Suffering

Last Sunday a gun man entered a Gay night club in Orlando, FA and killed almost 50 people and wounded many, many more.   US drones are flying over the middle East killing people, and climate change is causing the daily extinction of many species.   I have been thinking about suffering.

Clients often ask me why there is suffering.   We struggle against what we see as the unfairness and randomness of suffering.  It is unfair.  We feel if we could understand why suffering took place this would change it.  Each great religion offers explanations for suffering.  It does not change it for it is still part of our world.  We secretly hope that if we could understand suffering that we could escape it, and yet there is no escaping it.  Have you ever known anyone who did not suffer at some point in their life?  I certainly have not.  The question of why there is suffering is the wrong question.  The real question is how do we respond to suffering?   Perhaps if we could stop struggling against suffering like an animal in a trap we could learn to turn towards in and learn to respond with compassion.  Suffering is indeed with us like air, water and breath.

Christianity says that because God gave us all free will that this includes the freedom to do the wrong thing - to "sin" or to do evil.  But Christianity also says that God incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ stood looking down from a hill upon humanity and wept in response to our suffering (and way of treating each other.)  Christians are directed to identify the ways they sin or separate from God and bring themselves back to God and to pray for others to also have redemption.

Buddhism says that suffering is the nature of human experience.  But it also teaches that mindfulness is the way to reach detachment from the illusion of our experience being reality.  the Maras are the several forms of suffering that we are said to experience and believers are taught prayers of loving kindness designed to hold both people close to us and even total strangers in compassion and healing energy.

Judaism says that God contracted the divine self to make room for creation. Divine light was held in special vessels, or kelim, some of which shattered and scattered. While most of the light returned to its divine source, some light attached itself to the broken shards. These shards constitute evil and their trapped sparks of light give them power.

The first man, Adam, was intended to restore the divine sparks through mystical exercises, but his sin interfered. As a result, good and evil remained thoroughly mixed in the created world, and human souls also became imprisoned within the shards.  The “repair,” referred to in Judaism as Tikkun Olam that is needed, therefore, is two-fold: the gathering of light and of souls, to be achieved by human beings through the contemplative performance of religious acts.

It is noteworthy that all three of these great religions identify suffering - two of them describing it as separation from God, and all three see the way out of suffering as a spiritual path, that it is our intentional striving for good that is believed to be the cure.  All three call their followers to compassion in the face of suffering.  Buddhism says we cannot stop or end suffering we can only learn a way to be with us that releases us.

Coming Home to the Holy One

Becoming disconnected from the Divine or losing our spiritual way is an age old spiritual problem. Almost all religions proscribe steps one is to take if one is disconnected from God to reconnect. Prayer of course is one of the main ways we are encouraged to make that connection.  Recently I was listening to a talk by Tara Brach (which I highly recommend checking out: https://www.tarabrach.com/) When she made the comment that the surest way to turn back to the Holy was to turn towards love.  I noticed that just asking myself the question: which direction is loving? seems to help re-orientate me.

Buddhism suggests that the first spiritual motion is to stop, to reflect, to pause and to be mindfully aware of what we notice in the gap.   While Buddhism does not believe in a Divine entity I find that for myself taking this pause on a daily basis is the best way for me to take inventory and notice both if I am connected or disconnected from the Divine Parent.   It is also the best way for me to notice what are the spiritual issues in my life.

Buddhism also describes the Mara (the demon), said to have 5 daughters or Kleśa-māra (unskillful emotions - or the things that make us off center): greed/attachment/desire/passion, hate, delusion, aversion/discontentment and the worst being fear.  It is said that as the Buddha was about to reach enlightment Mara sent all 5 to tempt the Buddha. Buddha had resisted the first 4, but to resist fear Buddha touches the earth drawing upon its strength and energy as an anchor.  As a therapist I often find that when working with people in facing the hardest emotions: fear, rage, grief....that people are greatly aided by calling upon God but that for those who do not believe in God that calling on something Vast and mighty like earth, wind, fire, the ocean or mountain is what it takes to anchor us.

What can anchor you? What can help keep you from negative emotions that take you away from God? What kind of prayer practice keeps you connected?   What have you learned disconnects you?