Transform Suffering: The Discussion - Live Event Recording

Dive into the heart of suffering and expand your awareness of how each of us contains the power to transform it into divine wisdom. This is a recording of a live Insight Timer event split into two parts. This part, part one, is the opening practice and discussion, additional practices can be found in another upload. Here, Sarah Sati discusses the concept of suffering and offers a perspective to support your capacity to transform suffering experiences for the benefit of humanity.

Transcript

Hi Elena.

Okay,

I'm Sarah,

Sarah Satie,

And I'm going to give it just a few moments as people join us this afternoon or morning or evening,

Wherever you are in the world.

Hi Elena.

Hello,

Hello.

Yeah,

If you want to say where you are,

I'd love to hear where people are coming from.

I'm right now in the Dutch Caribbean,

The island of Bonaire.

Okay,

Canada,

Cool.

Yeah,

I think we'll have people from all over the world.

I'm really lucky today because not only am I live on Insight Timer,

But I'm joined here with five really beautiful human beings,

Also from all over the world.

And we all met on this island,

This Caribbean island.

So they will be here for the experience,

And that's really cool.

Hi Maria,

Yeah,

Wonderful to see you,

Or not see you,

But you know.

Yeah,

So I'll just kind of introduce us and get the vibe going as people slowly join,

And then we'll get started.

As you know,

Because you've joined the event,

It's called Transform Suffering.

That's really what we're going to be dealing with today,

Talking about the topic of suffering.

And hopefully I'll be providing you with some,

Hi Mariette,

Yeah,

Thank you.

Hopefully I'll be providing you with some valuable tools and resources.

So I want you to have an experience today,

But my actual goal is that after today,

You're able to use some of what we did here together to develop a new perspective for yourself on how to approach suffering.

And I'll get more into that as we get going,

But that's essentially the goal of today.

I want you to have an experience,

But more than that,

I really want you to take something from this experience that you can put into your day-to-day life.

So as I said,

I'm Sarah Satie,

I'm joining you from the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire.

I'm here with a few people,

Not all want to be on camera,

But I'll just show you,

Hello.

People from all over the world,

From Holland,

And living here also.

So maybe you can see me,

The internet is shoddy on an island,

But hopefully at the very most you can hear me,

Which is what's important.

So today we're going to get started just with a quick centering activity,

And then once we do that,

I want to talk a little bit about the topic itself,

Transform suffering.

We only have an hour,

It's a huge topic,

So I want to share some perspectives that may be new for you,

And some ways to look at this idea,

This concept of suffering in a way that may be beneficial for changing not just your life,

Because it's not really just about us,

But also the lives of the people you know.

So many people on the Insight Timer platform work directly with people in the helping fields,

And this is a topic that is really important for those fields,

And for the people working with them.

So this will maybe give you something that you can give to them as well,

Some information to pass along.

Let's begin though first with a centering exercise to bring us all into this space together.

So wherever you are right now,

Sitting up or lying down,

Let your eyes close.

Take a moment here not to resist anything.

As soon as the eyes close,

All of the activity that was going on inside the mind that you may have easily been able to ignore,

It presents itself.

So we think we're here and we're in this moment because we're talking and we're looking,

But once we close the eyes and we start to turn inward,

It's quickly apparent that there is a lot going on inside the mind that is keeping us at a barrier from being fully present.

What I want you to do in this moment is to see it all.

Don't avoid any content that comes up inside of your mind.

If you notice a tension in the body,

Don't resist it or try to force it to relax.

Instead,

Allow yourself to fully embrace everything that is in this moment.

It's natural that you may begin to pay attention to the feeling of yourself breathing.

But again,

Just as you may desire to interfere with your thinking mind,

You may find there's a desire to interfere with your energetic self as well by trying to control your breathing in some way.

Release that expectation of yourself that you have to control anything in this moment.

And instead,

Simply allow yourself to be with the fullness of experience,

Whether it's chaotic,

Whether it's comfortable,

Whether it feels good or bad,

Just let it be what it is.

Keeping this frame of mind,

I want you to bring your attention now to a time in your life where you suffered.

Let the experience or experiences really surface.

Let them really come all the way up into the mind.

You're in a safe space,

So you don't have to worry if it's okay or not to relive or remember this experience.

Allow it to emerge and look at it as clearly as possible right now.

