The Potential Alchemy Offered By Suffering

I gave a talk today is on happiness and inner peace from the Buddhist Perspective, as inspired by the seven principles of the Unitarianism.

We are all motivated by two main wishes: the wish to find happiness and the wish to avoid suffering.  In this way we are all the same.  Our wishes for happiness have equal value.  No one’s happiness is more or less important than anyone else’s.

Buddha said to know happiness, we must first acknowledge suffering and understand its causes.  In his teachings on the four noble truths, he described how one can achieve cessation of suffering by following the spiritual path.  

Often we avoid looking at our suffering because we don’t know what to do with it when we encounter it, and because we believe it is who we are.  As a result, we react with aversion and panic when we identify really strongly with our sufferings, and usually reach for things outside of ourselves to try and find relief.  

A fundamental and helpful teaching in Buddhism, is that suffering IS a common experience shared by each of us, but that one’s essential nature is NOT suffering.   In Buddhism one’s essential nature is described as a peace that is rooted in wisdom.  This view enables us to learn to relate to our suffering very differently.  

We are all looking for positive experiences, and attempting to avoid negative experiences.  We qualify our experiences as positive, negative or neutral.  When we describe our experiences, our words often describe external events, but these qualifications are actually describing the positive, negative or neutral feelings we are having at any moment in time.  Our feelings are on the inside and are dependent on the stories with which we are identifying at any moment in time.  

Buddhism is an introspective study of happiness and suffering and presents a psychology of the mind, and an understanding of the mind as the creator of one’s happiness and suffering. In this psychology, we come to understand which states of mind generate happiness and which states of mind generate suffering.   

The main practice of Buddhism is that of Refuge.  Going for refuge is the way in which we go about transforming our minds, so that they generate the happiness we seek.  A Buddhist practitioner wishing to develop the states of mind that generate happiness,  will go for refuge to Buddha’s teachings on the mind, by studying and meditating upon them.  By relying on the sangha or spiritual community’s support, one puts the teachings into practise, to transform the mind.  In so doing, one is able to alleviate one’s own suffering and increase one’s happiness, and thereby, be in a position to help others do the same.  

From the view of the mind being the creator of happiness and suffering, we learn to study our mental actions and habits.  In order to put spiritual teachings into practice, we can learn how to become more objective in relation to our feelings and thoughts.  We can observe which mental habits bring happiness and which bring suffering within ourselves, based on personal experiences.  We draw conclusions and generate intentions reflecting the changes and healing we seek.  Then the Dharma teachings becomes part of one’s own knowing, because it is proven through personal experience. The main tool for doing this is meditation.  

Suffering itself, and our shared desire to alleviate it, is the reason we look. Therefore in the presence of compassion and skilful means, suffering itself becomes the alchemical ingredient needed for healing and conscious evolution.  

Here is the key though!  We must study suffering from the perspective that it is NOT who we fundamentally are.  It is also helpful to conduct this study from an understanding that we are in a constant state of transformation.  Thoughts,  sensations and feelings rise, crest and fall back into the mind the way that waves do on the ocean.  Things are always changing, so we are never stuck.  

If we believe we are inherently stuck and in the nature of our sufferings, healing is impossible. 

Suffering It is rooted in mistaken understanding of how we actually exist.  When we understand this fundamental mistake, we can understand how healing and spiritual growth and transformation is possible.  

Buddha teaches that the nature of consciousness is inherently peaceful, when unobstructed by ignorance and mistaken views.  This is described as one’s Buddha nature. 

 In preparation for this talk, I did a little study and spoke with Unitarian member,Margaret, on the 7 principles of the Unitarianism.  The first principle describes the inherent worth and dignity of each being.  When I looked at the origins and definitions of these two words, I read: 

noble

of high rank

meriting

to come to be 

to turn into 

merit

Buddha teaches that happiness is directly proportional to the amount of wisdom and virtue in one’s mind.  Virtue increases merit or positive energy, and therefore happiness.  

Worth suggests a being of high rank, coming to be, and to turn into.  In Buddhism, enlightened beings are described as those whose minds are filled with truth and virtue.  They are considered holy and of high rank and described as the awakened ones.  By practising spiritual paths, they transformed their minds. The nature of their awakened, enlightened minds enables them to help others also find healing. 

Dignity suggests merit or worth.  I found this interesting.  Generating happy minds familiar with truth and virtue, requires positive energy.  In Buddhism this energy is described as merit.  

For me the first Unitarian principle describes the potential of every human being to awaken and to heal, through introspective spiritual study.  In searching for spiritual truths on the nature of happiness and suffering, we can learn to manifest our own highest potential.  We can experience the transformation offered by spiritual practice.

We live in a crazy world which is constantly seducing us that happiness and the alleviation of suffering can be found outside ourselves.  This is where spiritual community is so important.  Our spiritual friends will support our search for truth and meaning, as we do the 180 degree turn toward looking within.  

When we get still and turn our minds inwardly, we connect with our human experience.  We can learn to connect to our suffering compassionately and objectively,  and from the perspective of our inherent worth and dignity.  In so doing, we can manifest our inherent capacity to become increasingly conscious and enlightened beings.  

By following a spiritual path we can turn into a being whose mind is free from the inner causes of suffering and whose mind is pervaded with the wisdom that brings ultimate inner peace.  

We can go into and hold our pain with compassion and apply spiritual tools to self-soothe.  This alchemy leads to change.  The understandings we attain increase our wisdom of, and compassion for ourselves and others.  Because we are all interdependent, as we heal, we become a source of healing for others.  Because all actions of body and speech begin in the mind, as we become more peaceful inwardly, our behaviours and actions in the world will be more peaceful and thereby help to increase peace in the world.