Yesterday I was talking to a friend who recently had a major operation and has been recovering. I asked her what would be a good subject for a dharma talk, and she laughed and said, “Patience and Pain.” She found it very interesting that in the days immediately following her operation the pain was clear, clean, and sharp; and it was no problem. Then, as she became a little stronger, the mind began to work—and the suffering began. All her thoughts about what was happening to her began to appear.

In a way we sit for no purpose; that’s one side of practice. But the other side is that we want to be free from suffering. Not only that, but we want others to be free from suffering. So a key point in our practice is to understand what suffering is. If we really understand suffering we see how to practice, not just while sitting, but in the rest of our life. We can understand our daily life and see that it’s really not a problem. A few weeks ago someone gave me an interesting article on suffering, and the first part of it was about the meaning of the word—“suffering.” I’m interested in these meanings; they are teachings in themselves.

The writer of this article pointed out that the word “suffering” is used to express many things. The second part, “fer,” is from the Latin verb ferre meaning “to bear.” And the first part, “suf,” is from sub, meaning “under.” So there’s a feeling in the word “to be under,” “to bear under,” “to totally be under”—“to be supporting something from underneath.”

Now, in contrast, the words “affliction,” “grief,” and “depression” all bring images of weight; of something bearing down upon us. In fact the word “grief” is again from the Latin gravare, which means “press down.”

So there are two kinds of suffering. One is when we feel we’re being pressed down; as though suffering is coming at us from without, as though we’re receiving something that’s making us suffer. The other kind of suffering is being under, just bearing it, just being it. And this distinction in understanding suffering is one of the keys to understanding our practice.

I’ve sometimes distinguished between “suffering” and “pain,” but now I’d like to use just the word “suffering” and distinguish between what I call false suffering and true suffering. That difference in understanding is very important. The foundation of our practice, and the first of the Four Noble Truths, is the statement of the Buddha that “Life is suffering.” He didn’t say it’s suffering sometimes—he said life is suffering. And I want to distinguish between those two kinds of suffering.

Often people will say, “I certainly can see that life is suffering when everything is going wrong, and everything’s unpleasant, but I really don’t get it when life is going along well and I’m feeling good.” But there are different categories of suffering. For instance, when we don’t get something we want, we suffer. And yet when we do get it we also suffer, because we know that if we get it we can lose it. It doesn’t matter whether we get it or don’t get it, if it happens to us or doesn’t happen to us. We suffer because life is constantly changing. We know we can’t hold on to the pleasant things, and we know that even if unpleasantness disappears, it can come again.

The word “suffer” doesn’t necessarily imply a dramatic major experience; even the nicest day is not free of suffering. For instance, you might have the best breakfast you can imagine, you might see just the friend you want to see, you might go to work and have everything go smoothly. There aren’t many days as nice as that; but even so, we know that on the next day it could be just the opposite. Life presents us with no guarantees; and because we know that, we’re uneasy and anxious. If we truly examine our situation from the usual point of view, life is suffering, like an affliction. Now my friend noticed that when there was just the physical pain, there was no problem. The minute she began to have thoughts about the pain, she began to suffer and be miserable.

It makes me think of a few lines of Master Huang Po: “This mind is no mind of conceptual thought and it is completely detached from form. So Buddhas and sentient beings do not differ at all. If you can only rid yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything. But if you students of the Way do not rid yourselves of conceptual thought in a flash, even though you strive for aeon and aeon, you will never accomplish it.”

It’s the play of our minds, of conceptualization about anything that happens to us, that is the problem. There’s nothing wrong with conceptualization per se; but when we take our opinions about any event to be some kind of absolute truth and fail to see that they are opinions, then we suffer. That’s false suffering. “A tenth of an inch of difference, and heaven and earth are set apart.”

Now a point to add here is that it doesn’t make any difference what’s happening: It may be very unfair; it may be very cruel. All of us have things happen to us that are unfair, mean, and cruel. And our usual way is to think, “This is terrible!” We fight back, we oppose the event. We try to do as Shakespeare said: “To take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.”

It would be nice if it did end “the slings and arrows of most outrageous fortune.” Day by day we all meet events that seem to be most unfair, and we feel that the only way to handle an attack is to fight back; and the way we fight is with our minds. We arm ourselves with our anger and our opinions, our self-righteousness, as though we were putting on a bulletproof vest. And we think this is the way to live our life. All that we accomplish is to increase the separation, to escalate the anger, and to make ourselves and everyone else miserable. So, if this approach doesn’t work, how do we handle the suffering of life?