As you explore this experience or these experiences,

I want you to ask yourself a few questions.

So the first question is,

How were you experiencing that suffering in the moment?

What happened to you as a result of it?

This is a very broad question,

So you interpret it to the best of your ability.

Maybe you think of things like,

I became depressed or I isolated,

But you may also think of things like,

I became very angry or I lost all my focus.

Just allow what happened to you from the experience of suffering to emerge.

You may notice that naturally the breath rhythm changes.

Don't interfere.

Just allow it to be what it is.

The next question I want you to ask yourself is,

Who was experiencing the suffering?

I literally want to say the question inside of your mind in whatever language works best for you.

And then you allow whatever answer to emerge on its own.

And it may be the case there is no answer.

In fact,

It's quite likely it's the case that there is no answer.

So allow yourself to sit with that,

That space of answerlessness.

If you found there was an answer to the question,

Who was it that suffered?

Now I want you to locate that you who you think you are.

Look inside your body and search for it.

Can you find this you?

Can you find this self who suffers?

There is no you.

You cannot pull a you out of your heart.

You cannot pull a you out of your brain.

There is no you in your belly.

There is no you in your eyes.

So then what is the essence of you?

And you can again literally ask that question,

What is the essence of me?

And here's where we're going to have to agree on something.

The essence of you is emptiness.

Say it to yourself inside of your mind.

Use this internal dialogue.

The essence of me is emptiness.

You are as empty as a sesame seed.

As a blade of grass.

And this is great news.

This is great news because of the qualities of emptiness.

And as I said,

This is where we have to agree.

So just allow your mind to relax and listen as I tell you some qualities of emptiness of what you are.

Emptiness is spacious.

It has no boundaries.

Emptiness accepts everything into it.

Emptiness lives inside of everything.

And everything lives inside of emptiness.

Emptiness is boundless love.

Endless joy.

Emptiness is the source of creation.

Knowing these things about what you are.

These beautiful things about what you are.

Spend just a minute here in silence.

Sitting with the feeling of being this divine,

Open,

Accepting emptiness.

Let yourself breathe out.

Allow your breath to be its normal,

Relaxed breath.

And then let your eyes open.

So the topic is transformed suffering.

And there is a reason for some of the things that I brought to your mind during this meditation.

And it has to do with what I really want to talk about.

So I'm going to address also you.

Emptiness,

Pure consciousness awareness.

Yeah,

Brett,

I think that that's an appropriate understanding of it.

I also want to address the people here about this idea of when you think about suffering,

And please feel free to chime in through the chat.

Yes,

Lie down if you need to.

When you think about suffering and you brought to your own mind this question of a time you suffered,

What kinds of things did people suffer over?

And so if you don't feel comfortable sharing,

Don't worry about it.

But if you feel like you have a thing to share,

Go ahead and share.

Heartache.

Heartache,

Okay.

Heartache,

Like a breakup or let's be very specific,

A death.

Yeah,

A breakup.

A breakup,

Okay.

Yeah,

Breakups,

Suffering after a breakup.

Yeah,

Chelsea also here,

Broken heartedness,

A partner leaving.

Loneliness,

Cindy,

That's definitely a big one.

Yeah.

Grief.

Say it?

Grief.

Grief,

Yeah,

Grief.

And grief hits us in a lot of ways,

Right,

From a death or did anybody talk or feel like,

Yeah,

Divorce,

Justine,

This is a really big one.

Angie,

Confusion.

Can you be a little more specific?

Like,

Confusion over what?

One big one that may have come up for some people is an illness,

Not being seen by a partner.

Definitely this is an area where suffering comes through.

Okay,

Charisse,

Yeah,

Suffering through the emotion of fear of loss.

Big diagnoses,

Right,

Can cause suffering.

I've had situations in my life where I've been very injured,

So then I couldn't participate in the things that I loved.

That caused really deep suffering.

Sickness,

These kinds of things can cause suffering.

Business setbacks.

Business setbacks,

Right,

Business setbacks.

And this,

The bigger overarching expectations about how our life should be and then them not going in those ways that we expected.

So these are great.

And they're great because they really lead into what I want to bring is a perspective on suffering and four quadrants of it.

Addiction is a big one.

Guest.

Okay,

So a little insight time or humor.

