5. Pain and Suffering - Part 1

Welcome back to the mindfulness or everydaylife workshop. In this episode, I'm going to discuss the concept of sufferingand the chain of habitual reactivity. So as we go about attempting to live moremindfully in our everyday lives, it's important to be mindful of our instancesof suffering. There are moments in our lives.

[00:00:34] Where we experienced tremendousdiscomfort with how things are, and this is a topic that's very prevalent inmindfulness traditions, but it's important to understand what is sufferingsuffering is what arises when we want things to be other than how they are nowfrom the mindfulness perspective, any time that we're experiencing an instanceof wanting something to be other than how it is we're experiencing suffering.

[00:01:03] Now we do use the word sufferingfor other things. And sometimes it gets attached to other notions like pain,like discomfort, like anguish, but from the perspective of mindfulness as apractice, it's important to be able to distinguish the various types ofsuffering because the suffering that we're most concerned with is the one thatarises from wanting things to be other than how they are.

[00:01:29] Again, what we're trying toaccomplish with mindfulness in our everyday life is to be able to navigate lifea little bit more skillfully. So this starts with the process of becomingskillful at recognizing what forms of suffering are natural and what forms ofsuffering are self-inflicted. So if we were to categorize, suffering into threemajor types of suffering, We could say that the first form of suffering is whatwe essentially called pain.

[00:02:01] And this is the suffering offeeling some form of physical or emotional discomfort, especially a physicaldiscomfort. If I break my leg, I'm going to experience pain around the factthat my leg is broken and there's nothing I can do about that. I cannot willthe pain away. So we're not concerned with this form of, of suffering that whatwe would call pain.

[00:02:24] Next is the suffering of loss.The moment that I lose a loved one, for example, I'm going to experience thesuffering of loss. And again, this is a natural form of suffering that arises.And we're not so concerned with this form of suffering because it's not, self-inflicted,it's natural, but then there's a third type of suffering and I'm going to callthis unnecessary suffering.

[00:02:51] And this is typically sufferingthis associated to concepts, ideas, opinions, or, or beliefs. And this is thetype of suffering that we can work with through mindfulness, by understanding.So an example of this would be, if I were to give the example of somebody whosaves up a lot of money and buys the car that they've been wanting, the car oftheir dreams.

[00:03:18] Now, let's say that they go pickup the car, they're out on the road and they start driving to there. They're ontheir way to show their friends, their new car. As they pull up, they look overat their friends and kind of give this little smirk, like, look at me, look atthis car I'm in and suddenly realize a car in front of them had stopped.

[00:03:35] And they weren't able to stop intime and they slam into the back of the other car. So the first form ofsuffering would be the realization that, you know, I broke my nose on thesteering wheel when I hit this car. That is a form of suffering that's pain. Ican't do anything about that. And I'm not concerned with it.

[00:03:52] It hurts because I have a brokennose and that's totally natural. The second form of suffering as I get out ofthe car and I look at my car, that's all totaled. I'm going to be experiencingthe suffering of loss. And I saved up a lot of money for this car. This car wasnew 10 seconds ago, and now it's not, that's a form of suffering that again, I'mnot very concerned with because it's natural.

[00:04:16] I understand the causes andconditions. But then there's this third form of suffering. And this is as Ilook over to my friends and I realize, man, my friends are going to think I'msuch an idiot because I just crashed in front of them. And they probably thinkthis idiot. Why did he do that? That form of suffering is unnecessary.

[00:04:36] And it only exists because of abelief, a concept or an idea that's in my mind that says, if you're the type ofperson who crashes something, that's brand new, you're an idiot. If, if you'rethe type of person who doesn't crash things, you're, you're not an idiot. Nowthat belief, that idea is causing, causing a form of unnecessary suffering forme.

[00:05:00] So this is the form of sufferingthat we're most concerned with in mindfulness practice. It's the form ofsuffering that arises from beliefs or concepts. And again, it's from wantingthings to be other than how they are. I don't want to be an idiot, but I believethat an idiot would crash a car. And that's the only reason I'm suffering here.