There’s a Sufi story about this. At one time there was a young man whose father was one of the greatest teachers of his generation, respected and revered by everyone. And this young man, having grown up hearing his father speak great words of wisdom, felt that he knew all there was to know. But his father said, “No, I can’t teach you what you need to know. The person I want you to go and see is a peasant teacher, a man who is illiterate, just a farmer.” The young man wasn’t pleased with this, but he went off and traveled on foot, not very willingly, until he came to the village where this peasant lived. It happened at this time that the peasant was on his way by horseback from his own farm to another farm, and he saw the young man coming toward him.

When the young man came near and bowed before him, the teacher looked down and said, “Not enough.” Thereupon the young man bowed to his knees, and the peasant teacher again said, “Not enough.” Then he bowed to the horse’s knees, but again the teacher said, “Not enough.” So the young man bowed once more, this time to the horse’s feet, touching the horse’s hoof. Then the peasant teacher said to him, “You can go back now. You have had your training.” And that was all.

So (remembering the definition of the word “suffer”) until we bow down and bear the suffering of life—not opposing it, but absorbing it and being it—we cannot see what our life is. This by no means implies passivity or nonaction, but action from a state of complete acceptance. Even “acceptance” is not quite accurate—it’s simply being the suffering. It isn’t a matter of protecting ourselves, or accepting something else. Complete openness, complete vulnerability to life, is (surprisingly enough) the only satisfactory way of living our life. Of course, if you’re anything like me, you’ll avoid it as long as possible—because it’s one thing to talk about, but extremely difficult to do. Yet when we do it, we know in our very guts who we are and who everyone else is; and the barrier between ourselves and others is gone.

True Suffering and False Suffering

Excerpt taken from Everyday Zen: Love and Work

Our practice throughout our lifetime is just this: At any given time we have a rigid viewpoint or stance about life; it includes some things, it excludes others. We may stick with it for a long time, but if we’re sincerely praticing our practice itself will shake up that viewpoint; we can’t maintain it. As we begin to question our viewpoint we may feel struggle, upset, as we try to come to terms with this new insight into our life; and for a long time we may deny it and struggle against it. That’s part of practice. Finally we become willing to experience our suffering instead of fighting it. When we do so our standpoint, our vision of life, abruptly shifts. Then once again, with our new viewpoint, we go along for a while—until the cycle begins anew.

Once again the unease comes up, and we have to struggle, to go through it again. Each time we do this—each time we go into the suffering and let it be—our vision of life enlarges. It’s like climbing a mountain. At each point that we ascend we see more; and that vision doesn’t deny anything that’s below—it includes that—but it becomes broader with each cycle of climbing, of struggle. And the more we see, the more expansive our vision, the more we know what to do, what action to take.

In talking to many, many people, the main thing I notice is that they don’t understand suffering. Of course I don’t always either; I try to avoid it as hard as anyone. But to have some theoretical understanding of what suffering is and how to practice with it is immensely useful, especially in sesshin. We can better understand what sesshin is and how best to use it and really practice.

This mind that creates false suffering is operating constantly in sesshin. There isn’t one of us who isn’t subject to it. I noticed it myself last night. I could hear my mind complaining: “What, another sesshin?! You just did a sesshin last weekend!” Our minds work that way. Then, seeing that nonsense, we remind ourselves, “What do I really want for myself or anyone else?” Then our mind quiets down again. So as we do zazen we patiently refuse the domination of these thoughts and opinions about ourselves, about events, about people; and we constantly turn back to the only certain reality: this present moment. Doing that, our focus and samadhi constantly deepen. So in zazen the bodhisattva’s renunciation is that practice, that turning away from our fantasy and our personal dream into the reality of the present. And in sesshin, each moment that we practice like that gives us what we can’t get in any other way, a direct knowledge of ourself. Then we are facing this moment directly; we’re facing the suffering. And when we’re really, finally, willing to settle into it, just be it, then we know, and no one needs to tell us, what we are, and what everything else is.

Now, sometimes people say, “It’s too hard.” But in fact, not practicing at all is much, much harder. We really fool ourselves when we don’t practice. So please be very clear with yourself about what must be done to end suffering; and also that by practicing with such courage we can enable others to have no fear, no suffering. We do it by the most intelligent, patient, persistent practice. We never do it by our complaints, our bitterness and anger; and I don’t mean to suppress them. If they come up, notice them; you don’t have to suppress them. Then immediately go back into your breath, your body, into just sitting. And when we do that there is not one of us who, by the end of the sesshin, will not find the rewards that real sitting gives. Let’s sit like that.