And because this is a heavy topic,

So we want to make sure that we're talking about a heavy topic,

But we keep a beautiful sense of lightness to it because it's not so heavy that it needs to weigh us down.

So if you're like most people,

Whether you answered or not,

You identified what I would consider a profound suffering.

Something in your life,

Very specific that happened,

And we can call this,

I want to call it profound.

And I want to suggest here that there are four quadrants of suffering.

So unlike Zoom,

I can't share my screen.

I wish I could so that I could show you a diagram.

But you can imagine a box like this with four quadrants.

And even if you have a pen and paper,

You can write this down or just imagine it in your mind.

In these four quadrants,

We have profound suffering.

And that's what a lot of people are talking about right now and feeling in their mind.

I want to suggest we also have mundane suffering.

This is a suffering we don't talk about very much.

And we have two other types of suffering.

We have selfless suffering,

And then we have selfish suffering.

And so these are the four types of suffering that I really want to bring your minds to because it's by changing our perspective on suffering that we're able to actually transform it.

And that's really all it is.

It sounds very,

Very simple,

But it's very,

Very difficult.

I remember going through an intense breakup like,

Oh,

The end of the world kind of breakup and crying,

Crying,

Crying.

And someone I really loved said to me,

But what about me?

I was so consumed with myself and the suffering that I was going through that I was forgetting of the community that I had around me that were being this one person who I was no longer with.

This is not a unique experience.

You know,

This is something we've all,

I think,

Had an experience of.

If I had changed my perspective,

You know,

I would love to repeat at heart,

But I'm kind of in the flow.

So I'm going to record this and then I will repost it on Insight Timer.

So just to let you know that you can re-listen to this again if it moves you.

I'll repeat the four quadrants though.

You have profound suffering.

This is like an illness.

This is like a death.

This is like a breakup.

This is like a big diagnosis or a big injury.

You have mundane suffering.

Let's identify this.

This is like doing the dishes.

This can be really a source of suffering for some people.

Some people hate to do the dishes.

Paying your bills,

Okay,

That's my mundane suffering.

Definitely I hate to pay my bills.

There are other mundane sufferings like keeping your house clean.

General communication with a partner that you're not going to leave,

You know.

This is sort of mundane suffering.

Exercise.

Exercise I would consider mundane suffering.

And also eating well.

I think those are two really important ones that I actually want to talk about a little bit more.

But profound,

Yes,

Thank you Elena.

Profound,

Mundane,

Selfish,

And selfless.

So I want to go back to this example where I had this breakup.

And I say it's as easy as changing your perspective.

But if it were that easy,

Right,

In that moment my perspective would have just changed.

And it would have been like,

Oh,

I'm no longer suffering.

Like,

Yay everyone.

Thank you for joining me.

All you have to do is just change your perspective.

Okay,

I'll see you next time.

And if it were that easy that would be so awesome.

But although it's a simple concept,

It's really quite difficult.

Especially in the moment of suffering to do,

To change our perspective.

And that is really the purpose for this time together today.

Because I want to give you tools to leave here in this moment.

And be able to transform your perspective.

Not during times of intense suffering.

Because that's not the time necessarily that it will change.

But I will talk about that also.

Because that's not 100% the case.

But so that on a day-to-day basis you can use mundane suffering to transform your perspective.

So I'll talk a little bit about that.

But first let me attend to profound.

This is why we tend to talk about profound suffering so much.

Profound suffering,

And this is also a concept in Buddhism that you can investigate if you're interested in.

Like if we're very sick or if someone has died.

It often times makes it easier to tap into this emptiness space that we talked about during this opening meditation.

Because we're pushed very far deep into the ends of what we're capable of experiencing on our selfish level.

It often times makes it much easier to then recognize our true nature.

So while it's the case that if you're wrapped up in suffering,

You may not be able to transform your perspective easily.

It's also the case that,

And maybe you've had this experience,

You can share if you have or not.

That you've gone through like super intense suffering part of your life and you've come out of it a transformed person.

So that's something that you would say you've experienced.

Yeah,

You go through these really intense suffering experiences and you come out with a new perspective on life.

So maybe not during that necessarily particular suffering experience were you able to change your perspective.

But afterwards,

Then your perspective naturally changed.

So profound suffering is its own transformative process.

