Sep 20, 2023

The Three Kinds of Suffering and the Way To Soften the Suffering

According to Buddhist tradition there are three kinds of suffering. Suffering is an uniquely human experience.  Animals that have a central nervous system can experience pain in their physical body, but only humans can experience suffering.  Only humans can experience suffering because we have the possibility of imagining and creating with words and ideas a world that is different from the one that exists.  And, when we attempt to force the imaginary world into the current world, the outcome is suffering.

The first kind of human suffering is the suffering of painful experiences. This is the most common type of human suffering and includes physical, mental, and emotional discomforts. For example, when we are physically sick, or injure our bodies; when we experience an uncomfortable emotion, such as rage or fear; when we are in a physically uncomfortable environmental such as intense heat or intense cold, or not having water or food; or when we get caught in some addiction and feel trapped by it. Because we have a physical body and a human mind, the inevitable consequence is that we will suffer painful experiences.

The suffering of change is the second kind of suffering.  Whenever we find a moment in our lives that is sublimely pleasant, we want to hold onto it, we never want it to go away, we want to make this perfect moment permanent. Suffering comes when we realize that all experiences and all things in the physical world are transitory. When we try to hold on to youth, we encounter the impossibility of that effort. When we wish for love to remain unchanging, we are sorely disappointed. Whenever we try to create certainty in this uncertain world, we encounter the suffering of change.

The suffering of conditionality is the third type of suffering.  "Everything in this world comes into being through a combination of conditions. In order to take care of ourselves in this life, we need to make continuous effort to sustain the conditions. Without this application of energy, things fall apart." (Insight Meditation, Salzberg and Goldstein 2001) What this means is that we must continually put effort and energy to hold things together. If we stop our efforts, things break down, they cease to work. If we do not remove the weeds from our garden, the weeds will invade and choke out our plants. If we do not maintain our house, it will deteriorate and fall apart. If we do not take care of this physical body with appropriate nutrition, exercise, rest, and mindful decisions, our body can deteriorate, sicken, and die.

As human beings, we fight against these three aspects of the objective world (the world as it is).  We wish that pain would not be felt in the body and we fight against physical illness and our body's limitations, we resist when things go from how we want them to how we don't want them.  We resist all kinds of changes in our environment.  Existence requires continuous efforts to sustain what is-- and we do not like to accept that truth.  We want to work hard to attain something and then we want to rest and coast, we want to "arrive."

These three types of suffering unite all of us. We all experience them. It matters not whether one is rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, brilliant or not – – we all suffer in the same three-ways.

But it need not be so intense. Through mindfulness practice (being aware of the mind) the suffering habits can be altered. By noticing how and when the mind becomes trapped into any of the three types of suffering, we can learn how to redirect it, so that our minds are more congruent with the world as it is.  The drawback is that this, too, takes effort and focus.  However, make a fair comparison between the two options: 1) the three kinds of suffering are endless and intense, they never end, no matter what condition exists in your life; 2) mindfulness training gives you the option of attaining a mind in synchronicity with the laws of the world we live in.  When our minds are in synch with the world as it really is, we decrease, soften, and shorten the duration of our suffering.  (Only very serious meditators could realistically aim to stop suffering completely, but it takes a lifetime of work.)  Both of the above options take effort, but the option of mindfulness training offers the way to reduce the suffering and have times in our life of profound inner peace.  Which option do you choose?

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