Pain & Suffering

There are two kinds of suffering: the suffering that leads to more suffering and the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. If you are not willing to face the second kind of suffering, you will surely continue to experience the first.

Ajahn Chah;

Still Forest Pool

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I am fortunate in that I have had a rich and rewarding life and, as I look back on it, I have been blessed with a perspective that takes all that suffering in the context of gratitude. At the time it didn’t make sense… it seemed like a random set of circumstances that had no meaning because they evoked from me no response other than shaking my fists at the sky in a curse or whimper. It rarely dawned on me that these incidents of great inner suffering might have come about because of something I was doing. I have broken more than a couple bones and have had my heart broken as many times as well but I don’t mean to point this out as a masochistic mea culpa. It is a truth that suffering arises from my own heart and a simple change of heart commends the adage: Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.

     In the moment of great physical pain I can’t see past it… it hurts so much that I’d almost rather die. I need something to take the edge off of it. But when I am over the pain of the injury. Because of that relief, I go beyond it to take the edge off of suffering, tedium, boredom…I am high and I don't care anymore. I don’t want to suffer and then the drugs that originally gave me relief become a trap that only served to escalate into the unrelenting grasp of an unforeseen addiction. Once I put away drugs and alcohol, I became able to face the source of suffering and transcend it hand in hand with others like me.

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