And it's something very beautiful,

I think,

That we don't want to eliminate.

Because we can really experience it in a new way that allows us to go through this transformation.

It's like being burned in a fire,

Sort of,

And coming out a phoenix,

If you will.

Let's talk about these other two selfish and selfless.

So selfish suffering is why most people suffer during profound or mundane suffering.

It's because this is about me.

This is about me.

This is my break up.

This is my death.

This is my business that I lost.

These are pieces of what we would call our identity.

If you go back,

And this is why what we did in the beginning was so important.

If you go back to this beginning meditation and you think about what you really are and no one can deny this,

There is no you to find.

You won't find a you.

There is no sesame seed to find.

There is no blade of grass to find.

It's empty.

And this is a beautiful thing because it relinquishes this heavy demand on us that we have to be an identity.

So I really want you to think about that.

You are locked into an identity.

And being locked into that identity is holding you back from experiencing the natural joy that exists,

Whether or not life is bad or good.

Because the real truth is you're never going to eliminate maybe breakups,

Right?

Maybe one day you won't break up anymore.

But death,

We can't eliminate death.

We cannot eliminate the economy going up or going down.

You know,

This is a natural fluctuation of the economy.

These things are never going to go away.

And so if that's the case,

How can we relinquish this sense of a need for an identity that allows us then to also relinquish the concept of suffering?

We know that suffering is what allows us to experience joy.

We know that light is what allows us to experience darkness.

Yeah,

Laura,

I'm going to touch on this.

This is a great point.

So we also know then that it's inherent in light,

Darkness,

And it's inherent in joy,

Suffering.

So if you cannot pull one out from the other,

Then there isn't one or the other.

There isn't joy or suffering.

It's the same exact thing.

It's just the perspective of it in the moment.

Okay,

So this is great news because what we want to do is we want to relinquish this identity,

Which allows us to step out of the selfish form of suffering.

The selfish form of suffering is the one that says,

I don't want to do this.

I don't like this.

This hurts me.

The selfless form of suffering is the one that transcends being an identity and recognizing at the core essence of everyone is emptiness.

And as I discussed at the beginning,

Emptiness has some really beautiful qualities,

Some beautiful qualities.

Does that mean that the suffering is outside of you?

Yes,

I would say that the outside inside is a tough concept.

So I would say the belief that suffering is happening to you is,

Yes,

Eliminated when you imagine that suffering is actually a natural rhythm of the world,

The universe,

And that you can't experience any form of suffering at your essence.

This emptiness,

This empty self is free,

Is free of this up and this down,

Is present for all of those things so that it's no longer one or the other.

It's always the same.

So this is a,

These are big concepts,

Very big concepts,

And I talked about this last month.

Sometimes you're introduced to a concept and it doesn't take root for months or years or whatever,

And that's part of the process of growth.

Because as we know,

You don't go to a chemistry class and take a chemistry lesson and then go home and be a chemist,

Right?

You have to go home and do all this homework and you have to study more and practice and then eventually maybe you're a chemist and maybe you're a really good one,

But you may also just be like a mediocre one for a while.

And this is the reality of life.

Again,

When we relinquish the sense of identity,

When we step outside of this boundary that holds us into selfish suffering,

Then we're able to experience suffering on a different level.

And that is the selfless level.

So let me talk about this a little bit,

The selfless level.

I think we can all agree that everything we do has a reaction.

And this is something I talked about yesterday in this class.

Okay.

Everything you do has an outcome,

Has a reaction.

And so when that reaction happens,

It has two effects.

One is on the small self,

This selfishness side of us,

And the other is on the greater self,

The larger self.

So the example I gave in this class yesterday was reading a profound text,

Like a spiritual book,

Versus watching porn,

Versus watching pornography.

So the small self may get pleasure out of both of these things,

Right?

The small self says,

Oh,

Wow,

This book was very deep and rich.

The small self says,

Oh,

Great,

I had an orgasm that felt good.

So both of these things may give the small self pleasure,

But if we look beyond the small self to the larger self,

And we see the ripples that happen,

We can say that reading a profound text,

Like a really great book,

Has effects like it helps the writer,

Because you bought it,

Continue to produce content that helps many other people.

It colors your perspective lens,

So when you look out on the world,

You treat people in a way differently than if you were looking out on the world,

Maybe from a point of anger or something like this.

