ROOT CAUSE OF SUFFERINGTHE JOURNEY TO FINDING THE ROOT CAUSE OF SUFFERING
“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of
the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.” — Thich Nhat
Hanh
There is an important distinction to make when speaking about
suffering. When I mention suffering in this book, I’m referring to
psychological and emotional suffering. There is a way in which, no
matter what happens in your life, you do not have to suffer
emotionally and psychologically.
I am not saying that what we go through is all in our heads or
made up. Terrible and unfortunate events happen to people every
single day. What I’m saying is that although we experience a lot of
pain in our lives, suffering is optional. In other words, pain is
unavoidable, but how we react to the events and circumstances that
happen in our lives is up to us, and that will dictate whether we suffer
or not.
Buddhists say that anytime we experience a negative event in our
lives, two arrows fly our way. Being physically struck by an arrow is
painful. Being struck by a second emotional arrow is even more
painful (suffering).
The Buddha explained, “In life, we can’t always control the first
arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The
second arrow is optional.”
When I first heard of this quote from Buddha a few years back, I
was confounded because although I understood what he meant, I
didn’t know how I could apply this in my own life. If anyone were
given the clear choice of suffering and not suffering, I don’t think
anyone in their right mind would choose to suffer.
How can I just choose not to suffer? If it were as easy as that I
don’t think anyone would be suffering anymore. It wasn’t until years later that I came across a new understanding of where suffering
comes from that I was able to stop it at its source.
As I began my journey of self-improvement, I came across a
myriad of different teachings, studies, and methods to help people
overcome their problems. I read dozens if not hundreds of books,
studied psychology went to therapists, and listened to many different
thought leaders, tried changing my habits, waking up at 4 a.m.,
changing my diet, becoming more structured and disciplined,
shadow work, studying personality types, meditating daily, going on
spiritual retreats, following spiritual masters, and researching
different ancient religions.
If you name it, I’ve probably tried it. I was desperate to find an
answer because I wanted to know how to stop suffering in my own
life as well as help others do the same. Although some of these
things did help me improve incrementally, it didn’t stop my suffering.
I still always felt extremely anxious, fearful, unfulfilled, irritated, angry,
frustrated, and heavy every day. Even after doing all of that, I still
didn’t discover the answer and, if I’m being honest, I was even more
lost than before I started on this quest. I felt purposeless, hopeless, and directionless. I didn’t know what to do anymore, where to look, or who to talk to. It wasn’t until I was in my darkest hour that a glimmer of hope began to lead me to the light.
All of the sudden, after years and years of searching, I stumbled
upon one of my first mentors that taught me how to become a coach
and he revealed to me the answer of how I can alleviate my own
suffering.
The answer I discovered was in the understanding of how our
minds work and how the human experience is created.
THE ROOT CAUSE OF ALL SUFFERING
“One who looks around him is intelligent, one who looks within him is
wise.” — Matshona Dhliwayo
We live in a world of thought, not reality. Sydney Banks once said,
“Thought is not reality, yet it is through thought that our realities are
created.” Each of us lives through our own perceptions of the world,
which are vastly different from the person right next to us.
An example of this is that you could be sitting in a coffee shop having a
quarter-life existential crisis completely stressed out of your mind
about how you have no idea what you’re doing with your life when it
like everyone else has theirs together, while the person next
to you are happily enjoying their freshly brewed drink while peacefully
people watching.
You both are in the same exact coffee shop,
smelling the same aroma, surrounded by the same strangers, but
how the world looks to both of you couldn’t be more different. Many
of us go through the exact same events or are in the same location
at the time yet are having completely different experiences Of
the world.
Here’s another example of how we live in a world of thought and
not reality. If you walk up to 100 different people and ask each of
them what money means to them, how many different answers do
you think you’ll get? Close to 100 different answers!
