When we think of pain and suffering, we usually
think about more or less the same thing. When there’s pain, there’s suffering. And we can only be free from suffering if
we eliminate pain, right? Well, even though these two experiences are
interconnected, pain and suffering are two fundamentally different things, as far as
the Buddhists are concerned. “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional,”
is a Buddhist saying that points to a fundamental truth of existence, which is that pain and
affliction are an inherent part of life: we contract illnesses, get wounded, lose our
loved ones, our possessions, our social status. But despite the hardships we encounter, the
degree of suffering we generate still varies per person. The greatest misfortune hardly affects some
people, while the slightest inconvenience leads other people into states of deep agony. Thus, could it be that suffering is something
we can manage and doesn’t always have to result from pain? The first noble truth of Buddhism tells us
that suffering is part of living in the world and comes in many different forms like sorrow,
the fear of loss, and lamentation. Most (if not all) people experience these
forms of suffering at some point in their lives. The good news is that Buddhism offers a way
out, as the Buddha designed his teachings to end suffering. Part of this process is the realization that
the affliction by external forces is inevitable but that we can minimize further suffering. This video dives into the Buddhist view on
pain and suffering and how we can suffer less even though adversity and misfortune are part
of life. As humans, we cannot escape the impermanent
nature of life. The environment changes all the time. Sometimes life provides us with wealth, and
another time life takes from us everything we have. According to Buddhism, if we think that we
can escape the erratic and unpredictable movements of the universe, we don’t have a clear view
of reality. Clarity, thus, is where the path out of suffering
starts; it’s seeing how things are, including the truth about the human condition, which
is probably much bleaker than most people believe. Isn’t it so that we hold on to the illusion
of self-preservation by accumulating wealth, an excessive emphasis on self-protection,
and the ongoing efforts to maintain what we actually cannot control? As a culture obsessed with safety and the
prevention of hardship, we may be denying a fundamental truth that the Buddha presents
to us: whatever we do, we cannot escape everything falling apart. This means that despite our efforts to protect
ourselves and run from things like aging, dying, disaster, and loss, we’ll incur these
elements of existence nonetheless. Buddhism refers to these inevitable changes
and shifts in life as the ‘Eight Worldly Winds’: pleasure and pain, gain and loss,
praise and blame, fame and disrepute. Most people lead their lives pursuing pleasure,
gain, praise, and fame but avoiding the other side of the coin. But doing this makes us play-things of our
environment, rather than masters over our mental well-being. Hence, for most people, their inner tranquility
depends on the whims of the universe. As the Buddha stated, and I quote: When gain, loss, status, disgrace, censure,
praise, pleasure or pain arise for an ordinary person they do not reflect: “Gain (etc.)
has arisen for me. It is inconstant and subject to change.” He (or she) does not discern it as it actually
is. He welcomes the gain and rebels against the
loss. He welcomes the status and rebels against
the disgrace. He welcomes the praise and rebels against
the censure. He welcomes the pleasure and rebels against
the pain. End quote. The Buddha describes the human predicament;
being trapped in the wheel of suffering, living our lives in constant pursuit of what we desire,
and rebellion against what we’re repulsed by. This mechanism leads to despair, as we always
fear losing what we have and encountering what we avoid. But if we look closer at the reality of life,
we’ll never find what we seek if we let our happiness depend on outside circumstances,
as every blessing comes with a curse. In every pleasure lies the root of pain, which
is that very pleasure going away, and the inability to recapture it. With gain always comes the possibility of
loss. Praise can turn into blame, and with fame
comes the risk of defamation. Thus, the more we attach to desirable outside
circumstances, the more prone we become to their undesirable opposites. The thing is: all these changes of circumstances
are fundamentally not in our control. Whatever comes our way, comes our way. We can get wounded in traffic or stabbed by
a thief in a dark alley. And even if we avoid places entirely, we can
fall prey to sickness and lose what securities we have due to things like natural disasters
and war. We fool ourselves if we think that we can
avoid pain. Moreover, the pursuit of avoiding pain is
painful in itself; as we may minimize discomfort, we still suffer the fear of encountering it. An example is a phenomenon called social anxiety. People with social anxiety suffer an overwhelming
fear of social interactions. A common way to escape this fear is to avoid
social contact as much as possible. But avoidance doesn’t eradicate the fear
of being in a social setting at all. It maintains it and could even worsen it. Also, we’re always worried about the possibility
of social contact, which probably generates more suffering than socializing itself. Moreover, deep inside, we know that, someday,
we have to meet people anyway. So by avoiding people, we’re basically hiding
in a dark corner of a prison cell anxiously awaiting our execution. Instead of running from the unavoidable, we
might want to learn how to handle it, preferably even before encountering it, which Buddhist
practice aims for. But how can we do this? There’s a Buddhist parable that shows how