So there are all these little effects that create the global experience,

The global humanity.

If we talk about watching pornography,

For instance,

Then we can say it may give pleasure to the small self,

To the larger self,

To the global humanity.

We've done something like provided more encouragement for this kind of content to be produced,

Which is oftentimes related to exploitation of people and their innate nature and heart.

In addition,

We've colored the way we look out on the world.

So now we look out on the world through these eyes of sexualization of the people that we see.

So when we go into our community,

We're looking through those eyes.

So while the small selfish side of us may experience both of those things in some sort of a pleasurable way,

The global humanity is affected very differently from one versus the other.

So if we can agree on that,

What we can also potentially agree on is that if we look at suffering as an opportunity to change global humanity,

Our suffering individually,

Then we can begin to relinquish this identity and experience suffering not from a place of fear,

Laura,

And this is what I want to talk about,

Not from a place of fear,

But from a place of being invited into a profound experience to transform the way humanity is currently existing inside of reality.

So suffering,

Profound or mundane,

Is a beautiful invitation to allow the global humanity to transform itself through us.

So I just want to let you sit with that for a moment,

That idea.

I'll say it again,

Suffering is an invitation to begin to transform how the global humanity is experiencing reality.

It's a profound invitation.

So a young woman I knew,

Very young,

She was 15,

She was cutting.

Maybe you know somebody who's gone through this,

Cutting.

She's a young woman,

She was experiencing all sorts of life events and she started cutting.

I said to her,

And I'm saying this to you now,

Especially those of you who work with people in the helping industries,

We,

Instead of trying to stop people from experiencing suffering,

We can actually extend them that invitation.

We can say to them,

You have just been invited into a community of people that are experiencing suffering for the benefit of others.

So how does that work?

So how do we experience suffering for the benefit of others?

That's like the big question.

Okay,

Let's kind of unpack it a little bit and then we'll do a practice.

One way is that we can dedicate our suffering to other people.

Energy goes out and affects others.

If you're standing next to someone and you're not looking at them,

You can still see them out of the corner of your eye.

You can still feel them if they're a little close to you.

We know that we're experiencing energy on a deep way.

We just can't really measure it yet.

So the first thing is we can dedicate our suffering to other people.

Right away it uplifts us.

Right away when we say,

I'm going through this for the benefit of someone else.

I have a 15 year old son.

I go on these very hard runs and at the end of the run,

I always want to stop.

I do two things.

One is I check in with my body.

Does my body need to stop?

Okay,

That's honoring the system that carries me through.

So that's a good thing.

If I can keep running,

I dedicate it to my son because he's also 15.

And he's also going through this experience of COVID.

So I continue to run thinking about how I hope to alleviate some of his pain by taking it on for myself.

This is an energetic way that we can begin to transform suffering in the mundane,

In the mundane.

Right.

But there's also a way that we can apply this to the profound.

We can use it as an experiment.

I'm suffering.

Whoa.

How do I help myself?

How can I help myself?

And then we dive face first into our own suffering.

We don't avoid it.

We don't do whatever we want to do to cover it up.

We dive headfirst into it.

We see it as clearly as possible.

And then we identify what we need to do to transform it for ourselves.

And then we use that knowledge for other people in our lives who are suffering.

And this is a way that we can experience a transcendence from the selfish form of suffering into the selfless form of suffering.

Because in each of our lives,

The highest level of transforming suffering would be to eliminate the selfish suffering.

And so you no longer have these quadrants.

And now you have a triad,

Mundane suffering.

You have profound suffering and you have for humanity,

For the benefit of humanity.

And so what does this look like?

It looks like being present for your suffering.

That's number one.

You cannot you cannot look away from it right away.

If you look away from it,

You lose the ability to understand what's happening to you.

And although we want to consider ourselves very unique and special,

The real truth is,

As we explored already,

We're all just empty inside.

So there's there's not that much that's very unique about us inside,

Which means that suffering is the same for all of us.

So if we understand how to heal ourselves from suffering,

We can become powerful transformers to help other people heal themselves from suffering.

And that's the best gift that we can give to humanity is to live beyond ourselves.

So the first tool I want to give you before we dive into a practice,

Because there are some qualities you have to develop.

And like we talked about with chemistry,

You're going to learn go to a chemistry class.