Money is technically the same thing, but it means something
different to each person. Money could mean time, freedom,
opportunity, security, peace of mind, or it could mean evil, greed, and
the reason why people commit crimes. For now, I’m not going to get
into which one is right or wrong (hint: there is no right or wrong
answer, but that’s for a different chapter).
Another illustration of this concept is as follows: If you survey 100
different people and ask each of them what they think of our current
President, how many different answers do you think you’ll get?
Even though it is the same exact person we’re talking about, we
will get 100 different answers because most people live in their own
thoughts and perceptions of the world. The meaning (or thinking) we
give an event is what determines how we ultimately feel about it.
That meaning or thinking is the filter through which we see life from
then on — because of this, we live through a perception of reality,
not in reality itself. Reality is that the event happened, with no
meaning, thinking, or interpretation of it.
Any meaning or thinking we give the event is on us and that is
how our perception of reality is created. This is how our experience
of life is created from the inside out.
It’s not about the events that happen in our lives, but our
interpretation of them, which causes us to feel good or bad about
something. This is how people in third-world countries can be
happier than people in first-world countries and people in the first-world
countries can be more miserable than people in third-world
countries.
Our feelings do not come from external events but from our
own thinking about the events. Therefore, we can only ever feel
what we are thinking.
Our feelings do not come from external events, but from our
own thinking about the events. Therefore, we can only ever feel
what we are thinking.
Let’s hypothetically say that you really hate your job, and it causes
you an enormous amount of stress, anxiety, and frustration. It pains
you to even set foot in the building where you work and just thinking
about your job makes you furious.
When you’re thinking about your job, you’re just sitting there on a sofa with your family watching a TV show together, but you are fuming at the thought of your job. Everyone else is having a good time, except you.
In this moment, everyone else in your family is having a different
experience of life than you, even though the same event is happening. Just the thought of work created a whole different perception of reality, even though you’re not physically at work.
If it were true that external events cause us to feel the way we feel
inside, then you should be a happy camper in your living room,
watching a funny TV show with your family every single time you do
this activity — but that’s not the case.
Now, you may be saying that you’re only feeling this way because
an external event, your job, is causing you to feel stressed and
anxious. To that I’ll ask the question, is it absolutely true that every
single person feels the exact same way about the job they’re working
Two different people can be doing the exact same job but will
have completely different experiences of that job. It can be the most
amazing experience and a dream job for one person but be another
person’s worst nightmare and living hell. The only difference
between one person and the other is how they think about their job,
which determines how they ultimately feel about it.
Now let’s go back to the original scenario of you hypothetically
hating your job. Remember how much stress, anxiety, and frustration
it causes you when you think about it?
Let’s do a quick thought experiment about that by answering the
question below:
Who would you be without that thought that you hated your
job?
Take 1 minute to see what comes up for you and don’t move on
until you do that.
If you don’t overthink it and truly let the answers surface from
within you, without that thought, you will most likely feel and be
happy, peaceful, free, and light.
Without our usual thinking about a particular event or thing, our
experience of it completely alters. This is how we live in a world of
thought, not reality, and how our perception of reality is created from
the inside out, through our own thinking. With this new understanding, you’ve just uncovered the cause of all our human psychological suffering…
The root cause of our suffering is our own thinking.
Now before you throw this book across the room and light it on
fire, I’m not saying that this is all in our heads and that it isn’t real.
Our perception of reality is very real. We will feel what we think, and
our feelings are real. That is completely undeniable. However, our
thinking will look like an inevitable, unchangeable reality to us until we begin seeing how our reality is created.
If we know that we canonly ever feel what we are thinking, then we know that we can change our feelings by changing our thinking. Thus, we can change our experience of life by knowing that it comes from our own
thinking. And if that is true, then we are ever only one thought away
from experiencing something different and transforming our entire
lives at any moment — through a state of no thought.
In short, the moment we stop thinking is when our happiness
begins.
A Young Monk & the Empty Boat (A Zen Story About How
Thinking is the Cause of Our Own Suffering)
A long time ago, a young Zen monk was living in a small
monastery that was located in a forest which was near a small lake.
