From: Shinzen Young
Human Suffering & Happiness as a Second-Order Equation.
"With hand waving and poetry, roughly speaking, our sensory experience behaves like a second-order differential equation. Roughly speaking, with the resistance being impedance... Talk to any scientist and they'll tell you second-order differential equations are very often fundamental laws of physics. And there's a reason for that."
He connected this to his famous formulas:
These are equations that describe systems with momentum—where what happens next depends not just on where you are, but how fast you're changing.
Examples in physics:
The key insight: These systems have natural oscillation, can be damped (resistance slows them down), and can resonate (small inputs at the right frequency create huge effects).
Your sensory experience isn't just stimulus → response. It's a dynamic system with momentum.
The pain triggers resistance, which amplifies, which creates more resistance... a feedback loop. The system "rings"—you keep suffering long after the stimulus is gone.
Resistance is like damping in a circuit. The pain comes, you feel it, it passes. No ringing.
What Shinzen is suggesting:
The simple equation Suffering = Pain × Resistance is poetic shorthand.
The fuller picture might be:
Sensory experience flows through us like current through a circuit. When it flows freely (low impedance), we're equanimous - experience moves through without getting stuck.
But we block it in TWO different ways:
| Type of blocking | Circuit analogy | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Aversion | Resistance - fighting the current | "I don't want this, make it stop" |
| Grasping | Capacitance - storing/holding | "I need to keep this, don't let it go" |
| Inertia/stuckness | Inductance - resisting change | "I can't handle this changing" |
These combine into total "impedance" - the degree to which experience gets blocked.
Why second-order differential equations matter:
He says "they're very often fundamental laws of physics."
Newton's F = ma is a second-order differential equation (force relates to acceleration, which is second derivative of position).
He's implying: the way sensory experience behaves might be just as fundamental. Not a metaphor borrowed from physics, but the SAME underlying math showing up in a different domain.
If true, this means:
The practical upshot:
If suffering really does follow something like circuit dynamics, then:
The equation also explains why small practices matter. In a resonant system, tiny consistent inputs at the right frequency create massive effects over time. Daily meditation is "tuning to the resonant frequency" of transformation. The same math that lets engineers design circuits could inform contemplative training.