What Suffering is Made Of

There is the suffering of the body, including the sensations of pain,
illness, hunger, and physical injury. Some of this suffering is simply
unavoidable. Then there is the suffering of the mind, including anxiety,
jealousy, despair, fear, and anger. We have the seeds, the potential
in us for understanding, love, compassion, and insight, as well as the
seeds of anger, hate, and greed. While we can’t avoid all the suffering
in life, we can suffer much less by not watering the seeds of suffering
inside us.
Are you at war with your body? Do you neglect or punish your
body? Have you truly gotten to know your body? Can you feel at home
with your body? Suffering can be either physical or mental or both,
but every kind of suffering manifests somewhere in the body and
creates tension and stress. We are told that we should release the
tension in our body. Many of us have tried very hard! We want to
release the tension in our body, but we can’t release it. Our attempts at
reducing tension in us won’t work unless we first acknowledge that
it’s there. When you cut your finger, you just wash it and your body knows
how to heal. When a nonhuman animal living in the forest is injured,
she knows what to do. She stops searching for something to eat or looking
for a mate. She knows, through generations of ancestral knowledge,
that it’s not good for her to do so. She finds a quiet place and just
lies down, doing nothing. Nonhuman animals instinctively know that
stopping is the best way to get healed. They don’t need a doctor, a drugstore,
or a pharmacist.
We human beings used to have this kind of wisdom. But we have
lost touch with it. We don’t know how to rest anymore. We don’t allow
the body to rest, to release the tension, and heal. We rely almost
entirely on medication to deal with sickness and pain. Yet the most
effective ways to ease and transform our suffering are already available
to us without any prescription and at no financial cost. I’m not suggesting
that you should throw away all your medications. Some of us
do need to use certain medicines. But we can sometimes use them in
smaller quantities and to much greater effect when we know how to let
our body and mind truly rest.

The Four Noble Truths

The very first teaching the Buddha gave after his enlightenment was
about suffering. It’s called the Four Noble Truths. The Buddha’s Four
Noble Truths are: there is suffering; there is a course of action that
generates suffering; suffering ceases (i.e., there is happiness); and there is a course of action leading to the cessation of suffering (the
arising of happiness).
When you first hear that suffering is a Noble Truth, you might
wonder what’s so noble about suffering? The Buddha was saying that
if we can recognize suffering, and if we embrace it and look deeply
into its roots, then we’ll be able to let go of the habits that feed it and,
at the same time, find a way to happiness. Suffering has its beneficial
aspects. It can be an excellent teacher.

Did the Buddha Suffer

When I was a young monk, I believed that the Buddha didn’t suffer
once he had become enlightened. Naively I asked myself, “What’s the
use of becoming a Buddha if you continue to suffer?” The Buddha did
suffer, because he had a body, feelings, and perceptions, like all of us.
Sometimes he probably had a headache. Sometimes he suffered from
rheumatism. If he happened to eat something not well cooked, then
he had intestinal problems. So he suffered physically, and he suffered
emotionally as well. When one of his beloved students died, he suffered.
How can you not suffer when a dear friend has just died? The
Buddha wasn’t a stone. He was a human being. But because he had a lot
of insight, wisdom, and compassion, he knew how to suffer and so he
suffered much less.

