Why do we suffer?
The only thing that matters to us is how we feel and what we want.
We identify ourselves with how we should feel and what we want. And when we do not feel the way we should feel or do not get what we want we suffer.
We must feel happy, elated, satisfied, delighted, and blissful all the time. We don’t want to feel sad, lonely, depressed, angry, jealous at any time.
We want wealth, health, fame, and success all the time. We don’t want to fail, experience loss, languish, or struggle at any time.
So we strive to attain how we want to feel and what we want.
And very often we discover that life hits us back with exactly what we don’t want to feel and what we don’t want in life. Life is just what it is. The moment we accept this, we are on the path to freedom. We do not experience this freedom because we are inordinately attached.
We are our Attachments
We are our attachments. Not just material attachments which we use as crutches to prop up our self- esteem but also expectations, feelings, concepts, ideas, religion and so on. When these are under threat we suffer.
We are attached to our expectations. When we do good, we want to be noticed and appreciated. We expect it. In fact, we demand it. We barter with life. Parents are continuously demanding gratitude for what they have done for their children. We are continuously manipulating others in a very subtle manner to get what we want because we are ‘attached’.
We are attached to our ‘shoulds’. The world out there should be the way we want it to be. So we create our ‘shoulds’ which in a way defines ourselves and gives rise to our ‘self- concept’. “People should always respect me”. “The house should be clean at all times”. “People should always be understanding”. And so on. People perceive us through our ‘shoulds’. We try to protect this self’s ‘shoulds’ and fulfill its desires. The ‘shoulds’ become compulsive. However, gradually we realise that life out there doesn’t exist to fulfill our ‘shoulds’.
We are attached to our anger. Anger is the child of our pride. And we cherish our anger. It gives us immense satisfaction to vent our anger on somebody. We experience self-righteousness. We always want to be right. A very difficult proposition to uphold in a complex and ‘whitewater’ world.
We cling to our history. We play the victim of our circumstances. We relish and exaggerate what ‘we have gone through’. It becomes our refuge when things don’t work out the way we want it to. We get attached to our situation or circumstances. It becomes our comfort zone.
We seek Love but get Approval
Our hunger for love is so intense that we mistake approval for love. We compulsively do things for people to earn their love. We become dependent and attached. We see to their every need and expectation because we crave for their love but only get approbation which we mistake for ‘love’. And vice versa the person being served perceives what is being done as a show of ‘love’. ‘How much she does for me’. ‘She really loves me’. The test for real love is to see one’s attitude towards the person once the approval wanes and how the person being served feels once the service being given diminishes. We don’t want to evolve from dependency to self-reliance. It is too threatening. Love exists between equals. For who she/he is. Irrespective of what he/she does for me.
We Mistake the Image for the Essence
We get attached to our idea of a person rather than the person herself/himself. This is not love but attachment. Perhaps this image of the person comes from ‘a fond memory, a treasured experience, or a hope for the future’. This gets fixated and we want the person to be the way that will satisfy the image we have of him/her. We begin to care more about the feeling being generated from the image of the person, than who the person himself/herself actually is. And when our expectations get belied we suffer.
Similarly we pour ourselves into images or symbols along the journey of our lives. Trying to make sense of what this life is all about. This is seen in religion. For instance the statue or ritual becomes more important that what it signifies. We mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself. We forget the whole purpose of religion. A search for the fulfillment of life. Not to start adoring the finger but to proceed along the path the finger is pointing toward. And the sad part is that we are willing to fight and kill for the sake of these images and symbols. We never get to experience essences because we are attached to the superficial.
One Card Missing
We go through life feeling that there is one card missing. If only one had more money what all one could have done! If only one was living in different circumstances how much more one could have achieved! And so on. We never accept life the way it is. We are continuously trying to force life’s hand without first accepting what life has thrown at us. We need to understand that whatever happens and no matter how much we have to struggle it is ok. We need to be grateful. Everything that happens always has a purpose in helping us; an inherent meaning even though we do not see it. When we realise this, we begin to enjoy and appreciate life.
“Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know.” Pema Chodron
Life is a rambunctious amalgam of opposites and everything in between which needs to be celebrated. We are not slaves of spacetime but free spirits of eternity.
