Life is suffering. That is the first noble truth of the Buddha and the first sentence of psychiatrist Scott Peck’s classic book The Road Less Traveled. He phrased it as “Life is difficult.” Much of the suffering and difficulty in life comes from interpersonal relationships. They disturb our peace of mind and keep us awake at night. What hurts the most is when personal relationships with people we care about - friends and family - are damaged. At such times we look to spirituality for how to understand and address our feelings and thoughts. What does nonduality have to say to this? That is what I talk about in this episode.
Life is suffering. That is the first noble truth of the Buddha and the first sentence of psychiatrist Scott Peck’s classic book The Road Less Traveled. He phrased it as “Life is difficult.” Much of the suffering and difficulty in life comes from interpersonal relationships. They disturb our peace of mind and keep us awake at night. What hurts the most is when personal relationships with people we care about - friends and family - are damaged. At such times we look to spirituality for how to understand and address our feelings and thoughts. What does nonduality have to say to this? That is what I talk about in this episode.
Emotional Suffering and Nonduality
Life is suffering. That is the first noble truth of the Buddha and the first sentence of psychiatrist Scott Peck’s classic book The Road Less Traveled. He phrased it as “Life is difficult.” Much of the suffering and difficulty in life comes from interpersonal relationships. They disturb our peace of mind and keep us awake at night.
I experienced that recently when a friend broke off our friendship due to my religious and political views. I am not alone in experiencing this. Jesus warned us that this is the consequence of being his disciple. He said, “Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth …. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A person’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”
We are a very divided as a nation politically. When we bring religion into the mix it can get even more volatile. Some of you may have noticed an example of that in the comment section of my last YouTube video, in which I was trolled by a White supremacist from Australia. He posted thirteen comments on my video, all of them vitriolic, before I blocked him from posting any more.
Actually those comments did not bother me very much, because I do not know the man. Plus he is on the other side of the globe, so I did not feel physically threatened. I could write him off as a crazy. The same with Facebook friends that you don’t really know. What hurts is when our personal relationships with people we care about are damaged. Friends and family. At such times we look to spirituality for how to understand and address our feelings and thoughts. That is what I want to talk about in this episode.
What does nonduality have to say to this? Our first thought might be that something is wrong with us, that we should not be feeling like this. We might think that if we really were spiritual - if we dwelt in unitive awareness - then we would not have emotional pain and suffering. After all that is why a lot of people begin the spiritual search, including Gautama Siddhartha it seems. People are driven to the spiritual life to find relief from the pain and suffering of life.
But that is a misunderstanding of what nondual awareness is. It is not some type of some type of permanent psychological state in which one is exempt from the vicissitudes of life, including physical pain and emotional suffering. Nondual awareness is ceasing to identify with the psyche that is experiencing the pain and suffering. The emotions are still there, but they are not ours. By that I mean they are not happening to who we really are.
We still feel them, but we feel them in a different way. In the sense that we share the emotions of a character we are reading about in a novel or watching in a movie. We still feel the emotions. We are not callous or heartless or indifferent. But neither do emotions overwhelm us or threaten us at the core of our being. Nondual awareness takes the sting out of suffering. In this way you could say that unitive awareness is the cure for suffering. That is what the Buddha was talking about in his four Noble truths.
Unitive awareness is not an emotionless state of endless bliss. It is experiencing the emotional states of our brains and bodies without being captive to them. It is very natural. After all, we do not have any control over the emotions anyway. They just happen. We all know this firsthand. We do not choose to be angry or sad or fearful or hurt or depressed or anything else. Those emotions come on their own unbidden. They simply arise in body as the brain produces chemicals that prompt physical symptoms.
Unitive awareness is not identifying with the self that seems to be suffering from these emotions. It is seeing the larger context of emotions. We are not the character that is expressing those emotions. We are the awareness in which this character and the emotions appear. From that perspective everything is alright just as it is. We can accept everything just the way it is, without feeling we have to fix it in order to stop the suffering. What is happening to the character does not threaten who we really are.
