I’m a fan of the Feminist Vital Stats practice, to give an idea (not totalizing, of course, but y’know) of where my perspectives are coming from. Some of the basics of my standpoint:
Female, cis, preferred pronouns she/her
Middle-class: mom’s a Planned Parenthood lawyer; dad’s a judge
Mixed: mom’s side white Jewish; dad’s side Black
Hetero, poly
Public-school-and-Harvard-college-educated (graduated with a joint degree in Social Studies and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality)
California-born, American citizen
Non-disabled
Spitting distance from 24 years old
And one more, seldom mentioned characteristic I’d add might be:
One who suffers.
Sounds melodramatic, I know. :) But if you’ll bear with me, I think it’s an important point.
After all, concern with suffering is what brought me to feminism, even before I knew what feminism was. With a family history that included both Holocaust victims and African slaves, from a very young age I was highly attuned to, and emotionally affected by, oppression, injustice, and human suffering.
Which might explain how, one minute, I was just a studious, athletic, passably popular high school sophomore, and the next I found myself boiling into tearful fury in Mr. Wong’s history class after a relatively minor expression of homophobia in a Student Senate meeting. By week’s end I’d joined the school’s Lesbian Gay Straight Alliance (LGSA) and started spearheading their annual Acceptance and Awareness Week. We spent months passionately battling our high school principle for the right to host student-led activities. Her objection: “It’s a controversial issue.” Didn’t seem too controversial to me. My peers getting harassed, physically and verbally, based on their gender and sexuality. Becoming depressed or suicidal. Teachers who couldn’t talk about their partners in school, fearing the social and professional consequences. Needless suffering among others.
At least, that’s how it seemed at the time.
Then it changed.
During my first Women’s Studies course, in my very first semester of college, a new thought began to dawn on me. I called up a former boyfriend, a Women’s Studies major at UC Santa Cruz, who very helpfully confirmed this inkling: detailing to me, with all compassion, patriarchal dynamics that had manifested in our past relationship!
As it turned out, suffering didn’t exist only among others: among slaves and Holocaust victims and suicidal queer youth. Privileged and apparently ‘successful’ girl-women like me also suffered — under patriarchy. (The capitalism realizations would come later.)
Needless suffering in myself, as well as others. Lilla Watson had it down: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
At least, that’s how it seemed at the time.
Then, a couple years ago, again it changed.
I asked myself: What is it we are working for, together? Is it really an end to suffering? If enslavement ceased, if prisons were abolished, if patriarchy got smashed, if rape ended, if war and occupation disappeared, if racist, ableist capitalism transitioned into a more equal, just, and self-governed society, if we lived with the earth, rather than off it…would suffering be truly overcome?
The most challenging chapter for me in Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet speaks to this question, using language not of suffering, but of freedom:
And an orator said, “Speak to us of Freedom.”
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
Had my feminism become “the fetter of a greater freedom”?
Yes, in this particular sense: I looked for the source of suffering (and freedom from it) in external causes, and therefore conflated suffering and harm.
Now I began to see things differently. Oppression (along with its flip side, privilege) causes harm. Causes pain. But is this the same as causing suffering?
Harm and pain are realities — realities that happen in the body and in the mind. Suffering happens in our relationship to those realities. Far from mere semantics, I think this is an incredibly useful distinction. It helps us to see that the ultimate sources of suffering are internal, not external. And that with time and effort, we can diminish them. Maybe even eliminate them.
Does this mean we should, with cocked eyebrows, blame people for their own suffering?
No.
Does it mean we should give up the struggle against harm, or consider it secondary?
No.
In my experience, struggle against harm that lacks (or eschews) rigorous tools for addressing suffering automatically undermines itself. Same goes for a practice that addresses suffering but ignores (or superficially opposes) systemic harm. As Gandhi put it,
I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of [humankind], and that I could not do unless I took part in politics.
Put positively, though, I’m beginning to believe that harm work and suffering work — political and spiritual engagement — can strengthen each other enormously. In the words of Buddhist meditation teacher Donald Rothberg, “the two paths deeply need each other.” [Emphasis original.]
At least, that’s how it seems at this time.
So maybe I could add two more items to that list of vital stats:
One who uses feminism as a tool to reduce harm, and
One who practices dhamma as a means to reduce suffering.
