Suffering as Necessity
In a previous post I began to illustrate my vision of our lives as a wide path with many choices and hurdles. This is in stark contrast to the narrow path analogy for life, dictated by fate and the inevitability of suffering within our lives. The Buddhist perspective on suffering is that all choices within our lives cause innate suffering, and we must resign ourselves to this fact. Although I believe in many Buddhist principles, this core fundamental belief does not necessarily resonate with me. I believe that within the wide path of life, we may inevitably encounter hurdles that result in what we determine to be suffering. Where I diverge from the Buddhist belief, is that I believe suffering is created through a negative self construct that builds and is embellished with our feelings of negativity as we grow. When exaxmined, all experiences within life can be viewed any number of ways, and ultimately it is our own viewpoint and understanding of the situation that ends up garnering how we actually feel about any particular event. What we perceive as suffering can ultimately be perceived any number of ways, and it is our attitudes towards a particular situation that determine our actual feelings with regards to the hurdle that we are encountering.
When illustrating this within the 'wide path' metaphor, we can see that we more than likely will face obstacles no matter which way we choose to encounter the world. The power of humanity is our choice of how to overcome the obstacle, side skirt it entirely, or even backtrack and attempt to walk back your decision. If we choose to encounter the world unconsciously, merely trudging through our routines on a daily basis, we will still encounter just as many hiccups in our path as we would have if we acted consciously within all of our decisions. They just will be different hiccups, different problems encountered within a lifetime of decisions made that were perhaps adverse to growth and change within our lives. It is my firm belief that there really is no life within this world that is immune to suffering, for many this will be external, and you will have no real ability to intercept it on its way into your life. Other times, suffering comes from within, and this is perhaps one of my core goals, to reframe suffering using context and understanding.
If we can merely begin to take control of our own suffering (the type that is generated within ourselves from our own anxieties, fears, and misgivings) we can begin to see perhaps that by affecting our own lens and scope of the world, the external suffering becomes less of a factor within our lives. By making the conscious choice of examining our own emotions, and why we feel strongly one way or the other, we begin to illuminate the importance of choice within our lives. Suffering can begin to become an externality of life, when the choice of to suffer or not to suffer is an available option. By examining our feelings within the most important and tenuous situations within our lives, we can act with intention and knowledge rather than fear and impulse. By elevating our consciousness within our decision making process, we begin to see real substantive change in the way that we view challenging events within our lives.
