Suffering is wanting what you don’t have and having what you don’t want

Buddhism is a 2500 year old religion referred to as the philosophy of awakening. Up until a hundred years ago, Buddhism was mainly an Asian philosophy but it has increasingly gained adherents in Europe and America and today it has approximately 300 million followers world-wide.

A trio of events have recently occurred by happenstance to bring the practice of Buddhism to my attention and it has led me to dig deeper into the merits of this ancient teaching and philosophy.

The first event was my participation in an online course on Mindfulness Meditation that focused on Buddhist techniques for training the mind to detach from unhelpful thoughts that can control us.

The second event was my reading of the classic Jack Kerouac novels “On the Road” and “Dharma Bums” which demonstrated how Kerouac blended the Roman Catholic faith of his youth with the free spirited Buddhist teachings being practiced by his friends to create an interesting spiritual amalgam that greatly influenced the peace loving Beat Generation.

The final event was my reading of the book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind“; in which the author, Professor Yuval Harari, argued that the move away from polytheistic religions towards monotheistic religions (like Christianity and Islam) had an overall negative impact on the course of human history.

Harari  writes that real religious troubles began for humans with the rise of monotheism:

“Monotheists have tended to be far more fanatical and missionary than polytheists. A religion that recognizes the legitimacy of other faiths implies either that its god is not the supreme power of the universe, or that it received from God just part of the universal truth. Since monotheists have usually believed that they are in possession of the entire message of the one and only God, they have been compelled to discredit all other religions. Over the last two millennia, monotheists repeatedly tried to strengthen their hand by violently exterminating all competition.”

Harari believes that Buddhism and other enlightened eastern religions have been more beneficial to the human species because their teachings are characterized by their disregard for gods and because they do not require the acceptance of a Supreme Being to explain the origins and workings of the universe.

Buddhism is human-centered, rather than god-centered, and teaches that we must look within – not without – to find perfection and understanding. No one saves us but ourselves. Each human being has the capacity to purify the mind, develop infinite love and compassion and perfect understanding. Buddhism shifts attention from the heavens to the heart and encourages practitioners to find solutions to their problems through self-understanding.

Buddhists do not think that other religions are wrong. In fact, all religions share many common beliefs: among them that mankind’s present state is unsatisfactory, that a change of attitude and behavior is needed if the human situation is to improve and that the path to fulfillment  includes love, kindness, patience, generosity and social responsibility. It is only when believers narrowly cling to their one way of seeing things that religious intolerance, pride and self-righteousness can arise.

The first pillar of Buddhist teaching, referred to as the First Noble Truth, is that life is suffering. To live, you must suffer. It is impossible to live without experiencing some kind of suffering. We have to endure physical suffering like sickness, injury, tiredness, old age and eventually death and we have to endure psychological suffering like loneliness, frustration, fear, embarrassment, disappointment and anger.

Acknowledging that to live is to experience physical and psychological suffering is so true and obvious a statement that it cannot be denied. Unlike most religions whose central concept is a myth, or a belief that is difficult or impossible to verify, Buddhism starts with an irrefutable fact, a thing that everybody knows, that all have experienced and that all are striving to overcome. Buddhism gets right to the core of every individual human being’s concern – suffering and how to avoid it.

The Second Noble Truth of Buddhism is that all suffering is caused by craving. When we crave something but are unable to get it, we feel frustrated. When we expect someone to live up to our expectations and they do not, we feel let down and disappointed. When we want others to like us and they don’t, we feel hurt.

Even when we want something and are able to get it, it does not often lead to happiness because either we lose interest in it or we begin to fear that something will happen that causes us to lose it. Stated simply, the Second Noble Truth teaches that suffering results from wanting what you don’t have and having what you don’t want. This wanting and worrying deprives us of contentment and happiness.

It is remarkable that Socrates, even though he held polytheistic views, and lived before Buddhism was established, came to the same conclusions regarding the root cause of suffering in his writings:

“If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”

The Third Noble Truth explains how suffering can be overcome and how true happiness and contentment can be achieved. It involves developing a reflective mind in order to let go of delusions and to ponder things objectively without forming an opinion on whether they are good, bad, useful or useless. By training the mind to reject, relinquish and renounce the bottomless pit of our cravings, suffering can be gradually lessened and eliminated.

When we give up useless craving and learn to enjoy each day, without restless wanting, the experiences that life offers us, patiently enduring the problems that life involves without fear, hatred and anger, then we become happy and free. It is only then that we begin to live fully. When we are no longer obsessed with satisfying our own selfish wants, we are free from suffering and we have time to enjoy the present as it is. We  achieve what the Buddhists call Nirvana.

My limited look into the Buddhist faith and practices have been beneficial and thought provoking. I would recommend others to look into it as well because from my point of view its practices have been good for the world, it is praised by the wise and many have observed that when it is practiced it leads to happiness.

One factor in my consideration of Buddhism that was important to me is that I could not identify any practices of the Buddhists that would be incompatible with my Catholic faith. In fact, the two religions seem to reinforce one another and I can see how Jack Kerouac was able to harmonize Catholicism with Buddhism without becoming conflicted. He considered Jesus and Buddha spiritual brothers.

I believe in a higher power because I have personally felt a God presence guiding my steps throughout life, but I also believe in the capacity of the human mind to positively control our thoughts and actions.  We all could benefit from the ancient wisdom found in both traditions.