I have been working internally on so much of what you are talking about here, and it helps me very much to see you share your feelings so eloquently. Thank you!
This article is perfect. Watch Martyrs for a complete dissection of the effects of human suffering.
I’m so glad y’all are feelin it! Thanks! :)
This explanation resonates with me oh so much, and I’m really excited to read your posts over the rest of your time here at Feministe!
While I agree with all of what you said, I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration to call these experiences ‘suffering’. As a foreigner, it seems odd to me that middle-class Americans who have it so much better than so many other people (even if they don’t have ‘everything’), seem to constantly express themselves in these ways.
But that’s just me. Language has different uses all over the world, maybe it isn’t as emotionally driven as I see it. Good job all the same.
Oh no, Somebody. None of that. The suffering of white, middle-class women is real suffering. It may be called just that.
Sure, there are a thousand other suffering groups, and many do indeed have it much worse than white women. Still this fact does not in any way diminish the midclass women’s suffering. Violence, rape and stunted opportunities are real oppression – you won’t guilt trip us us into not seeing them.
Not to mention the author exists at the intersection of sexism and racism.
Are you going to claim that racism can’t be called real suffering?
This is one of the most helpful articles I have ever read. Both in terms of writing style, the progression of thoughts, and the thoughts it provokes in me, and most especially in this:
“Harm and pain are realities — realities that happen in the body and in the mind. Suffering happens in our relationship to those realities. Far from mere semantics, I think this is an incredibly useful distinction. It helps us to see that the ultimate sources of suffering are internal, not external. And that with time and effort, we can diminish them. Maybe even eliminate them.”
And everything that follows from that.
We all suffer (the human condition and all that). Without this we wouldn’t recognize the suffering of others.
Hi Mon and Melissa,
So, I’m actually not trying to say that racism, violence, rape, and discrimination are suffering. I’m not sure I did the best job of explaining it at the end there, but I’m trying to make a distinction between harm (which includes all of those things) and suffering, which has to do with our individual, differing, inner relationships to those harms.
So, like, if an immigration officer tries to detain and deport me because I ‘look illegal’ (a.k.a. I am brown), that’s a form of harm. But it’s my mental relationship to the situation (Do I spiral into a cycle of fury and blame? Do I panic? Do I acknowledge my anger and fear, allow them to dissipate, and do my best to respond with wisdom?) that ultimately determines how much I will suffer from it.
Which doesn’t mean that harm is not, well…harmful! But I want to explore the extent to which we have a choice in how to respond, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, to all the harms that occur.
Does that make sense? Just want to be clear.
Somebody, I’m not quite sure which examples of ‘suffering’ you feel are exaggerated? Could you point to them for me? Because even though I initially call the high school homophobia and patriarchal relationship dynamics “suffering,” I later re-framed them as harm, instead, and didn’t actually give any examples of what I would call suffering.
But in any case, yes, the point you raise is exactly why I find the distinction between the concepts so useful. It helps us to see why someone who is experiencing relatively little harm (and may even be inflicting quite a lot of it on others — intentionally, ignorantly, or based on rationalizations) can still suffer immensely. To me, that is real. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold them fully accountable for their harmful actions, or try to dismantle the systems that give them so much power and privilege — even if they resent or resist our efforts. But what would it mean to do that while observing that their suffering may be very painful for them?
And the same applies to ourselves, of course — acknowledging that the extent of our own suffering (anger, fear, ill-will, animosity, jealously, hatred, neuroses, anxiety) may sometimes be disproportional to the harm we are facing. That’s ok: it doesn’t make us bad people. But in my opinion we should looking for the solution not in fixing what relatively little harm is there, or justifying why it should in fact make us feel terrible, but in addressing the suffering directly.
I’ll be going into all this more in-depth in the next few days, but I hope that helps to clarify what I was getting at here. If y’all want, it might also be useful to read the comment thread on my first post, where a conversation about the difference between harm and suffering also came up around comment #15.
Thanks for contributing!
@almandite: wow — that means a lot to me. Thank you. I’m really glad you found it helpful. Hope to talk more with you here, in the two weeks. I’d love to hear where your thoughts and responses go.