we can deal with suffering skillfully. Imagine you’re walking on a mountain path,
and suddenly you’re hit by an arrow. Yes, the arrow hurts. Worse still, in the distance you see another
arrow coming your way. Being aware of this arrow, you have a choice:
will you avoid the second arrow or let it hit you? The first arrow represents the unavoidable
pain that we encounter during our lives. We generally don’t see this arrow coming,
and if we do, it’s not in our absolute power to stop it. Thus, tragically, it’s an affliction that
we have to take as long as we’re alive. The first arrow is when you get cut off in
traffic, or someone insults you, or your partner cheats on you. We can influence these things to some extent,
but we can never altogether avoid them. But the second arrow is different. As opposed to the first, we can avoid the
second one. The second arrow represents our reaction to
the first arrow. It hurts more because it hits the same spot. Doug Smith, Study Director of the Online Dharma
Institute, describes the second arrow as follows, and I quote: It’s the arrow that we might call ‘suffering’
or ‘unsatisfactoriness’ [...] It accompanies all of the pain, discomforts, of that first
arrow. End quote. Imagine that you’re fired from your job,
for example. You miss career opportunities, lose colleagues
you might be fond of and have to deal with financial consequences. But these are normal discomforts of life that
most people experience at some point. In other words: you’re hit by the first
arrow. Now, you can pull this arrow out and avoid
the second one by accepting the situation and moving on. But you can also linger, let the second arrow
hit you, and suffer way beyond just losing your job. By rebelling against the Eight Worldly Winds,
by being outraged, depressed, and beating ourselves up, we make an unpleasant situation
much worse than it already is. The same goes for anxiety. The anxiety itself is a physical sensation
that we consider uncomfortable. There are countless reasons why anxiety appears. Even though it’s generally not a pleasant
feeling, what makes it worse is the resistance against this anxiety. Alan Watts compared this type of thinking
to the oscillation we see in old televisions. He described it as follows, and I quote: “I
am worried. And I ought not to worry. But because I can’t stop worrying, I’m
worried because I worry.” End quote. So, anxiety comes and goes, which is the first
arrow in this case. But when we resist it, the anxiety increases,
which, in turn, we try to fight as well, and so forth, which is the second arrow. Buddhism acknowledges the existence of suffering,
but at the same time, offers a way to escape it. The antidote for suffering comes with following
the Eightfold Path, which is considered the road to freedom of suffering: a state known
as enlightenment. The Noble Eightfold Path is too extensive
to cover in one video, and there are plenty of elaborations available if you’re interested. Instead, we’ll conclude this video with
a few Buddhist ideas to help us find relief when facing the inescapable worldly winds. Awareness Between the first arrow and the second arrow,
there’s space. Within this space, we can decide what we do. Do we choose to let the second arrow hit us,
or do we choose to avoid it? To avoid it, we must be aware that we have
a choice. So, it starts with awareness; the awareness
that the first arrow is inevitable, but the second one is optional. Emotions like anger, resentment, and discursive
mental activities like excessive rumination and worry are all manifestations of the second
arrow: they’re not the unfortunate event itself (i.e., the first arrow) but its consequences. Whenever we catch ourselves upset over something,
we can make an effort to let go of these thoughts and emotions. If we know this, we can shift the focus from
the first to the second arrow, which we can do something about. In Buddhism, meditation and mindfulness are
the keys to this awareness. By watching the inner landscape, we discover
what’s going on within ourselves and do the necessary work to rid ourselves of destructive
mental states and avoid further suffering. We can only avoid the second arrow if we learn
to see it coming. Not clinging to an illusion A cornerstone of Buddhist thought is the realization
of impermanence. Hence, the term ‘worldly winds’ is so
effective, as it illustrates the ongoing changes between pleasure and pain, gain and loss,
et cetera. Nothing remains the same. As Alan Watts once stated: “change is just
another word for life.” Clinging to pleasant circumstances is, therefore,
a bad idea, as we’re grasping for water; as soon as we think we have it, it has already
slipped through our fingers. If we demand the world to stay the same, we
cling to an illusion, and we’ll be disappointed when the truth confronts us. This doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy
life. We can, as long as we see its transient nature
as part of the bargain. As the Buddha stated: The world is afflicted by death and decay. But the wise do not grieve, having realized
the nature of the world. End quote. Sailing the worldly winds When good times are fleeting and bad times
are inevitable, why do we torture ourselves by clinging to the former and running from
the latter? Why can’t we just accept that what we enjoy
at the moment will soon disappear? And that no matter where we hide and how far
we run, misfortune will get us no matter what? Instead of grasping or fighting the worldly
winds, wouldn’t it be better if we move along with them skillfully? If we successfully sail the waves of impermanence,
we’ll never go under. Well-trained sailors can keep their boats
afloat even in the most aggressive, unpredictable weather conditions. So, perhaps we could say that the Buddhist
teachings benefit us in transforming from helpless floaters to skillful sailors. Thank you for watching.
