Choosing Suffering over Safety

For me, suffering "well" is something of a cumulative experience.  When you are faced for the first time with a place of deep suffering, it provokes for most of us panic and fear; it is not possible for most of us to be fully present for it.  When you have moved through it and discover that you can survive it, then over time when you are faced again with suffering, it becomes possible to be present and aware of its nuances and textures, like a not unfamiliar companion.  Over time, you accumulate an experiential understanding that suffering takes different forms and that also it will pass, so that the companion of suffering becomes more interesting in its own subtle ways, and who you are through it becomes a source of stillness and self-awareness that you could not otherwise ever know.  For each place of suffering we may face in a lifetime, there are so many different nuances and textures with many gifts, including often those we do not perceive until much later.  But facing it, holding through it, seeing it to its end, can be very, very hard. 

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 I am learning to accept what is and not to resist or to deny the presence of what is. The first suffering I experienced was the passing away of my dad. I did not want him to leave me. What helped me  to accept his passing away was the way he embraced  his breath leaving his body. He used to recite the verses from the Bhagvat Geeta shedding light on how to live with equanimity, how to remain centered and balanced in the midst of the rising and falling waves of life. He lived that way and died that way. He used to teach me how to live by the way he lived his life. He was walking his walk.He planted the seeds of the art of living and leaving.Breathing in and breathing out are the wings of the bird of living fully.

Three years ago, my beloved wife passed away.  She had very aggressive breast cancer. Six months before she passed away, she asked me looking into my eyes, "Jagdish! Do you think I will survive? I trust you. You will tell me the truth." This  was the most difficult question for me to answer. I was holding her hand in my hand and this answer emerged from my heart: " Everyone  is going to pass away sooner or later." That answer was enough for her. Without any hesitation, she accepted the truth. There was a glow of acceptance on her face. And that's the way she lived her life.She was ready to go when the time would arrive. Before she passed away, she asked all of us- me, our grown up children and grand children- to face her face. She touched everybody's hand, looked at all of us and said, " Is everyone OK?" She lived that way caring for all and left  the same way showing her caring for all. These were her last words and these words deeply resonate with me when she comes to my mind and heart. Like my dad, my wife taught me a lesson of how to live and how to die.

Suffering is an integral part of living fully. The evening is  born in the womb of the morning sun. There is no morning without evening and there is no evening without morning.The river of life flows in between the banks of joy and suffering. They are intertwined. They are the wings of the bird, the tide and ebb of living.

May we cultivate this art of living and dying to live fully and die fully.

Namaste.

Jagdish P Dave

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Bonnie:
Thank you for the piece -wonderful, important, insightful, kindly put.  

Opinion:

Certainly most harbor the safer world of ignoring the potential loss of those we hold dear. Most avoid the inevitable fact of the loss of a loved one right up to the end because the recognition of inevitable loss diminishes or ruins the moments we experience when that loss is not imminent. 
To live recognizing we will lose the ones we love is a debilitating understanding of reality, and for we humans, this state of ordained death awareness is no way to live.  This state is almost impossible to deny and ignore after a bad diagnosis or on the march to the end. To exist at all times in such awareness would be a constant, protracted suffering-pain at a low burn level, distracting, at least, and robbing us of many pure moments of joy.  The loving caretaker substitutes selfless care and compassion for the feelings of helplessness and inevitability of loss and has a chance of giving the dying individual a better chance of feeling life and love right up through the end.

In general, we naturally revel in the “immortality of youth”, the young person or pet, and even if later we pine for the days when, for instance, the pet romped or played, or ran with us, we still extract the joy of their presence at any age and diminishment.  Holding that dying cat or dog, that dear member of your life, as they slip away is the clear proof that the exuberance of youth and movement has nothing to do with the real bond of care and selflessness on both sides of the heart fence.  

Yes, the understanding that there will be unfathomable loss, causes the fear of, and the pangs of, pain. We call that “suffering”, before and after a loss. In truth, the pain must surely be many things coalescing in one clear moment, death.  If one can think it at the end, it can cause pain, and perhaps because we hold onto such hope of just another moment and helpless denial of the end right up to the end, our pain is accumulated, over years, to be released at once, when the rubicon is breached in passing.

When we die, we collide with the understanding that the everyday is no longer relevant or an option -breath is unnecessary, time is meaningless and our actions are no longer needed or effective –all clearly so, like no other time. Finality has its lessons for our being, and those lessons can be very painful, indeed.

