This episode is a response to questions I receive every once in a while about pain and suffering and how they are addressed in Christian nonduality.
This episode is a response to questions I receive every once in a while about pain and suffering and how they are addressed in Christian nonduality.
This episode is a response to questions I receive every once in a while about pain and suffering and how they are addressed in Christian nonduality. It seems that a lot of spiritual seekers are looking for a cure- for all the difficulties of life. It is believed that spiritual awakening will usher them into a life of glassy-eyed bliss and never-ending peace. They think that liberation or enlightenment or salvation – or whatever term you want to call it - will solve all their problems. That is not spiritual awakening. That is snake oil. Anyone who is trying to sell you that is not a spiritual teacher; he or she is a snake oil salesman.
It is true that spiritual awakening changes everything – including suffering. Yet it is also true that everything remains the same. As the Zen sayings goes: “In the beginning, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; later on, mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers; and still later, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.” This is true with suffering and pain. Everything is different, yet everything is the same.
Suffering is an important issue. For many people suffering motivates their spiritual search. It drives us to look for a solution to the human condition. According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha began his spiritual search in response to the four sights: old age, sickness, death and an ascetic. After his enlightenment his first sermon was his four noble truths about suffering: the fact of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and his eightfold path to cessation of suffering.
Christ also focuses on suffering but comes at it differently. The symbol of Christianity is the cross, which as the hymn Old Rugged Cross says, is “the emblem of suffering and shame.” A crucifix is clearly about suffering and how it relates to God and humans. But Christ approaches pain and suffering not by expounding a path to be free of suffering but by teaching nonresistance – taking up the cross.
Life is suffering. I identify with the first of the four sights of Siddhartha at this point in my life. Aches and pains of aging are a constant part of my life now. As soon as I hit seventy years of age, it seems like the body started announcing the approach of its expiration date. My physicians started talking about replacement parts for my body, as if this body were an old automobile with a lot of miles on it.
The third sight of the Buddha – death - feels more real as I notice daily that more names in the obituaries are people around my age. Psychological suffering is a problem for increasing numbers of people in western society. Suicide rates are high in all age groups, most tragically in youth. Suffering and pain are real, and any spiritual tradition worth its salt will address it.
Some nondual approaches give the impression that awakening is liberation from all the suffering and pain. It is presented as the golden ticket. People ask me if self-realization or the realization of no-self solves the problem of suffering. When you realize you are not a self, does that end suffering? People ask how awakening changes the experience of physical pain and psychological suffering. Lurking right beneath the surface of these inquiries is the hope for the end of all suffering.
On the surface that seems to be what the Buddha taught, but on further inquiry I think it is not. I am no Buddhist scholar, although I have studied Buddhism as part of my university and seminary work in the World’s Religions. My understanding of the Pali term for suffering, dukkha, is that it refers to a wheel that is off-center. In Pali, du means bad. Kha is the hole at the center of a chariot wheel. Dukkha means a bad hole at the center of a wheel. It describes a wheel or a life that is off balance. It is the sense that something is not right.
In the West we might call this existential angst. Christianity speaks about the Fall as depicted in the story of the Garden of Eden. It is the sense that something about human existence is off balance. Something is not right, and that not-rightness (the biblical term is unrighteousness) prompts a spiritual search for rightness or righteousness, to use the biblical term.
As I understand it, this is the type of suffering that is being addressed by the Buddha. He found a way to be free from existential suffering. If doesn’t mean that we don’t feel pain if you hit your finger with a hammer. The other day I was putting a log in my woodstove recently and accidently touched the hot grate with my finger causing a second degree burn. It hurt. Awakening doesn’t mean that we don’t hurt. It doesn’t mean you won’t get cancer and feel pain and die. So if you are looking for a pain-free existence, you are looking in vain. But if you are looking for freedom from the suffering caused by the uncenteredness of life - that is possible.
It means freedom from much of the psychological suffering of life. Not all of it. There is suffering as long as there is a self to suffer. But the less self there is, the less suffering. That is the key. It is a process. When one realizes that we are not the psychological self, then we are immediately freed from a lot of that psychological suffering. It is present, but it is no longer happening to us. That is freedom!
The body still feels pain, and the self still suffers. Everything is the same … but everything is different. Suffering does not touch what we really are. In that sense there is liberation from suffering. We are free from all that distress and anxiety that people pile on top of the hardships of life. People pile on layers of unnecessary suffering by identifying with the body and psyche. Liberation frees us from that. Realizing we are the Whole and not an isolated part puts life in perspective. But this does not mean there is no pain or suffering at all.
Jesus teaches us how to approach pain and suffering. He told us that liberation from suffering is not to fear or run from suffering or pain. He repeatedly said the way is to take up our cross and follow him. Jesus started his Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes. He lists all sorts of people who are suffering – the hungry, poor, grieving, the persecuted, etc. He does not propose a way to end their suffering. He blesses them. He points to the Whole, the One. He points to God and the Kingdom of God. He puts the pain and suffering back into the balance of opposites in life. He rebalances life. This is the cure for dukkha. He fixes the broken wheel.
Jesus’ approach to pain and suffering is represented by the cross. Jesus did not endure his crucifixion like a stoic – mind over matter type of thing. He did not escape from suffering or pain by coming down off the cross. When offered a drug to dull his senses he refused. That should tell us something right there.
Jesus also experienced emotional suffering on the Cross and in Gethsemane immediately before. He cried out “My God. My God, why have you forsaken me?” That is an expression of emotional suffering present at the end of his life. This tells us that the incarnated spiritual life fully lived involves emotions, including negative emotions. They are part of what it means to be authentically human. The Spiritual life – salvation, liberation - is not an end to feelings. That is not life; that is death. The spiritual life is a balanced life, a holistic life, a life of shalom.
So if you are looking for an emotional Shangri-La on earth, you are looking in vain. If you are looking for the spiritual equivalent of opioids or antidepressants, you will be disappointed. As long as there is a physical body there is pain. As long as there is a self there is psychological suffering.
But you are not the body or the self. That realization is liberation! When we see we are not the self, then suffering loses its hold on us. Its power over us is broken. Suffering is no longer happening to us. The suffering of the self feels more like the suffering of a loved one. That is compassion, which means to suffer with. When someone we love suffers, we suffer with them, don’t we? We suffer, yet it is not us who are suffering. That is liberation.
That is the solution to suffering taught and modeled by Jesus. It is love. It is compassion. It is divine life. Jesus is God suffering with us. That is the heart of Christian nonduality. That is the meaning of the Cross. Oneness does not abolish suffering; it conquers suffering by embracing suffering. It includes it and transcends it. The Tao of Christ embraces and includes all opposites. In so doing it takes the sting out of suffering and pain and death.
In short a lot of people come to the spiritual life seeking an end to negative feelings and sensations. That is a fool’s errand. Spiritual teachers who put that carrot in front of you are either deceiving you or deceiving themselves or both. Pain and suffering are part of Life because they are part of the Whole, the One, just like their opposites, pleasure and comfort. The key is neither to cling to those nor fear them nor fight them, but to let them be. Take up the Cross. All is one. That is the way of Christ. That is the teaching of Jesus and Christian nonduality.