Life Without Suffering

He said it so matter-of-factly.

“You can live life without suffering. It is completely possible.”

Really? At 52, I have grown accustomed to suffering. I know all about the

burden of perfectionism, the grief of loss and rejection, and the worry and

sacrifice of parenting. These three are my greatest hits...playing every time

I tune in.

But, when I change the channel, I know there is more. I am talking about

the suffering that I don’t like to name or claim because it doesn’t suit my

ego. There’s the way that I second guess myself in professional and

personal situations. There’s the body shame that tells me to stay in the

shadows. There’s the way that I review social interactions, searching for

signs of being rejected. There’s the way my heart wants to carry the

burdens of others because I think it is the loving thing to do. There’s my

shame as a white woman in a racist system…and the guilt that it took me

five decades to see how deeply complicit and advantaged I am by it.

And, like an infomercial, there’s more…there’s much, much more!

So, what was this shaman talking about…living without suffering? Life is

not all sunshine and roses. In the face of real tragedy, injustice, grief and

loss how do I keep from suffering?

The Buddhist teaching of the second arrow offers some guidance. It

suggests that a painful event or circumstance is like an arrow that lands in

me. It hurts. My goal in the face of this pain is to avoid sending more

arrows at my heart by blaming myself or even someone else for the pain.

Blaming adds suffering on top of pain.

So living without suffering means that I allow pain to exist in my life without

fighting it, running from it, or attaching to it. The goal is to see the pain

objectively and get in right relationship to it. Peace seeps in like a healing

salve when I radically accept discomfort and challenge as part of the

human condition, and I lovingly take care of myself through the pain. That

takes a lot of patience, kindness and compassion.

It also takes work.

I have to be careful about which thoughts I empower, which story lines I

allow to define me. I have to be willing to release my attachment to the

identities that my family, my culture, and my ego hand me. All of them…

the sweet little fat girl, the rescuer, the rebel, the rejected one, the

nurturer… create suffering because they obscure my true identity. They

limit me while they also inflate my importance. In other words, I am these

things, and I am not these things. They are roles I adopt to predict when I

will get hurt and to know where to place the blame.

And they are convincing. So how do I move beyond them?

I can let pain heal me. I know that if I don’t resist the fire of pain, then I can

use it to transform me. I have to be willing to hurt... to move into sorrow,

grief and anger. And I have to be willing to come out the other side. I can

let the pain burn away my attachment to my chosen identities and see

myself as a pure expression of the Love that created me. Then I know that

I am ok, even if I am hurt, or scared, or mad. I am ok because my soul is

so much bigger than my identities and my feelings.

And here’s where it gets really good. If I can see the sacred truth of

myself...beyond my chosen identities and my raging feelings...then I can

see others that way too.

When I see our shared sacred truth, then all the divisions fall away. I begin

to understand that the people in my life who hurt me through their actions

and words do so because they are playing a role that they adopted for their

own protection and survival. When I know how hard it is to sit in the

transforming crucible of pain, I can be compassionate with those who aren’t

ready to do that.

And I can choose to move away from those toxic relationships.

When I widen my vision and understand that not everyone can get out of

harm’s reach because racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia (again,

there’s more...) know no bounds, then I must answer the moral call to use

what I have been given to demand accountability and change.

When I am rooted in the sacred ground that we all share, the call to treat

everyone as I want to be treated becomes clear. I am clear that I want to

live without adding suffering to pain. I want to see myself as whole,

dynamic, and strong...good enough to be loved all the way through. I want

access to the wisdom and compassion that can liberate me from what my

ego and my culture tell me I am. I want to live an authentic and safe life.

And I want all of this for you, too.