@Q Grrl: mmmhmmmm. The basis for compassion. Well said.
This is a very interesting article. I need time to process what it says, but it seems so far it could have a very productive meaning.
@ Somebody: As the author says, suffering is caused by how we relate to our realities. This means that some people suffer from what you might call relatively minor harm, while others don’t consider themselves suffering when they encounter a lot of oppression. Also, of course, the author explains about the historical suffering of slavery and Holocaust. That is very real.
This distinction is incredibly helpful, especially when situating activism (feminism, anti-racism, etc) in our lives. Loved this post, Katie.
Somebody: It might be useful to reflect on the fact that the term ‘suffering’ is one translation of the Pali word(Pali being the original script of Buddhism where this idea was originally expressed) Dukkha, which Wikipedia describes as “roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration.”
So the difference in language is really the result of this translation, rather than anything to do with U.S language use, or even the attitudes of U.S residents to their own experience of ‘Suffering.’
Kloncke – I like the distinction you’re making between harm and suffering. I’m not sure I come to the same conclusions you do, though, about how we should respond to those who experience significant suffering in the face of relatively minor harm.
You say, “Does this mean we should, with cocked eyebrows, blame people for their own suffering? No.” I disagree in the case of people who are so self-involved and lacking in perspective that they respond to minor harms with passionate suffering. In short, I think “suck it up” is a valid and necessary attitude in some (many?) cases.
We get so much of our own conception of self tied up into the concept of being wronged or harmed. Often, I have learned, the harm done to me by others is almost completely about them and little to nothing about me.
Think about our own actions on a day to day existence, for example. I think on average we probably spent 95% of all our thoughts during our waking hours thinking about ourselves. Other people in our lives are often no more than, metaphorically and literally, someone we pass by in the street—someone we devote all of perhaps three seconds to while thinking about something about ourselves, yet again.
@comrade Kevin:
I would disagree. It is my experience that minority or oppressed groups spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about and accommodating those who make up the dominant social groups. To not do so is not a matter of ideology but often one of physical safety (perceived or otherwise) or livelihood, etc. Those who are in the dominant groups can, indeed, pass people by as if they are strangers. Those of us who live with the burden of racism, sexism, or homophobia do not have the luxury of either assuming benign motives or assuming that our own “self” is so important that we can ignore social markers of threat.
It helps us to see why someone who is experiencing relatively little harm (and may even be inflicting quite a lot of it on others — intentionally, ignorantly, or based on rationalizations) can still suffer immensely.
I think this is a really excellent point. It seems to marry a couple ideas together, like the idea that you can sort of externally judge how much someone is being harmed (medical and legal professionals attempt this all the time) but only that person can self-identify about how/if they are suffering. It’s a great way to pick apart some tricky stuff, and as someone with similar stats to the OP I find it a valuable framework. (Would have been helpful to hear when I was a kid, sobbing for hours over how terrible other people’s lives were, and then sobbing with self-pity that I thought my life was so terrible I’m weak scum I didn’t even deserve to cry about those people… Oh, undiagnosed depression. :p)
Would this apply to things like rape and harassment, too, do you think, where even a woman who hasn’t been raped or harassed can suffer by knowing those exist, or always having them in the back of her mind? A sort of cultural/group suffering even if not everyone in the group is directly harmed?
It’s interesting how suffering both shapes us – and changes over time. For example, some of the things that I suffered from acutely just a few years ago – ridiculous beauty standards being one of them – no longer mean a whole lot to me. And what I’m trying to figure out is – does this happen because I have bigger problems now, or have I just become more resilient? Or is it a combination of both? Or am I pushing a false dichotomy to begin with?
This question is important to me, because I think it goes to the heart of how certain issues are framed. It’s very easy to say “well, I don’t relate” when someone else is discussing their suffering, because, well, if you don’t relate, you don’t relate. And that’s fine, I think, and normal. I don’t necessarily expect someone who grew up in Ohio to relate to, say, my issues when I was growing up in Ukraine. Compassion, though, is a whole other thing. Sort of like the difference between harm and suffering. Maybe.
Anyway, thank you for this post.