You want to become a chemist.

And it doesn't happen overnight.

You have to do the homework.

You have to transform yourself as a human being.

You have to transform yourself as a human being.

You have to decide that you want to go beyond an identity of small self and that you want to work for the benefit of all beings.

So you have to develop some qualities.

The qualities that you have to develop first off are endless love and endless compassion,

Endless love and endless compassion.

And that's what we'll work with in our practice.

So we'll do the practice today and then I'd invite you to continue day after day working with these types of practices in whatever way is right for you.

So that you over time transform yourself into the type of personality.

That's what it is.

It's a personality.

It's just a facade on the outside,

A personality who lives for the benefit of all beings instead of just for the benefit of ourselves.

That takes time.

So we'll do a practice.

The other practice I want to give you,

Excuse me,

The other practice I want to give you is something that you can take into your life every day.

And that is to wake up to how you suffer on the mundane level day to day.

We never say this.

I doubt anybody when I asked you to envision what you've suffered over was like the dishes.

I hate doing the dishes.

You know,

Probably nobody nobody did that.

But maybe Tom.

Maybe.

Yeah.

You love the dishes.

Oh,

OK.

OK.

Some people love the dishes.

So somebody probably didn't even maybe somebody thought of exercise,

You know,

But exercise can be something we avoid,

But we can use exercise for the good of humanity.

And that's a beautiful thing.

It's also motivating.

So if I'm somebody who suffers from exercise,

I can motivate myself to exercise more when I make it a gift for others.

So how do we take mundane suffering on a day to day basis and we transform it for ourselves?

You wake up to how you suffer in a mundane way.

So you have to identify those things for yourself.

Journal it.

Write it down.

What makes me suffer in a way I wouldn't necessarily tell anybody because I wouldn't want them to think that I'm suffering over something so small.

Or maybe you do tell people and they're wondering,

Like,

Why are you always suffering over the dishes?

But you can bring attention to it and make yourself super aware of it.

And then the next time you experience it,

If you're fully present for the experience,

You give it to someone.

You say to yourself,

You say to yourself,

And it's literally talking in your own mind,

You say,

I'm going to endure this so someone else doesn't have to.

And maybe it's that you decide to do the dishes for Tom as a gift to him.

But it could also be that you have somebody near or far.

You have somebody near or far who you really love,

Who you know may be going through some suffering.

And you choose energetically to endure some normal day to day activities for their benefit.

So this this can happen all day long,

All day long.

I don't want to go to work today.

You know what?

I'm going to go to work for the benefit of insert,

Insert a person and then really visualize them,

Really bring them into your mind.

That's a day to day practice.

You don't need any sitting time.

You don't need anything special.

You don't need a meditation cushion.

You just do it.

You do need presence.

You have it already.

It's a gift,

But you have to wake up to it.

So that's your own task.

So that is bringing in profound suffering to your mundane suffering.

Yes.

But then can you do it to yourself too?

Definitely.

And this is something we'll work on in this next practice.

You can also,

Daphna had a great question,

Or not question,

But comment.

She said that's actually turning mundane suffering into profound suffering.

So I love that because let's go a little deeper.

What if we created a world where we didn't even have a triad,

But we only had profound suffering for the benefit of all beings so that whether it's mundane day to day or it's big like death or some other event,

It always has a profound effect on the benefit of all beings.

And that would be,

That's something I didn't think about and I'm really glad that you brought it up and is a beautiful way to think about our own suffering.

And then also that we can direct it to ourselves.

Because we have a small self.

It's a little baby.

It lives inside of us.

It didn't get the love it wanted.

It had a break up.

It really went through some things you know it's as much a reality that we don't exist as we do exist.

It's,

It's never all one or the other.

We don't want to become like nihilist.

Nothing is real.

Everything you know is,

Is fake.

We want to be with the richness of experience.

It's our one life.

We're gifted to have it.

So we can also direct that to ourselves.

And,

And when we direct it to ourselves,

We can again transcend this experience of being selfish,

Because we are living inside our highest self.

So let's practice.

Reviews

Technical difficulties and lost connection half way through but absolutely wonderful teaching❤️thank you so much and no suffering as I get to listen as many times as I like. Thank you for caring so much that you do what you do to help others like me. Namaste my friend... 🙏💖🙌💥💯