[00:05:20] It's because I hold that view.So once we've kind of separated out the various forms of suffering, and weunderstand that. The natural form of suffering is something that we don't needto worry about. If you experienced loss, you're going to suffer. If youexperience pain, you're going to suffer. And those are natural, but there'sthis third one that I really want to pay attention to in myself.

[00:05:42] What form of suffering am Iexperiencing? That's actually unnecessary. And it's only there because of someunskillful view or belief that I have. And that's what we focus on inmindfulness as a practice. Now, when we're talking about suffering, there's a,an acronym that's really useful. And this is used by the Buddhist scholar,Steven bachelor.

[00:06:05] When he's talking about theconcept of dealing with suffering, he has an acronym called Elsa E L S a. Andhe talks about these tasks when dealing with suffering. If we were to approachthe notion that in life difficulties arise and when they do, we can work withthem as a task, as tasks, this is much more helpful as a mental framework.

[00:06:32] So the acronym goes like this,the E. Is four embrace the instance of suffering and this might be okay. I justrealized that I crashed my nose is broken. It hurts. And I'm just going to makea quick mental note of what am I experiencing? And I catalog and I label, okay,I'm experiencing pain in my nose because it's broken.

[00:06:53] I'm experiencing embarrassmentbecause I crashed in front of my friends. I'm experiencing. Uh, loss because Iknow this car was brand new and I, I saved up all my money for it. I'm justmaking a mental note of the full assessment of how things are. That's what I dowhen I embrace the instance of suffering, what we're not doing when we embrace,we don't mean embrace in the term in the sense of.

[00:07:18] Be okay with this, like, justaccept that this is what happened. That's that's not it. We're just saying,this is how things are I want, if I'm going to deal skillfully with reality, Ineed to have a pretty clear picture of what reality is. And that's what I'mdoing in this first step that he to embrace.

[00:07:36] The instance of suffering is catalogeverything. Just the way that it is. Don't sugar coat. It don't look for thepositive. Just be very realistic. This is what I'm dealing with and that's it.The L is letting go of the habitual reactivity. So, as I mentioned before, wego through life with these moments of stimulus and response, stimulus andresponse, and it's like, um, a chain, one link goes to the next, which goes tothe next and, and that's how we go about living our day-to-day lives.

[00:08:13] So what we're trying to do withthis task is I'm letting go. Of the habitual reactivity, which is to say, if Ijust noticed that I'm standing here with a broken nose and I'm embarrassed andnow I'm really mad. And now I'm mad that I mad and now I'm embarrassed that I'mcrying. Like at some point I put the pause in there and I just say, this iswhat I'm experiencing.

[00:08:33] I'm going to let go of thereactivity. I'm not going to try to make this moment be anything other thanwhat it is. So once I've let go of the. Habitual reactivity. I move on to thenext task, which is S see the stopping of the reactivity. So this is to say,observe we're, we're kind of in two mental frameworks at any given moment,we're either making meaning of things or we're observing things.

[00:09:03] This is the moment to observethe moment I see the stopping of the reactivity. I can S I can catalog that andsay, Okay. I was getting angry and then I was embarrassed that I was angry andI was mad that I was angry and boom, I stopped it. And now I'm just observingthe observation of everything that's unfolding as I'm experiencing it, whichleads us to the final one, the a, which is act skillfully.

[00:09:31] So all of this is to say thatwhen I'm experiencing life, Oftentimes I'm in an act very unskillfully and abig part of why is because I'm caught up in the chain of habitual reactivity. Icrashed my car. I was embarrassed. I was bleeding. Uh, my friends were lookingat me. Then I was thinking my friends think, I must think I'm an idiot.

[00:09:52] And that leads me to the nextact, which may be an unskillful act wishes, whatever I'm going to say to thedriver in front of me, whatever action I'm going to do next could beunskillful. I'm much more likely to be skillful in my next action if I followthese tasks and if I can assess and notice here's what's taking place and thenI can act skillfully.