@Natalia: I think you might be on to something about the compassion thing. But I can’t figure it out? I think compassion might be very wrapped up in suffering, and that suffering might not always be a bad thing because, you know, it allows action. It allows for movement and change. But maybe letting your relationship to harm become controlling is how it becomes unhealthy.
But (and, please, excuse my grammar. I know I shouldn’t start a sentence with “But”) maybe there is part of the harm that is directly related to the suffering, right? Because we acknowledge some harm as being mainly about the suffering it will cause- namely, terrorism. And we might also frame rape in that context: That it’s not about the actual harm to the victims (although that would be terrible and devastating) but also about being ubiquitous and always kind of thinking about how you might be in harm’s way. And we can’t very well step outside of that suffering because the harm is done in a way that lets us know if we let our guards down we’ll get hurt.
Courtney, that’s a lot for me to process on my extremely fried brain at the moment – but I just have one thing to say, love: If you want to start a sentence with “But,” – you go ahead and start it with “But.” Don’t let anyone get in your way. I might not do it in an article, but in a conversation on a blog, I think everyone should just knock themselves out.
/de-rail
@Courtneyb: I know that it’s been true in my own life that compassion and suffering are very much intertwined. The Israel-Palestine conflict has caused me a lot of suffering in the past couple years, even as it’s caused me a lot less harm than other people I know. I’m a Jew from Brooklyn with strong personal and family connections to Israel, and at the same time I’m very leftwing and have a Palestinian boyfriend too. Trying to sort out my issues with my relationship to it in the past and now, and trying to figure out how all of that should affect how I view myself and my place in the whole conflict, caused me suffering and guilt that was intense and difficult to bear. But now that I have been going through it for awhile, I’ve come to see that compassion has arisen from it–I want to work to alleviate the suffering and harm that this conflict has caused me and so many other people. Because of my suffering I’m always a little vulnerable and can never be too sure that I have all the right answers. And even as compassion is intertwined with my suffering, I also see it as a path beyond it: though I am not sure what to make of myself, my past, my future and my identity in regards to Israel and Palestine, I can be sure that I am capable of kindness and understanding, and that ultimately this is more important.
@Natalia: awww. thanks.
@Alyssa: Yeaahhhhh….. Yeah. That’s what needed to be thought out and organized in someone’s head that isn’t me. Compassion comes through suffering and compassion is good.
Maybe some suffering then is good, or even right. Because we need compassion. Maybe there is something about our relationship with harm then that allows for us to change things. And maybe when we suffer and it feels like the suffering is bad and the pain is completely overwhelming, maybe then: maybe that is a gift. And the pain is what gives birth to vision and positive change.
Hey, what a deep and interesting conversation!
I struggle with the theoretical difference between harm and suffering, especially with the fact that suffering is reducible or even extinguishable….for everyone. I’ve had some limited success in my own nascent meditative practice, but have a lot of questions about whether people facing more severe oppression (which is almost everyone, since I’m a middle-class white dude from California) have the same likelihood of success. I’d say that a successful practice is technically possible for everyone, but wonder about the cumulative effect of realities like the one that Q Grrl points out here:
This question is related to ones like “it seems like US Buddhists are disproportionately white and middle-class, why is this?”
The second question I have is eloquently summed up in a way that I haven’t been able to by courtneyb just above:
Thanks for giving me so much food for thought, and thanks to the OP for patiently teaching me about this different way of relating to the world.
Appreciating all the insights still being contributed here…just a couple of thoughts of mine.
One, I love and totally second the point about compassion being a good thing, and compassion not coming easy, or without pain. But still, for me, the way I’ve understood and experienced it, there is a subtle difference between pain and suffering. And we can actually cultivate compassion from the pain *directly*, without converting it into suffering for ourselves.
So in the OP when it says:
I’m actually trying to get at a fork in the road that happens at the point of pain. So that instead of the chain of
Harm –> Pain –> Agitation/Aversion –> Suffering,
we get
Harm –> Pain –> Equanimity –> Wisdom & Compassion.
Neither one of these chains leaves out the pain. And even if we took out the Harm, pain could still very well be there: through illness, the natural death of a loved one, guilty or insecure thoughts, or any number of difficulties in life that we wouldn’t necessarily directly label as “harm.”
But the suffering doesn’t need to be there in order to transform pain into compassion.
