Chris Marti wrote:
Yes, that's generally what people mean, I think, by, "There is pain but no suffering." But isn't that a rather confusing way to express the underlying process and result?
I guess it's a matter of what people find clarifying. It was clarifying for me, but it is confusing if we think of "suffering" from the vantage point of the term's usual meaning in English. So I'd rather call it dukkha. Dukkha is, to me, that paralyzingly gripping of the gut, that sense of suffocation I get when my belief in self is under attack, real or imagined. It can be very subtle, or it can be overwhelming. It's what shame and embarrassment are made of. I can remember years ago reading a review of another scholar's work and feeling the heart rate accelerating, my breathing getting jagged, and a distinct feeling of being threatened at the very fact that another scholar in my field was being praised. It took me a moment to figure it out, because she wasn't in direct competition with me.
I used to get this feeling when people I liked or supported were being undermined. It really wreaked havoc in my married life, because I would identify with what I thought my husband might be feeling, and engage in this huge emotional reaction, which was the opposite of helpful. Once when my then 10-year-old son was disinvited from a birthday party I got upset, yet my son just sort of shrugged it off, and felt uncomfortable with my reaction.
Since waking up I have had none of this, even though I have experienced grief, physical pain, and even depression. It's not simply that I accept these things, it's that I experience them in their purity, without the overlay of me, mine, myself. The depression is a feeling of listlessness, but there is no corresponding thought process that starts in saying stuff like "this is awful, I'll never feel better, I'm a big failure, blah, blah blah." I sometimes feel curious about the way certain things have turned out. I also wonder where things will go from here. The wife of an acquaintance is dying of cancer, and I know that could just as easily be me. She was full of hope and high spirits, ready to take on the challenge of beating this thing, and now she's in hospice. I say this not to denigrate her spirit, but rather to recognize that we all live for awhile, and then at some point we die. We don't know how or when. We thus can hold up and support one another as best we can.
When I look back on my relationship with dukkha, it's as if I was insane. Now the insanity has lifted and I can see it as such. I don't know if everyone else is or has been as insane as I was, but I know I was, and while I am not perfect in any sense of that word, I am now able to tell the difference between being insane and not being insane. So that is what dukkha means to this yogi.