Therefore we do not take it as seriously any more. In a certain sense we can enjoy the ride of the whole range of emotions, just like we enjoy a roller coaster or a thriller novel or film. Nondual awareness is not a state of constant tranquility. It is not the fix for every relationship so everything in life is perfectly harmonious. We could not do that even if we wanted to. We do not have control even over our own emotional states, how could we possibly have control over others?
So what do we do when we find painful emotions arising? Simply experience the feelings without pushing them away. Accept them. Embrace them for what they are, which is physical sensations arising in the body. That is all they really are. The same with the thoughts that accompany them. Embrace them as interesting visitors. No need to try to understand them or judge them or stop them or fix them. Resisting emotions simply gives them more energy so that they grow stronger and keep them going. Instead let them be and experience them just as they are.
This is very different response than what people normally do. Normally we try to identify the problem and think about it and try to resolve it to stop the pain. We relive the painful emotions over and over in our mind. We go over and over the problem. We replay past events again and again and relive the emotions again and again, increasing the duration and harm the emotions casus to our psyche.
We rehearse scenarios and imagine what we should have said or what perhaps we should do. In so doing we live in the past and the future rather than in the present. All this does is increase the suffering. The mind is a suffering-producing machine. We allow our minds to torture us in this way. This is how neuroses develop. Then we have to see a therapist who will try to get us to relive those painful emotions some more. It is a never-ending cycle.
I think this is where the idea of reincarnation came from. Reincarnation is not something to accept literally. What is there to be reincarnated? There isn’t any such entity! It is an illusion. That was the original teaching of the Buddha, who rejected all the mythology of his Indian religion. He was a spiritual radical. But it feels like we are living a thousand lifetimes, when we rehearse every painful moment over and over in our minds trying to get it right.
The solution to endless suffering it to treat emotions – our inner environment – the same way we would treat things in our external environment. Treat them like we would treat the weather. Emotions are internal weather after all. We don’t take it personally when it there is a snowstorm or a thunder storm, or when there is a heat wave or drought or when the mosquitoes bite me or the black flies here in New Hampshire swarm me.
We don’t think God is out to get us. At least I hope not. People used to think that. This is what the book of Job is all about. If you think God is out to get you, you have bigger issues than I can deal with! When the external environment is painful I don’t nurse a lingering anger toward the cold front moving in or bugs that bit me. I deal with the situation the best I can and let it go. Inclement weather comes and goes. Feelings come and go. Let them come and go. We might resolve to be better prepared for next time by wearing better clothing or applying on bug repellent. I might decide to avoid a particularly harmful person in the future, like I would avoid an icy spot on the sidewalk, but that is all. I would certainly avoid an emotionally abusive person like I would avoid getting too close to an angry dog tied up at the corner house.
But generally speaking the way to be free of suffering is to be present to it. Be grateful for the full range of emotions, and not be fearful of them. See suffering as a teacher rather than an enemy. Do not seek to escape from the suffering and pain but to learn from it. I think that is the profound truth at the heart of the Cross of Jesus. Jesus did not seek to escape it, but embraced it. Christians say this was the path of salvation.
We do not have to fix our lives. All we have to do is show up. Woody Allen famously said that “Eighty percent of life is showing up.” I would say it is 100% of the spiritual life. All we have to do is show up. When we are consciously present to the drama of life, then we will know in the moment what, if anything, we need to do to address relationships. And we can act without fear of getting it wrong.
This is unitive awareness. It is not meditating on a cushion until there are no painful thoughts or feelings, but only bliss and joy. It is welcoming all feelings and emotions, like we would welcome a snowstorm or a bright sunny day. Jesus said that God sends the rain on the righteous and unrighteous. It is a matter of whether we accept the rain or bemoan it. When we live in unitive awareness, then life is much lighter. Most suffering drops away by itself. What is let is easier to bear. Again that is what Jesus meant when he said his yoke is easy and his burden is light. It takes a lot of work and time and worry to maintain suffering in our minds and bodies. And there is no need to do it. Just let it be.