We put a loved one first, and now they do not need us. We feel helpless, as they go. Rationalizing they are in a great place after death is wonderful but the pure pain of knowing all just changed forever for a loved one, is singularly stunning.  In stead of looking at that severest of human experiences as suffering only, it may be that suffering is only one symptom of the larger and more beautiful gift of finally, if only for one transitional, transformational moment, feeling all the worry of loss, from the day you met your loved one, and which accumulated unrecognized in our souls, released, never to be used again for this dear part of our lives. Loss is a terrible thing but loss of the worry of loss is a beautiful thing, and perhaps is such a unique and precious gift that the loved one’s passing gives to us.  

For the average human, it is probably never a choice between “safe and suffering”.  Our evolved minds have developed to simply ignore the vulnerabilities in life; so, we can have a chance to function with the possibility of joy in life at all.  Even so, most people do not often experience the joy of any part of life for long, or at all.  The loss of a deeply loved person or pet is clearly one of those joyous moments being celebrated in reverse. Euphoria is replaced by throbbing pain and the compression of time. Yet, the intensity and the heart involved is perhaps the purest form of joy there is. It is of course a reflected joy, masked by the suffering pain, and if we are lucky, recognizable later as the true illustration that the loved individual gave us great, indefinable joy right up through passing.

What we deny can catch up to us, and usually does in death. The wonder of it all is that extraordinary bonds, whose vulnerabilities are denied all our lives so we do not drive ourselves crazy, revisit us in a rush at a loved one’s passing. What we traditionally fear and observe as the resultant suffering, is really the strength of those bonds, not their loss, as we feel them intensely being bound together forever. It is real pain but built on the real joy received for the privilege and luck to have found each other in life and passing –both we tragically feel in the end. There is perhaps no greater joy than this intensity at the end of a loved one’s life but also, ironically, no more misunderstood part of our hearts and souls, as they struggle to with having no control over the next step in the relationship. 

In passing, I am personally as certain that the dying loved one feels the comfort of persistent love as much as they silently acknowledge the thankfulness that caring never stops with condition and that in the end they were never worried about being abandoned.  Love and joy are incomprehensible in the end. We feel pain but the intensity is still love and joy. That is the wonder and the kicker of the death of a loved one.  

–as if any of it is comprehensible anyway.

 
Military Family Voices  
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 Suffering equals being 100% present to whatever the situation is, both for self and if there is another involved, for them as well. I chose suffering when I helped my mother heal after she broke her kneecap 2 years ago. She is a very anxious person and extremely afraid of nearly everything. I allowed myself to be with her 24/7 as her caretaker and helped guide her through her own pain; physical, mental, emotional. I sat with her, read to her, and did my best to meet all her needs while letting go of many of my own; choosing to be present rather than in safety. At the same time, I also chose to keep a commitment to a once in a lifetime performance trip to Kenya for a storytelling festival for which I had auditioned 1.5 years earlier. It was 2 months after her injury, she was doing well with physical therapy and seeing a therapist. I made arrangements with her sisters (who both lived 10 minutes away) and with the neighbor right next door to check on her daily. I went and performed, emailed daily and learned my Mom was doing very well with her healing. It was an interesting space to be in; to both have been so present in the early stages of recovery and then to allow myself to let go and for her to grow into further healing. It helped both of us. I suppose that was the joy in it; seeing the progression and also being in the depths of the pain/healing.

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Suffering means to me to bear or carry my experience.  My experience is my truth.  To accept, value, express, utilize what I am experiencing is for me to suffer it.  I can carry my experience efficiently, in a way that doesn't create unnecessary pain, or I can carry my experience inefficiently , which creates unnecessary pain.  Pain is unavoidable -- it's part of life -- how I suffer it is up to me.  I have chosen to suffer my experience over safety when the cause is important enough to me and the danger looks acceptable.  I have chosen safety over suffering my experience when the danger looks too great.  Suffering my experience is integrity, and my integrity definitely has cracks and limits.  I think of Jesus as someone who suffered his experience over safety, and the price he paid the was execution.  I've been no martyr.  I've been aware of the choice between suffering my experience or safety.  Sometimes I have suffered my experience in the form of saying or doing what felt dangerous, choosing suffering my experience over safety, but the danger was not extreme.  Usually I've ended up taking less heat than I expected.  I do feel joy when I have the courage to suffer my experience, and have shame when I don't suffer my experience and deny it.  As C.S. Lewis said, "The boy chooses safety, the man chooses suffering."  Sometimes I'm a boy.  The more I suffer my experience the easier it becomes.

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