Suffering

I have just finished writing a paper based on a book entitled Preaching for Adult Commitment and Conversion: Invitation to a Life Transformed. While most of that book is not applicable to life in the zendo, there are some very interesting things in the book. There is one statement in particular, actually a quote from Richard Rohr, which caught my attention. “[Tragedy] is the cauldron of transformation, the belly of Jonah’s whale… Suffering is, I’m sorry to say, the most efficient means of transformation, and God makes full use of it whenever God can.” Let me read that again.

When I read that, my first thought was, “How different this is from Buddhism.” But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize how like Buddhism it is.

Let me briefly recount for you the story of Shakyamuni’s enlightenment. After many years of a life of great austerity an extreme asceticism, Shakyamuni realized he wasn’t getting anywhere. So he sat down under the Bodhi tree and said, “I will not rise from this seat until I understand.” In the picturesque imagery of the Denkoroku, “[He] sat on the Adamantine Seat, where spiders spun webs in his eyebrows and magpies built a nest on top of his head. Reeds grew up between his legs as he sat tranquilly and erect without movement for six years. At the age of thirty, on the eighth day of the twelfth month, as the morning star appeared, he was suddenly enlightened.” Upon his enlightenment, Shakyamuni said, “How wonderful! How wonderful! I and the great earth and all beings are enlightened together.” Whereupon, as the tradition has it, he sprang from his seat, ran down the road, encountered the five ascetics with whom he had been living the austere life, and expounded the Four Noble Truths. They listened politely, perhaps stifling a few yawns, and then went on their way. Only one of them became his follower.

Now all of you have had enlightenment experiences in your lives. Maybe little enlightenment experiences, but enlightenment experiences nonetheless. They are those moments when suddenly, out of nowhere it seems, the light bulb goes on, the penny drops, the “Aha!” appears and suddenly something falls into place. You suddenly see something in a new way or have an understanding of a problem that has been bothering you, or whatever. Now, if you think back to those moments in your life, you will realize that they are wordless. Contentless. It is just like a flash of lightening that blazes through and is gone. All of which makes it hard to believe that Shakyamuni jumped up from his seat under the Bodhi tree with his elaborate system of suffering and its cessation fully formed. I have always thought that this was a gross exaggeration. Luckily, some scholars agree with me. The Four Noble Truths are most likely a distillate of years of his meditations on suffering.

Although many of you already know the Four Noble Truths and can recite them in your sleep, let me remind you of them: There is dukkha. There is a cause of dukkha. There can be an end to dukkha. The way to end dukkha is the Eightfold Path: Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. Now this word “dukkha” is interesting. It is usually translated as “suffering,” but it is a much broader term than that, although it does include suffering, as we ordinarily understand it. That is, it includes birth, sickness, old age and death, having to be around people you don’t like, being separated from people you want to be with, not getting what you want, and so on. But it also refers to the impermanence, insubstantiality, imperfection, the emptiness of all things. In effect, it says that life – even the most wonderful things in life – is profoundly unsatisfying. Even if life fills our hunger for the moment, it doesn’t last.

The whole Buddhist definition of the Five Aggregates as that which constitutes the nature of all beings comes from the First Noble Truth: dukkha. The Five Aggregates are: Matter (or form), Sensation, Perception, Mental Formation (volition, or as the Heart Sutra puts it, reaction) and Consciousness. And all of these are dukkha. In other words, everything you see, feel, touch, taste, think are the aggregates, and they are all dukkha.

Now I have always found this whole system of the Four Noble Truths rather philosophical and frankly, a bit bloodless. It’s so calmly systematic, so intricately reasoned. How can this highfalutin theoretical stuff drive a person to spend years sitting on a cushion? It is that sense of coolness that, for me, made Rohr’s statement – “Tragedy is the cauldron of transformation” – seem so different from the Buddhist take. The Bible is so much more gutsy than these old Theravadan texts, or so it seemed.

But then I looked at where these texts came from. What drove Shakyamuni to spend all those years starving himself and sitting unmoving under that tree.

(Although, I suspect that six years is a bit of an exaggeration.) Again, this is a story with which many of you are familiar, but please indulge my telling it again.

Siddhartha was born a prince. When he was born, his father called in a soothsayer to predict his future. The seer said, “He will either be a great king or, if he ever experiences suffering, a great saint.” Now the king wanted his son to become king after him, so he determined to protect the boy from experiencing any suffering. So the king created a life of luxury for his son. He gave him the best toys, fed him the ripest mangos, and created a beautiful garden with singing birds and myriads of flowers for him. But the garden was walled, and the boy had no experience of the outside world. Yet, one day, while he was still a boy, Siddhartha saw a farmer plowing a field. As the plow turned up the earth, worms were brought up to the surface, and the birds swooped down and gobbled them up. This upset Siddhartha, for he had not known that creatures eat other creatures. He sat down under a tree, sat there for a long time, and gradually soothed himself. But somehow this impression stayed with him.

