Theos-Talk Archives (May 1996 Message tl00123)

Keith:

In your posting you write about the benefits of suffering and how
it is something that cannot be avoided. I'd use a different word:
"pain". Pain is the mirror of pleasure. Both are a part of the
experience of life. But suffering is not. Suffering is a state of
mind that we don't have to approach our experiences with.

If I were jogging, and my legs hurt as I ran, there would be
pain. But I could be enjoying the run, and not think about the
way that my legs feel. Paying attention to the pain, I could
wish to be doing something else, and let myself suffer. Or
ignoring the pain and enjoying the run, I could have the identical
experience, minus any sense of suffering.

Buddhism would call the cause of suffering to be the attachment
to our expectations. We fail to recognize the impermanence of
life, and want to repeat or hold onto experiences that have
previously brought us pleasure. This clinging to the past and
failing to embrace the present, this wanting to be someone and
somewhere else, is the cause of suffering.

>1) suffering is a tool for spiritual growth

The action of Shiva in destroying the old forms in our
lives helps us move forward, to leave behind stagnant waters
for fresh-flowing springs.

>2) suffering is good for you -- it teaches lessons we have
>chosen for ourselves this incarnation

We always get lessons in life. Often they are unexpected and
come as a surprise. Sometimes they are painful, but that pain
can be combined with pleasure and excitement. We can cooperate
with life, keeping in touch with our inner lives, sensing
when change is needed and cooperating with bringing about that
change. Or we can drag our heels, turn our backs on the need
for change, and let the new lessons in life impose themselves
on us, yelling and screaming all the way! Change is unavoidable.
If we cooperate with planning and directing it, we remain
somewhat in control and don't have to suffer.

>3) suffering is necessary as the shadow of good

Suffering is the feeling that we don't want to be in life
as we find ourselves at the moment. It comes from *denial*
and lack of cooperation with the processes of change. It's
not the shadow of good, it's the shadow of living in
harmony and cooperation with the eternal law of change.

>4) people can expedite debts by willingly learning to accept
>suffering with grace.

But it's not a debt, because there's not a fixed quantity
of suffering to pay off. We can become willing to accept
pain with grace, but don't have to suffer.

>5) suffering leads to transcendence

As we cooperate with the law of change and loosen our clinging
to the status quo of our lives and personalities, we approach
transcendence. That loosening can be forced upon us through
painful episodes in life, but also can be done by cooperating
with the process, and finding enjoyable ways to do it.

>6) willingly helping the suffering of others is the true
>test of spiritual advancement

It is, as you say, easiest to forget our pain when we seek
to heal the pain in others. That is because suffering comes
from the sense of personal self, from the personality-centered
perspective on life. In forgetting ourselves for a moment,
we've let go of that activity of mind that is the cause of
our greatest suffering: the notion that we are the personality.

>7) suffering in itself is a karmic repayment

Everything that happens in life is karmic, that is, we're
responsible for it. That does not always mean that it came
about because we did something in the past. Other people
besides ourselves have free will, and can choose to make
new karma that affects us for the first time. But we are
responsible *for the future* for anything that comes into
our lives. Again, though, we may have pain inflicted upon
us, but do not have to let ourselves suffer because of
that pain.

>8) suffering can bring people together and get to the
>truth the way celebration rarely does

Because people are drawn *out of themselves* due to the
pain, and are inspired to unselfish acts. They have a
sense of compassion evoked in their hearts, a compassion
that uplifts them. That compassion is much harder to
evoke in people in seeing someone that is content,
enjoying himself, and having a good time.

>But when I search in books read and reread, I seem to
>find things I failed to see before, for example, that
>self-expression is not the goal of life, but the willingness
>to accept the seemingly unacceptable

I would still see it the older way: that the purpose of
life is in self-expression. Not self-expression where we're
talking of the petty personality parading itself before the
world and saying "See how great I am!" Rather, the making
of a unique, personal expression of the truly divine side
of life. There are untold wonders awaiting their chance to
be born into the world, if we'd only grow, open ourselves
up, and give them expression.

The willingness to accept the seemingly unacceptable is
a trait of spiritual advancement. But when it is done, the
unacceptable does not look that way at all! The notion
that things are unacceptable disappears, along with any
trace of selfishness, of "me first!", and things aren't
seen in those terms at all.

>I have been deeply resentful that if life has so many
>unfortunate accidents, why religion seems to exalt suffering,
>renunciation, humility, poverty unto sickness as a
>requitement for the spiritual path.

A short-term lesson of suffering is to cope with it until
finding better solutions. But the long-term experience of
suffering is not the nature of life. Suffering indicates
that something is wrong and needing attention.

The long-term solution to suffering is to discover,
even if it takes lifetimes, what are the needed changes
in one's life. What are the inner adjustments that need
to be made, that are forcing themselves upon one's attention,
despite any efforts to deny or avoid them.

These adjustments could mean that there are changes to
lifestyle, to types of self-expression, to relationship
with others, to subjects to learn and ways of making a
contribution in the world. What specifically is needed?
It's hard to pin it down, it's something like working on
a Zen koan, the question needs asking, asking, and asking
again. And the answer may not appear for some time. But
when it comes, there will be a sense of recognition, and
some new, important vista in life will open itself up
for one.

