Interesting thoughts.......the quote, "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional" is more or less my view. There is going to be pain, we can't avoid that, but I think suffering is what happens in our thoughts after the painful part is over. We ruminate, feel guilty, go over and over the thing, so that moment in our life when the pain hit, well, it hit, and then we go through the sadness or the anger, or whatever for a little while and then we could choose to let it go.
I was just talking to husband a little while ago about a book I read about PTSD and how this guy has a whole theory and therapy he put together based on what he saw in animals. He said ( and I am so paraphrasing) that let's say a deer is attacked by a tiger......the tiger has it in his jaws, and then miraculously the deer escapes. The deer has just been in fight or flight, his adrenals are wildly pumping........he runs in to the meadow and shakes it off. And then continues his life. We on the other hand, get into the jaws of life and once we are released, we now have all these fear thoughts about avoiding that same fate, controlling our lives so it never happens again, talking about it, reliving it, ruminating about it.........we think it back in to existence over and over again. It's not the event now, it's our thoughts about the event.
I am not making any kind of right or wrong statement here, I am simply relating how I perceive it. I have been practicing staying in the present and not slipping in to the past to ruminate about my circumstances or jumping in to the future to try to control anything. The difference it has made in my life is pretty remarkable. I can look at how I, me, not anyone but me, has dragged my being in the jaws of life around for a long time........suffering. The pain left long ago, but the suffering, well, that became my story. The story I told myself and believed in and talked about and thought that was who I was. Well, I don't believe that anymore. It's all done. It's in the past. I can't change any of that. I can't leap in to the future in a single bound and figure it out and make it perfect so I am not hurt or in pain. All I can do is live right here. For me, suffering then became optional. I can get over pain. Suffering seems to be a sentence you have to live through until it's over. But often, its a life sentence. Todays suffering ends and tomorrow brings a whole new thing to suffer over. I see that now as a mindset. Just because most people do it doesn't mean it's right. I've had enough of suffering, I wanted OUT.
I just decided I was not going to suffer anymore. Does it have meaning? I believe it does. Buddha said when we figure out what the meaning is, it ceases to be suffering. For me, it's a lessen. Once I learn the lesson, I move on. Suffering usually means, (for me) that I am holding on, that there is something I can't let go of. Once I let go, the suffering ends. And, that statement, suffering is arguing with reality makes so much sense to me.
I was listening to a CD about this the other day. And, the guy said, 'when you don't like your reality, you say, I don't like this job, this day, the weather, my life, whatever'........so he said, 'you are superior to the moment, you are above what is happening to you.' I laughed out loud. He said, say "YES" to the moment. You're in it, you may as well say yes instead of no, saying no makes you suffer. I have been practicing this like when you are stuck in traffic. You can certainly bum out. You are stuck, there is no where to go. What can you do. Well, I can listen to music, I can practice being present, I can day dream, I can find a way to enjoy it. So that is my new practice, I do it all the time now. It seems we are hard wired to think ourselves in and out of suffering, it's a state of mind. I have to practice this a lot, it ain't easy, the mind is a powerful master and can drag you right back in the center of the suffering. But, I can say "nah, I think I'd rather go have some fun, move out of my way." And it works! When I have those creepy thoughts, I now notice them before I get dragged in to some movie I don't want to be in. I notice the thoughts, which is the most important part, to observe yourself about to sink into quicksand about something you can't control or happened to you 18 years ago, or something someone said which hurt you, or you dented the car, blah blah.......or yadda yadda......sure I can take that thought to infinity and look at every facet of it forever..........but really, why? Its done. So, I notice the thought and I say, 'wow, I can go there, or I can decline the invite and go to another party. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.' HLM, I think you do that naturally, that seems to be how your mind works. It happened. It's over.What am I grateful for? That's how I am training myself to respond. It works.
I believe we have more power over how we perceive things and how we feel about them. The thought creates the emotion and then the emotion takes over and we are now in a full swing state of misery. We could just as easily think another thought and go in an entirely different direction. When I was studying more philosophical questions, I recall reading over and over again that first you clean up your language, you stop judging, comparing, all of that stuff...........but then........clean up your thoughts..........holy moly, think about how many thoughts run through your head a day!!!! And thoughts are what drag you around and around, all that mental chatter judging yourself, beating yourself up, making claims about what is right and what is wrong, incessantly.........it's exhausting. Meditating and staying away from the past and the future makes a lot of sense to me. Just staying in the present moment, I'm just fine here. And a bi product? A lot less fear.