When he was a young man, Siddhartha’s father found the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, the princessYasodhara, and brought her to him for his bride. Siddhartha loved her but he was also very curious about the outside world. So, with the help of a trusted servant, he sneaked out of the walled gardens one night, and he saw an old man. This was the first time he had ever seen an old person, and he wondered about it. Again he sneaked out, and this time he saw a sick man. Siddhartha had never seen sickness before. Again, he wondered. The next time, he saw a dead man. He had never seen death before. And he wondered. On his last journey outside of the walls, Siddhartha saw an ascetic, emaciated from fasting, dirty, his hair all matted. And he wondered. Siddhartha went back to his wife, but he couldn’t stop wondering about all that he had seen. What did it all mean? The question ate at him. What is life, old age, sickness, death? And why did this man intentionally starve himself? Why didn’t he wash? Finally, shortly after his son Rahula was born, Siddhartha could stand it no longer. He had to know for himself. So, again, with the help of his servant, he kissed his sleeping wife goodbye and left the palace for good. He joined a band of ascetics and began his search for understanding. It was because he had seen the suffering of others that Shakyamuni embarked on the quest that ultimately led him to sit under that Bodhi tree.

Or take the case of Dogen Zenji, the founder of the Soto sect in Japan. His father died before he was born. His mother recognized his interest in religion and encouraged it. She loved him very much. But she died when he was seven. The young boy was overcome with grief. At his mother’s funeral, when he saw the smoke of the incense rising, he became aware of the impermanence of life, and the desire for enlightenment was awakened in him. From then on, Dogen was driven by the need to know, to understand for himself. The question that ate at him, that wouldn’t leave him alone, was, “If we are already enlightened, why do we need to practice?” He traveled to all the teachers he knew of in Japan but was satisfied by none of them. So he went to China. Again, Dogen went from teacher to teacher, but none of them had the realization he was seeking. Finally, when he had given up hope of finding what he was seeking in China and was about to sail back to Japan, someone told Dogen that he could learn from Ju Ching. So Dogen went to study with Ju Ching, and it was there that he had his great realization, the “dropping off of body and mind.” Again, it was out of the crucible of suffering – his grief at his mother’s death – that Dogen’s desire for enlightenment was born.

So I’m back to my original question. “Tragedy is the cauldron of transformation.” At first glance, this would seem to be true of both Buddhism and Christianity. And I think that finally it is ultimately true for both religions. But the in-between is quite different. The first clue to that is in the second sentence of the quote I began with. “God makes use of [suffering] whenever God can.”

The Christian impulse is to turn to something outside of ourselves. To God, who is usually perceived as being somewhere “out there.” In fact, I think most Christians first look to God for help and for comfort. I know a couple who, although they were both raised Catholic, never had any interest whatsoever in religion except to complain about it. Then the husband got cancer. They both began praying earnestly to Padre Pio for a cure. And he was cured. Now they both carry around a picture of Padre Pio in their pockets. But they are back to having no interest in religion except to complain about it. I think their story is not unusual, except perhaps many people stick with religion after their prayers are answered.

The Buddhist impulse is to turn within. Or at least that is the teaching. It actually wouldn’t surprise me if Buddhists often start praying to some power outside themselves in times of great suffering. But the genuinely Buddhist impulse is the desire to understand. And it is indeed true for many people that suffering is the beginning of a lifelong journey within. This is what happened for Buddha and Dogen.

But, I think that at their apices, the two traditions meet. Suffering is indeed an efficient means of transformation, as Rohr says. And how does this happen? Suffering drives people to search for something greater, something deeper, than what is apparent on the surface of life. Transformation happens when people give themselves deeply to the tradition they embrace. In Christianity, people turn to God who is at first perceived to be “out there.” But gradually, over time, many people become aware that God is within. Not only in me but everywhere. As St. Ignatius puts it, they “find God in all things,” including themselves. And Buddhists? On that great journey within, they realize that they are part of something huge, something much greater than themselves. Enlightened nature is indeed within myself, but it is also everywhere. The Buddha, the Enlightened One, shines out in every created thing. And all things are members of one huge, living, shimmering reality: the great One Body. Isn’t it interesting that both religions have this concept, these same words, as one of their central, most cherished beliefs?

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