Suffering: The First Step Down the Path

 When you suffer you go deep.

Br Phap Dung

You can guide yourself in the right direction, but you are not in control of Life.

Eckhart Tolle

I heard these words from two teachers in bodily form today as I was doing my usual morning ritual. I found that both quotes are connected.

The first quote, in reference to a discussion on the Four Noble Truths, speaks to the idea that yes, there is suffering and there is a cause for suffering.  We need to go deep to understand what that root cause is which has a lot to do with our tendency  to want to control, grasp, cling, or push away aspects of the outside world in order to create conditions that please us internally. We look to the superficial plane of our existence as both the cause of our suffering and the solution for suffering.  It is neither.  What Life offers us, be it pleasant or be it unpleasant, is not the source of suffering.  Our reaction to it is.  

When we have the experience of suffering we are given the opportunity to look deeply into our minds and our experiences to determine if we re reacting or responding...to go deeper...to the roots of it all. . How do we view the external event?  What do we think about it? How do we speak about it?  What actions to we take in reaction to it?  How are we choosing to live or make a living? Are our efforts wise, wholesome and committed  enough to steer us inward in a healthy response to external stimuli or are they unskillful enough to keep us stuck in the superficial world of form?  Are we mindful and concentrating on  the healthy seeds in our store consciousness? Or are we unconscious, mindlessly watering those reactive emotions that cause suffering?

The way out of suffering is always in.

In the second quote we are reminded that we all have the ability to take the right path ( in this case maybe...the noble eight fold path)  but that doesn't mean that we can control Life.  Life is going to keep giving us challenges and pain.  The path just offers us a peaceful way to get through all the natural chaos, the loss, the temporal nature of satisfaction, the grief, the pain  that is as much a part of Life as the joy. It teaches us how to respond and bend like the high grass in the wind rather than to react or resist which causes our sense of suffering.. 

Awareness of our suffering can be the first step down this path of liberation from it. 

Hmmm! All is well in my world. 

Brother Phap Dung/ Plum Village (July, 2017) Manual For Living. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Loi-R0drg-0

Eckhart Tolle/ Conscious Awareness ( December 28, 2021) Acknowledging the Good and Being the Light of the World.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drlbmknhasg