And this can raise some really interesting questions, like: what is the opposite of suffering? One of the ideas that surprised me in studying dhamma is its postulate (as I understand it) that the opposite of suffering is not bliss, but equanimity. And equanimity in the mind creates ideal conditions for wisdom and compassion to arise. (Whereas agitation in the mind — craving or aversion — tends to create narrower thinking, decreasing our holistic awareness and increasing our propensity to suffer.)
Anyway, I will say that even once I’d heard it, none of this stuff made deep sense to me before I started meditating and was given some tools to directly observe it for myself. But I do think it’s a helpful perspective to at least try on and test out.
A couple more things. Ryan S, on why US Buddhists are disproportionately white and middle-class, I appreciate the question – but – it’s crucial to note that the majority of American Buddhists are not white. Most are Asian. As Angry Asian Buddhist writes in that linked piece, Asian Buddhists have shaped the total history of US Buddhism to a far greater extent than any other racial/cultural/ethnic group (with great diversity within the “Asian” group itself, of course), but are consistently ignored or even denigrated by powerful, privileged convert-Buddhist and white Buddhist institutions. Even the most recent 10-day Vipassana retreat I did, here in California, was conducted bilingually in Mandarin and English. Lots of older Asian ladies participating, and all three teachers were Asian (Burmese, Chinese, and I think Tibetan — a Mahayana-school reverend/nun).
With that in mind, we might differently approach the question of whether someone facing more “severe oppression” than a “middle-class white dude” would have the same likelihood of “success” in a Buddhist or dhammic practice. Clearly lots of working-class, Asian women, for instance, are actively practicing.
I hope I’m understanding the question right: that it’s more about access and contact with dhamma, than about whether someone’s personal experience of oppression would prevent them from practicing properly or reaping the benefits of a proper practice. Please let me know if I’m misunderstanding.
. . .
Ok, in the middle of writing this typically long-ass comment I just had an awesome conversation with you IRL :). To share with everybody, one of the questions we’re coming away with is: If a bodhisattva’s vows are to delay their own liberation until they can help all beings become liberated, then is it in the interests of a bodhisattva to analyze and understand the current (racist, patriarchal) modes of production that constrain and delimit the spread of dhamma?
[Full disclosure, Ryan S is my partner, and he is a fabulous partner. :) ]
All right, sorry for all the talking, y’all. Thanks again for sharing your stories and questions. Hugs.
And maybe when we suffer and it feels like the suffering is bad and the pain is completely overwhelming, maybe then: maybe that is a gift. And the pain is what gives birth to vision and positive change.
I’m always leery of this kind of idea. While it’s certainly true that people who’ve been through tough times can wind up more compassionate than those who haven’t, I hate the idea that suffering is automatically enlightening. When the pain or suffering is literally overwhelming there is just no way it can lead to “vision and positive change” because the person is, yanno, overwhelmed. There is no room for anything but suffering.
And occasionally it turns into some kind of bullshit “disabled people are nicer than normal people*!” or “you shouldn’t medicate depression because it’s good to have negative emotions!” and then I’m just like NO.
*not my words, naturally. So much wrong with that phrase…
Bagelsan: You are absolutely right. The first time some one told me that the pain/suffering I went through was a gift, I was so angry at them. And I kept having that reaction for years. When I was completely over whelmed with grief there was nothing good in it for me, I couldn’t see out of it. During those times, during hospital visits, dealing with side effects of so many different medications, during a time when I felt no hope, I would never, ever have considered what I was going through a gift. And if I had met myself, when I do meet people who are there, I wouldn’t have and don’t tell them to stay there.
But things did get better (and yes, medication was a part of that journey). My pain is now manageable and I live a fairly normal life. Recently I was talking to a close friend about that time period and he smiled when he told me the pain was a gift. And that’s when I got it. You have to get through the pain for it to be good. (Or, at least, I did.) But that pain is what made me compassionate, and what led me to activist communities. And getting through it was work, but having it happen was a gift.
this states so clearly what I have been feeling for the past few months, where before I denied that harm was done to me and yet I suffered, and then I accepted that I was harmed and still suffered, and now I understand that just because I was harmed/ damaged doesn’t mean that I have to suffer and hold on to my anxiety and anger, I can just let that go. It doesn’t negate the fact that I was harmed or mean that I should just ignore it, but it happened and what I can do to win is to not suffer and go on, wiser happier better. My mom calls it a state of grace, all I know is that it doesn’t hurt to go outside anymore.
