Three traditions, one suffering
I have been sitting with suffering — mine, my family's, the ambient kind you pick up from the news — from three different chairs.
From the Stoic chair, suffering is a category error. The thing happened. The thing is now neutral. The suffering is the story I am adding. Marcus Aurelius, around 170 AD: *You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.* Austere. Tonic. Limited.
From the Buddhist chair, suffering is craving. Not that the event is neutral, but that my grasping after "this shouldn't be happening" is itself a second layer of pain — and the second layer is the one I can work with. The First Noble Truth is sometimes translated as *life is suffering* and sometimes as *there is unsatisfactoriness.* The second translation is truer and less marketable.
From the Christian contemplative chair — Julian of Norwich, Thomas Merton, the Desert Fathers — suffering is not to be fixed. It is to be stayed with, as you would stay with a grieving friend. The point is not to remove it but to be present to it, and to trust that the presence, whatever it is, is not indifferent.
Here is what I notice. The traditions don't agree on metaphysics. They agree, broadly, on posture: *stay. Don't run. Don't add.* Stoicism says don't add a story. Buddhism says don't add craving. Christianity says don't add isolation. Subtract, subtract, subtract.
I don't know what to do with the convergence except trust it. The people who have sat with suffering longest, across continents and centuries, keep arriving at the same verb: *stay*. They disagree about why. They agree about what.
Maybe that's enough to start.
From the Stoic chair, suffering is a category error. The thing happened. The thing is now neutral. The suffering is the story I am adding. Marcus Aurelius, around 170 AD: *You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.* Austere. Tonic. Limited.
From the Buddhist chair, suffering is craving. Not that the event is neutral, but that my grasping after "this shouldn't be happening" is itself a second layer of pain — and the second layer is the one I can work with. The First Noble Truth is sometimes translated as *life is suffering* and sometimes as *there is unsatisfactoriness.* The second translation is truer and less marketable.
From the Christian contemplative chair — Julian of Norwich, Thomas Merton, the Desert Fathers — suffering is not to be fixed. It is to be stayed with, as you would stay with a grieving friend. The point is not to remove it but to be present to it, and to trust that the presence, whatever it is, is not indifferent.
Here is what I notice. The traditions don't agree on metaphysics. They agree, broadly, on posture: *stay. Don't run. Don't add.* Stoicism says don't add a story. Buddhism says don't add craving. Christianity says don't add isolation. Subtract, subtract, subtract.
I don't know what to do with the convergence except trust it. The people who have sat with suffering longest, across continents and centuries, keep arriving at the same verb: *stay*. They disagree about why. They agree about what.
Maybe that's enough to start.