The monastery was occupied by a few senior monks while the rest
were newcomers and still had much to learn. The monks had many
obligations in the monastery, but one of the most important ones was
their daily routine where they had to sit down, close their eyes, and
meditate in silence for hours at a time.
After each meditation, they had to report their progress to their
mentor. The young monk had difficulty staying focused during his
meditation practice for a variety of reasons, which made him very
mad.
After the young monk reported his progress, or better said, lack
of it, to his mentor, the elder monk asked the young monk a simple
question that had a hidden lesson, “Do you know what is really
making you angry?” The young monk replied, “Well, usually as soon
as I close my eyes and begin to meditate, there is someone moving
around, and I can’t focus.
I get agitated that someone is disturbing me even though they know that I’m meditating. How can they not be more considerate? And then when I close my eyes again and try to focus, a cat or a small animal might brush past and disturb me again.
By this point, even when the wind blows and the tree branches make
noise, I get angry. If that is not enough, the birds keep on chirping,
and I can’t seem to find any peace in this place.”
The elder monk simply pointed out to his pupil, “l see that you
become angrier with each interruption you encounter. This is exactly
the opposite of what is the point of your task when meditating. You
should find a way not to get angry with people, or animals, or any
other thing around you that disturbs you during your task.”
After their consultation, the young monk went out of the monastery and looked around to find a place that would be quieter so that he could
meditate peacefully. He found such a place at the shore of the lake
that is nearby. He brought his mat, sat down, and started meditating.
But soon a flock of birds splashed down in the lake near where the
monk was meditating. Hearing their noise, the monk opened his
eyes to see what was going on.
Although the bank of the lake was quieter than the monastery,
there were still things that would disturb his peace and he again got
angry. Even though he didn’t find the peace he was looking for, he
kept returning to the lake.
Then one day, the monk saw a boat tied at the end of a small pier. And right then an idea hit him, “Why don’t I take the boat, row it down to the middle of the lake and meditate there? In the middle of the lake, there will be nothing to disturb me!”
He rowed the boat to the middle of the lake and started meditating.
As he had expected, there was nothing in the middle of the lake to
disturb him and he was able to meditate the whole day. At the end of
the day, he returned to the monastery. This continued for a couple of
days and the monk was thrilled that he had finally found a place to
meditate in peace. He hadn’t felt angry and could continue the
meditation practice in a calm manner.
On the third day, the monk sat in the boat, rowed to the middle of
the lake, and started meditating again. A few minutes later, he heard
some splashing of water and felt that the boat was rocking. He
started getting upset that even in the middle of the lake there was
someone or something disturbing him.
When he opened his eyes, he saw a boat heading straight
towards him. He shouted, “Steer your boat away, or else you will hit
my boat.” But the other boat kept coming straight at him and was just
a few feet away. He yelled again but nothing changed and so the incoming boat hit the monk’s boat. Now he was furious.
screamed, “Who are you, and why have you hit my boat in
middle of this vast lake?” There was no answer. This made
young monk even angrier.
He stood up to see who was in the other boat and to his surprise,
he found that there was no one in the boat.
The boat had probably drifted along in the breeze and had
bumped into the monk’s boat. The monk found his anger dissipating.
It was just an empty boat! There was no one to get angry at!
At that moment he remembered his mentors’ question, “Do you
know what is really making you angry?” And then wondered, “It’s not
other people, situations, or circumstances. It’s not the empty boat,
but my reaction to it that causes my anger. All the people or
situations that make me upset and angry are just like the empty boat.
They don’t have the power to make me angry without my own
reaction.”
The monk then rowed the boat back to the shore. He returned to
the monastery and started meditating along with the other monks.
There were still noises and disturbances around, but the monk
treated them as the “empty boat” and continued to meditate
peacefully. When the elder monk saw the difference, he simply said
to the young monk, “l see that you have found what is really making
you angry and overcome that.”
The End
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