Oakville Zen Meditation
Dharma talk # 346 Is suffering necessary?
Of course not or ..maybe! However physical and emotional pains are unavoidable.
Events in Life are what they are and not what we want nor what we don’t want to be.
“When we do not get what we want or when we get what we do not want,” we are creating suffering at various degrees...... and Life does not care less.
Few external events such as the loss of a loved one, of a job have/will induce suffering but they are seldom and transient during life and, again, there is nothing we can do about them.
So, most of our suffering is coming from our ego-driven mind with its poisonous arrows such as:
“ I want”, “I don’t want”, “I like”, “I dislike”, I am a victim, my feelings, my illusions, etc..
“I, Me, Myself, Mine” are the roots of all of our negative feelings and illusions.
They describe the word “Dukkha” in Sanskrit, poorly translated as “suffering”
Is suffering necessary? .....Yes and No.
I already said NO because we are not looking for.
However, I will now elaborate on the YES answer that is:
Without being masochistic, suffering can be used as an opportunity when it happens.
At this point, it has a purpose if not a necessity.
Let me elaborate on this counter-intuitive statement:
If we never suffer, we will not be able to discover the master of our suffering and its hidden tools that create suffering because we are trapped in a fictional daydreaming state, away from reality.
The master is our ego and its single strategy to generate suffering are “ I, me, myself and mine”
Suffering is like a waking call because it cracks the thick shell of our egotistic mind like a pneumatic hammer breaking concrete or like an MRI of our mind.
When the opening is done, we can look at our naked ego and discover, inside this beast, the tools it is creating to induce emotional pain from negative feelings to illusions and mind set.
Up to us to deal with them using awareness thru meditation.
At this point, suffering did its job and is not necessary nor has a purpose anymore.
This is the “NO” answer of the beginning.
Unfortunately, our ego becomes busy again to rebuild its shell, to blossom, and to bring back new egotistic causes of suffering.
Fresh suffering will, again, break the shell of our selfishness and so on until the end of our life.
When you are able to observe your ego-driven negative emotions, you realize that they are not the real you because you cannot be both the observer and what you are observing at the same time.
This realization that is the separation between genuine self and ego-driven self is also called “Awakening” or “Enlightenment”
Thank you all.