No mud, No lotus

Both suffering and happiness are of an organic nature, which means
they are both transitory; they are always changing. The flower, when it
wilts, becomes the compost. The compost can help grow a flower again.
Happiness is also organic and impermanent by nature. It can become
suffering and suffering can become happiness again.
If you look deeply into a flower, you see that a flower is made only
of nonflower elements. In that flower there is a cloud. Of course we
know a cloud isn’t a flower, but without a cloud, a flower can’t be. If
there’s no cloud, there’s no rain, and no flower can grow. You don’t have
to be a dreamer to see a cloud floating in a flower. It’s really there. Sunlight
is also there. Sunlight isn’t flower, but without sunlight no flower
is possible.
If we continue to look deeply into the flower, we see many other
things, like the earth and the minerals. Without them a flower cannot
be. So it’s a fact that a flower is made only of nonflower elements. A flower can’t be by herself alone. A flower can only inter-be with everything
else. You can’t remove the sunlight, the soil, or the cloud from
the flower.
In each of our Plum Village practice centers around the world, we
have a lotus pond. Everyone knows we need to have mud for lotuses to
grow. The mud doesn’t smell so good, but the lotus flower smells very
good. If you don’t have mud, the lotus won’t manifest. You can’t grow
lotus flowers on marble. Without mud, there can be no lotus.
It is possible of course to get stuck in the “mud” of life. It’s easy
enough to notice mud all over you at times. The hardest thing to practice
is not allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by despair. When
you’re overwhelmed by despair, all you can see is suffering everywhere
you look. You feel as if the worst thing is happening to you. But we
must remember that suffering is a kind of mud that we need in order to
generate joy and happiness. Without suffering, there’s no happiness.
So we shouldn’t discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to
embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world,
with a lot of tenderness.
When I lived in Vietnam during the war, it was difficult to see
our way through that dark and heavy mud. It seemed like the destruction
would just go on and on forever. Every day people would ask me
if I thought the war would end soon. It was very difficult to answer,
because there was no end in sight. But I knew if I said, “I don’t know,”
that would only water their seeds of despair. So when people asked me
that question, I replied, “Everything is impermanent, even war. It will
end some day.” Knowing that, we could continue to work for peace.
And indeed the war did end. Now the former mortal enemies are busily
trading and touring back and forth, and people throughout the world
enjoy practicing our tradition’s teachings on mindfulness and peace. If you know how to make good use of the mud, you can grow beautiful
lotuses. If you know how to make good use of suffering, you can
produce happiness. We do need some suffering to make happiness possible.
And most of us have enough suffering inside and around us to be
able to do that. We don’t have to create more.

Suffering and happiness are not separate

When we suffer, we tend to think that suffering is all there is at that
moment, and happiness belongs to some other time or place. People
often ask, “Why do I have to suffer?” Thinking we should be able to
have a life without any suffering is as deluded as thinking we should be
able to have a left side without a right side. The same is true of thinking
we have a life in which no happiness whatsoever is to be found. If
the left says, “Right, you have to go away. I don’t want you. I only want
the left”—that’s nonsense, because then the left would have to stop
existing as well. If there’s no right, then there’s no left. Where there is
no suffering, there can be no happiness either, and vice versa.
If we can learn to see and skillfully engage with both the presence
of happiness and the presence of suffering, we will go in the
direction of enjoying life more. Every day we go a little farther in
that direction, and eventually we realize that suffering and happiness
are not two separate things.
Cold air can be painful if you aren’t wearing enough warm clothes.
But when you’re feeling overheated or you’re walking outside with
proper clothing, the bracing sensation of cold air can be a source of
feeling joy and aliveness. Suffering isn’t some kind of external, objective
source of oppression and pain. There might be things that cause
you to suffer, such as loud music or bright lights, which may bring
other people joy. There are things that bring you joy that annoy other
people. The rainy day that ruins your plans for a picnic is a boon for
the farmer whose field is parched.
Happiness is possible right now, today—but happiness cannot be
without suffering. Some people think that in order to be happy they must avoid all suffering, and so they are constantly vigilant, constantly
worrying. They end up sacrificing all their spontaneity, freedom, and
joy. This isn’t correct. If you can recognize and accept your pain without
running away from it, you will discover that although pain is there,
joy can also be there at the same time.
Some say that suffering is only an illusion or that to live wisely
we have to “transcend” both suffering and joy. I say the opposite. The
way to suffer well and be happy is to stay in touch with what is actually
going on; in doing so, you will gain liberating insights into the true
nature of suffering and of joy.