[00:10:15] And maybe instead of, um, Idon't know, getting into it, fight with the driver who was in front of you.You're able to talk through things and get the insurance called and get the,all the processes that now need to take place because of the situation I findmyself in. So that is in a nutshell, how you work with, uh, suffering in termsof tasks, E L S a again, this comes from Steven bachelor.

[00:10:41] You can research his work. Ifyou want to learn more about this specific acronym. Rhett's a really neatconstruct to work with in our minds when dealing with suffering. So I want toget to this notion of the chain a little bit, the mental chain of thoughts,emotions, and memories. Sometimes there's this notion that by practicingmindfulness, we're going to tame the mind.

[00:11:06] And it's not that we tame themind it's that we tame the relationship we have with our mind. The mind is themind and it's going to do what a mind does. It produces thoughts. It feelsfeelings, it experiences emotions. We can't really help that process. That'sthe mind does what the mind does in the same way that the heart does what theheart does and the lungs do what the lungs do.

[00:11:32] Now we don't really get all bentout of shape when the heart starts beating faster because we're scared or thebreathing intensifies, because we're scared. We just recognize that's aphysiological response that's happening, but I don't have to try to control myheart rate. I don't have to try to control my breathing, although that could bebeneficial with the mind.

[00:11:53] It's the same, but why, why doesit seem like with the mind we're always trying to control it. We're trying. AndI think that's where one of the misconceptions with mindfulness comes in wherewe think we're trying to make our, our mind go blank. And not have thoughts andthat's not true. We're just trying to observe and, uh, become more skillfulwith the thoughts and feelings and emotions that we have.

[00:12:16] So if we were to think of ourmind as a chain where you have thoughts, linked to emotions, linked tomemories, linked to thoughts, linked to feelings and so on, linking all to eachother. With each instance that goes by then it can be a really helpful way tovisualize what's happening in my mind. And all I'm trying to do is occasionallyput a gap between two of these links between stimulus and response.

[00:12:43] Like I mentioned before in theprevious episode, now there's another, uh, mental analogy that I want you tounderstand when it comes to, uh, suffering. In relationship to our thoughts,emotions, memories, et cetera. Now, with memories, if you were to recall anymemory that you have right now, you would probably recognize that the vastmajority, if not all of our memories, uh, are things that we have in our mind,but they're not necessarily who we are.

[00:13:15] We don't fuse with our memories.Uh, but we do with our thoughts and with our feelings. So what I'd like to inviteyou to entertain from this moment on is the notion that you are not yourthoughts. You are not your memories. Uh, you are not your emotions. These arethings that arise in you and that you experience, but they're not you in thesame way that each breath I take isn't me.

[00:13:42] It's something that's happeningto me. Something that. It's something that my body is doing, and that changesthe understanding that I have. Of my relationship to what's happening to me,thoughts are something that's happening to me, feelings. Any emotions are aswell breathing as, as well, a heartbeat is as well.

[00:14:03] And that is the mindfulperspective or the mindful view of what's happening to me. So I think it'simportant to clarify that because as we begin to work with mindfulness as a wayof being. The first thing we need to realize is that we are not our thoughts.We are not our opinions. We are not our beliefs.

[00:14:26] And now if somebody were to, um,contradict of you that I have, I don't have to get bent out of shape because Irecognize that my opinion is just something that I have. It's not somethingthat I am. And if you don't like my opinion or you think that my opinion isdumb or wrong or something, well, that's okay.

[00:14:45] Because that's just an opinion.No different than if you don't like the shirt that I'm wearing, you don't likethe shirt that I'm wearing. That's okay. The shirt's not me. It's just what Ihappen to have on. Uh, and my thoughts and my feelings and my opinions and myemotions and my memories. Or the same to me as something as simple as the shirtthat I'm wearing.

[00:15:05] So that is the mindful, um,understanding of our relationship to the experiences that we're having. Sothese are the concepts and ideas I wanted to share with you regarding sufferingdiscomfort and the chain of habitual reactivity. The next episode, we'lldiscuss some exercises and the guided meditation.