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I used to think suffering was out of my control. I don’t believe that anymore.
At breakfast yesterday, my friend and I got into a discussion centered around a teaching rooted in Buddhist philosophy -- “There Is No Suffering in an Experience.”
Suffering only comes from what we think about the experiences we have.
I relayed a story from my own life. When my dad died unexpectedly, it was the greatest trauma of my life to that point. I had a newborn son and the greatest wife, whom I had to leave to go home and pick up the pieces. That was brutal enough.
I was also the only child of an alcoholic mother, and this experience was an easy excuse for her to numb herself. My father had owned a small business with 3 employees -- and I had to find a way to wind it down. Contact his employees, contact his clients, contact his lawyer…come up with a succession plan for a business I knew little about. Amidst my grief, it all felt overwhelming.
I recalled a distinct moment from those days -- 2 days after he had died. I was in my childhood bedroom, sitting on the floor with my back against my bed. My parents had left my room exactly as it was when I was 18. I sat there quietly, still in shock, trying to make sense of it all. My devastation felt total.
And then, suddenly, I felt this powerful sense of joy come over me. I felt instantly lighter. Amidst my tears, I actually smiled.
What had happened? I’d had a thought. A thought about my father that was brand new for me. Like most thoughts, I had no idea where it came from. It was about how he had been emancipated.
My dad’s life was not an easy one. We were a squarely middle class family in my youth, and we struggled to stay there. And then, when I was 16, my dad was laid off from his career in software design. From that point on, there was constant money stress. There were progressing health issues. His relationship with my mom was oftentimes tense. When she was drinking, our home wasn’t a pleasant place to be.
So this thought was about everything that had been weighing on him these last 23 years. Since losing his job, he had been fighting every day just to keep his head above financial water. My mom’s condition made her less than a help -- she was an anchor, in many ways. He was aging. His light had been dimming for years. And the thought that brought this sudden, overwhelming sense of joy was this:
He’s finally free.
In my mid-20’s, one of my best friends gave me a book: “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.” It was the first time I had encountered a different model of death than the one I grew up with. I recall the story of a Tibetan master who was dying -- and he was greeting death with peace and joy. He saw it as simply the passageway to the next chapter, a liberation of the soul. It challenged my perception of death as a final, lights-out kind of event. An ending filled with pain and sorrow.
That viewpoint fascinated me -- but in a way that felt unreachable. It didn’t change how I viewed death. It felt like an interesting story, something to tangle with from time to time…but not something I could ever make myself believe.
Until I did.
What makes this experience so striking is that nothing about the facts had changed. I hadn’t gotten good news. The situation was exactly what it was two minutes before.
My thinking changed my suffering into joy.
There I was…smiling at the thought of my father’s death. Smiling at the thought of his soul’s liberation. His human struggle was over.
There is no suffering in an experience. Our suffering comes only from our thoughts.
Yes -- you absolutely can believe yourself out of suffering.
So what story are you telling yourself about the hardest thing in your life right now? Is that story true? Or is it just a default program that’s been running in the background your entire life?
Are you ready to examine it? Because you can always change the story you’re telling yourself. Even in the most extreme circumstances.
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