Pain vs. Suffering: A World of Difference

There's a comment in an essay by Sylvia Boorstein that has proven extremely suggestive for me. Boorstein is a therapist, a meditation teacher, and a yoga instructor. Her essay appears in a book edited by Stephen Cope entitled Will Yoga & Meditation Really Change My Life? "I was consoled by the idea of the end of suffering," she writes playfully,

long before I had any ability to calm or focus my attention. I remember the chagrin I felt when, after some significant period of practice, I realized that I had confused the promise of the end of suffering with the end of pain, which was what I really had hoped would happen. I was embarrassed not to have figured out something so obvious -- really, what could I have been thinking? (17)

Boorstein doesn't explain the difference between suffering and pain, but it's clear that the distinction is powerful for her. This difference seems to come from the The Four Noble Truths, but I leave it to those who know Buddhism to say for sure.

Whatever its origin, I find this distinction very useful. It suggests that there are feelings that cannot be avoided that arise as the result of the most human experience. The death of a child. The collapse of a marriage. Violation of one's body. Rejection by a parent. These are a few of the commonplace traumas that define what it means to live in this world, to be subject to change, to be a victim of chance. These are a few of the traumas that cause pain.

The difference Boorstein points to implicitly suggests that how we manage our pain determines whether we suffer. If we sit with our pain and don't try to block it, we have a chance to experience it, understand it, and act on it. We may not be happy about it, but we learn to accept it. And with this acceptance comes insight and wisdom.

If, on the other hand, we try to avoid pain, this invariably leads us to suffer. Drinking, doing drugs, abusing sex, binging and purging. Or any of the myriad other ways we numb ourselves. All these attempts to avoid pain make things worse. First by bringing harm to ourselves and often others. Second by leaving our pain unattended. Rather than gaining wisdom by dealing with our pain, we add suffering to the mix by trying to avoid it.

This is the state that most of us are in when we finally decide that we're ready for therapy. We know we are suffering. And we know we're in pain. Even if we don't know the difference between them.

The work of psychotherapy is to bring an end to suffering by helping us to deal with our underlying pain so we no longer have to anesthetize ourselves. This work requires us to turn our gaze inside, to notice how we feel, and to reflect on our feelings. Though challenging, it allows us to get to know ourselves so we don't live in constant fear of who we are. It doesn't eliminate the pain that comes with life but it does eliminate the suffering we add to it.

Maybe it's not the happiness we hoped for, but it's light years away from the place where we started. And there's nothing like distance to give us perspective.