Suffering: An invitation to life
When I was 21, I used to spend time in hospice care, a program in a local hospital. Yes, you read it right… at an age when my friends were off dancing and dating, I found myself in hospital rooms holding hands of the sick and dying, trying to make sense of the state of their suffering.
Now, when I connect the dots to that part of my life, I understand that I had to go through such experience so I can distill the insights towards clarity and share these experiences either through my writing, talks or counseling.
During that hospice program, after being with a dying person reviewing his life, or someone in critical care struggling through the physical suffering, my feet would naturally lead me to the nursery, to peep into the little newborn babies breathing their first breaths, little bundles of a human life set to unfold. I guess it was my own balancing mechanism to define the beginning and end states of our lives, with the constant of change permeating all of life.
Our awareness of living within the constant of change is what challenges us to stay awake, to strive to see life deeper and the purpose in it. Physical illness is the most intense reminder of suffering on a most immediate level. Excruciating pain: in the midst of this, deeper and intensely contracted states happen and the personality sheds its egos to touch the depths of their souls.
I experience having loved ones go through critical illness. I believe all of us at some point in our lives would experience this. I watch as pain, anxieties and fear surface in as helplessness steps in and control is released to have to learn reliance, dependence and trust. Watching loved ones go through physical pain that makes them jump out of their skins is heart-wrenching. Watching helplessly knowing one can only be there, loving and being…brings us to the core of life’s enigma of suffering, and the mystery of its transformation. Then there is acceptance, humility as we surrender that change will have its way and the physical vessel called the “body” is on its sure and steady journey through life.
We look around and there is so much suffering in the world today. I guess this has also been true throughout history and people question that if there is a God, why does He make the world suffer through diseases, earthquakes, floods and famine? Not to mention the collective suffering that comes through the free will of man’s evil choices brought about like greed, control and selfishness of the ego resulting in wars, genocides, gang rapes. Our media connectivity today makes collective suffering even more acute.
People suffer mentally, emotionally and physically since time immemorial, so the perennial question that religions have tried to address has been the root and cause of suffering. The Christian religion offers Christ to provide an answer to the problem of suffering by offering His unreserved availability and compassion; His presence in its effectivity in that He gives help and gives Himself.
Pope John Paul II states in his Salvifici Doloris that suffering has a subject and it is the individual who experiences it; yet it is not imprisoned within the person but gives rise to solidarity with others who are suffering; for the only one who has a special awareness of this is the person, the whole person. Thus, suffering involves solidarity.
Peter Morrell, medical historian and homeopathic practitioner, gives the Buddhism perspective that studying the suffering of oneself and that of other people is a central focus of the religion, its practice and its philosophy. “One is encouraged to explore what suffering is, the various forms it comes in and their root causes. We live much of our lives in an entangling spider web of these desires and aversions. Buddhism aims at the demolition of the self, the creation of subtle mindfulness, bliss, great compassion and moderation and gentleness. These must be cultivated within a general atmosphere of subduing the passions, subduing the desires and aversions and of cultivating reflection and a caring attitude to all life.”
Okay, so I write those quoted lines from my head. But the inevitable is that the heart wrenches as I see my loved ones in pain. And through it all, I watch myself not trying to change what is present, but watch what is arising. Staying totally in the present moment with the clarity of the mind and the openness of the heart. Suffering arises when we attempt to control the uncontrollable. When we attempt to change the past and/or the future, then in our minds, we suffer. In the present moment when we share both the suffering of our loved ones, and watch within ourselves the rising of suffering, we have the capacity to be present, to be aware — so that expansion and transformation is possible.
Hopefully our spiritual practices, our faiths born out of our chosen religions, our consciousness and mind through time…would brought forth the strength to see that the path becomes being her. The only practice is recognizing how to be BE HERE as it is happening. Using the power of suffering to connect to the other person and validate his present experience. This aids the healing process. At the end, there comes the peace in knowing that even suffering is just is — and that it is a life invitation to the awareness of being totally alive.