Attempting to Overcome Suffering

Everyone suffers. It is an indubitable fact of being alive. Every religion and philosophy, every school of psychology has written tomes on the subject. Suffering is the central fact of both Christianity and Buddhism. Indeed, it seems obvious from our perspective that suffering is a central experience to all life, not just ours.

To ask, "How do I end suffering in my life?" is a deceptively simple question that is both straightforward and yet hopelessly contradictory, innocent but at once audacious. The question has the danger of leading one down endless dead ends of fruitless hope but if handled correctly also glimmers with the promise of liberation. In such a fundamental question, in such a possibility, therefore, one should see immediately the trap of the question simply leading to more questions. A simple way to look at it is this: it is while suffering that I wish suffering to end. I seek relief.

If we look to people who have seemed to overcome suffering, we often want to know how they got there and entertain the possibility that if we, too, do what he or she did then over time we might be free of suffering as well. Unfortunately, there couldn't be a greater illusion. Overcoming suffering requires transcendence, and transcendence requires abandonment of all doctrine (formula). Experience, in other words, is created and not repeated. You must go through this your own way: others can merely help you get started.

However we can also clearly envision a state of being of minimal or no suffering and deem it to be far preferable to our present life. That is fine- as a vision. But it is something that is true here and now or not true. The reality of this path (for it is truly a path and not a process), is that for all of us who live in suffering is the surprisingly frightening yet obvious fact that we must go through and confront suffering directly in order to transcend it. We cannot fear it if we are to let go of it.

I believe that suffering in this life can indeed be conquered. But it cannot be escaped.

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