I can see what you are saying here. I find the comments more troubling.
Pain is not always a gift. That some people are able to gain wisdom from pain is a wonderful thing about people, not a wonderful thing about pain. Just because something shapes my life, has meaning, teaches me, does not automatically make that thing a positive thing.
For many people like me, I am bipolar II, pain and suffering are a cyclical thing that we will never escape from. There is no way to look at something like that philosophically when it’s actively destroying your life and driving you toward suicide.
It also undermines your ability to deal with pain and suffering that come from other angles. It’s never something you can look back on because it is built into your brain chemistry. It is always there and will always be there, immediate and real.
Catastrophic life events can cause similar effects, long-lasting and ugly, reducing your ability to cope with things.
If someone else feels pain but does not suffer, or is able to overcome their suffering and gain something from it, that’s great. It doesn’t make them more enlightened or emotionally advanced. It just means that they had the right mixture of personality traits, external factors, and other tools to be able to make something out of it. Not everyone is equipped to do that.
Suffering, pain, has no intrinsic greater meaning or value, as many seem to believe. We learn from it, take wisdom from it, because if we don’t then we get nothing from it at all, and that’s terrible. And even if we get something great out of it in the long run, that doesn’t always make the pain and suffering worth it. I’ve learned a lot from being bipolar. It’s made me more empathetic, more understanding, more self-aware. I would still very much rather not be bipolar, and yes, I would trade it back if I could, because plenty of folks become good and empathetic people without having to wonder whether they are going to find themselves sliding into a hell that they don’t know if they can climb out of.
I really dislike the idea that if I just accepted whatever-it-is, I would stop suffering. It’s crappy advice. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t give me a tool to use to help myself.
Suffering and pain are two different things. I can see that. That’s a useful point. It’s why simply setting a broken leg won’t stop the pain, and why giving someone with a broken leg a painkiller won’t do anything about the injury.
This point should not be used to paint people who are suffering too much as complicit in their own suffering. I know that you, Kloncke, explicitly said as much, but I’m seeing some words that are too close to that in comments. (I admit I’m really sensitive on this topic.)
Suffering is not a sign that we are doing something wrong.
Naamah, thank you for raising this — I think it’s an important point and a very difficult one to parse.
Ironically, I’ve heard some dhamma teachers caution that searching for the “meaning” or “gift” in our pain can be a way of not accepting it. We’re trying to escape the pain by turning it into a story, something more beautiful or noble. Pain is not noble, and it’s not shameful. It’s pain. It happens. Sometimes more — an almost unbearable amount. Sometimes less — our daily annoyances, our inconveniences.
And from a dhammic perspective (again, only my own understanding), it’s actually these tiny, mundane pains that are good basis for practice in reducing our suffering. We may not be able to touch our deep traumas, and that’s fine, and doesn’t make us weak or wrong or complicit in the least.
And at the same time, using these specific, time-tested tools (much more than injunctions, which I totally agree, basically amount to crappy and harmful advice), we can slowly, gently cultivate patience, compassion, and wisdom within ourselves. Just in a very basic, simple, everyday way.
The tools themselves are a bit too complicated for me to try to explain online, and I’m nowhere near qualified as a teacher. But I can say that the Vipassana meditation courses I’ve attended and volunteered for under S. N. Goenka are free-of-charge, donation-based, and available in many countries across the globe.
Many thanks again, Naamah.
Kloncke, you write: “In my experience, struggle against harm that lacks (or eschews) rigorous tools for addressing suffering automatically undermines itself. Same goes for a practice that addresses suffering but ignores (or superficially opposes) systemic harm.” And then: “I’m beginning to believe that harm work and suffering work — political and spiritual engagement — can strengthen each other enormously.”
I suggest that, just like harm work requires spiritual engagement, suffering work requires political engagement. And so many other kinds of engagement too! The most relevant way to approach suffering, may I propose however, is algonomy, the work area dealing with the collective knowledge and management of suffering.