>Perhaps this is why I was attracted at some level to the
>occult, which seems to covertly imply the opposite, that is,
>that spiritual "ideas", prosperity thinking, Depak Chorpaisms
>etc will give you spiritual success which can't help but lead
>to "like attracts like", perfect health, eternal body/mind
>and two new cars.

But since it is the attachment to the objects of pleasure
that brings about suffering, gaining those objects will
potentially bring about more suffering, if one's inner
attitudes towards life don't change.

>The Buddhist doctrine of the wheel of karma as desire leading
>to the suffering of unfulfilled desires as the nature of human
>consciousness leads to the desire to escape into nirvana.

We are held in existence by the wheel of karma, but are not
held in suffering. That comes from a self-created delusion,
from the hearsay of separateness. Nirvana is a sense of perfect
peace to a certain part of us, but there is yet a higher part
that is beyond the cycle of evolution, the Monad, and this
part is beyond both liberation and bondage to the wheel. We
have a transcend part to ourselves that is perfectly at peace
regardless of our status -- in or out of nirvana, evolved or
unevolved, suffering or not.

>To hold back to help others as the Nirmanakaya vesture
>blows out the difference between Nirvana and Samsara to a
>unity awareness.

You are right. It is a higher form of awareness that leads one
to postpone nirvana for the purpose of liberating other
sentient beings. This too is karmic in nature, and participates
in the wheel of rebirth, the wheel of life, but the ties that
are forged are those of compassion, not those of personal
desire. The ties are infinitely stronger, and are able to even
overcome the allure of ultimate bliss, nirvana itself!

>World Service seems not to depend so much on special knowledge,
>but attitude.

Attitude is a better indicator of someone that is truly a
server, than special knowledge. The knowledge itself, without
the corresponding inner changes, takes us nowhere. But the
knowledge is also of critical importance if we would be not
just holy and wondrous beings, but also be of actual use to
others in the world.

>World Servers can be the ordinary people who provide the link
>unconsciously to the goodness behind suffering: that is health
>professionals, doctors, ministers and on down to the levels of
>cook and office cleaner.

But anything that we do is of service, even a father tending
the children after work, a woman writing a healing letter to
a friend, or someone taking time to talk to a stranger on a
bus and bringing a smile to their face!

>I am beginning to think that intellectual analysis is necessary,
>but actually lies midway on the spiritual path.

It is a necessary ingredient, but where it comes on the way
depends upon the specific individual. All ingredients are needed,
though, to make the whole man, the whole woman, the whole worker
for the spiritual in the world.

>I have been synchronistically reintroduced indirectly and
>through my own conscious and unconscious processes (dream work)
>to the notion of the World Server.

But there are *two* ways of looking on service. Both are important.
First is looking to the world, finding its needs, and seeking to
fulfill them. This is important and good. But there is another way,
equally important, but not as often talked about. There are *wonders*
that await their expression in the world. There are great works and
grant ideas and ideals seeking people capable of expressing them,
great things that are denied expression in the world *until we take
personal responsibility to take concrete, tangible steps to bring
them into the world*!

>Many like Eldon reiterate the theosophical goal or a Brotherhood of
>Humanity.  Is a political system necessary for this?

No. Systems and organizations work for some people some of the
time, but I never expect to see one that would work for all people
all of the time. It's not having a better system, it's having a
genuine love and respect for others that are different, that is
needed. And this is not given to anyone along with a membership
card. It has to be called forth from within by each individual.
We can only provide encouraging circumstances for others to, on
their own, open up their minds and hearts. They still have to take
the necessary steps to change themselves.

>Are we in collusion with some dark tyrannical movement that wants
>to reduce the freedom of the individual in the name of world peace
>as many so-called kooks would suggest.

There's a lot of darkness, but it only appears in our lives through
our own neglect, our own inattention to what we should be doing in
life. Evil cannot walk up to us, stare us in our faces, and gain
our cooperation. But it can sneak up behind us and catch us unaware,
and enlist us in its work, when we are inattentive.

>The goal is not the brotherhood of humanity, but the more humble
>nucleus of a brotherhood of humanity. This modest goal is perhaps
>all we can achieve at this point in the evolution of humanity.

Each of us, though, is a nucleus of one. When our barriers drop
and we accept others, we are a living center of brotherhood. We
don't need a theosophical group to do this work.

>How many have been called to the path by suffering more than by
>complacency, boredom or simple curiosity?  Until the Buddha stepped
>out of the palace and Christ out of the carpenter's shop spirituality was
>superfluous to the enjoyment and struggles of life.  Suffering was the
>initiation fee, so to speak.

Unexpected pain in life (which you call suffering), like physical illness,
is the last and most primal attempt of life to get one's attention. If
we were more inattentive, we could resolve the inner conflicts and deal
with the issues in a more effective manner, before things get to that
stage. But pain is also an inseparable part of life, and itself is not
suffering, but rather the "bitter" in the "bitter-sweet" flavor of life.

Just as there is a "music of the spheres", a sound-quality to life, there
is likely a "flavor of experience", a taste-quality to life as well. And
we can savor the taste, rather than spit it out of our mouths and say
"I don't like life."

-- Eldon