Don't Suffer More Than Needed | Buddhist Philosophy on Pain and Suffering

When we think of pain and suffering, we usually think about more or less the same thing. When there’s pain, there’s suffering. And we can only be free from suffering if we eliminate pain, right?

Well, even though these two experiences are interconnected, pain and suffering are two fundamentally different things, as far as the Buddhists are concerned. “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional,” is a Buddhist saying that points to a fundamental truth of existence, which is that pain and affliction are an inherent part of life: we contract illnesses, get wounded, lose our loved ones, our possessions, our social status.

But despite the hardships we encounter, the degree of suffering we generate still varies per person. The greatest misfortune hardly affects some people, while the slightest inconvenience leads other people into states of deep agony. Thus, could it be that suffering is something we can manage and doesn’t always have to result from pain?

The first noble truth of Buddhism tells us that suffering is part of living in the world and comes in many different forms like sorrow, the fear of loss, and lamentation. Most (if not all) people experience these forms of suffering at some point in their lives.

The good news is that Buddhism offers a way out, as the Buddha designed his teachings to end suffering. Part of this process is the realization that the affliction by external forces is inevitable but that we can minimize further suffering. This video dives into the Buddhist view on pain and suffering and how we can suffer less even though adversity and misfortune are part of life.

As humans, we cannot escape the impermanent nature of life. The environment changes all the time. Sometimes life provides us with wealth, and another time life takes from us everything we have. According to Buddhism, if we think that we can escape the erratic and unpredictable movements of the universe, we don’t have a clear view of reality.

Clarity, thus, is where the path out of suffering starts; it’s seeing how things are, including the truth about the human condition, which is probably much bleaker than most people believe. Isn’t it so that we hold on to the illusion of self-preservation by accumulating wealth, an excessive emphasis on self-protection, and the ongoing efforts to maintain what we actually cannot control?

As a culture obsessed with safety and the prevention of hardship, we may be denying a fundamental truth that the Buddha presents to us: whatever we do, we cannot escape everything falling apart. This means that despite our efforts to protect ourselves and run from things like aging, dying, disaster, and loss, we’ll incur these elements of existence nonetheless.

Buddhism refers to these inevitable changes and shifts in life as the ‘Eight Worldly Winds’: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute. Most people lead their lives pursuing pleasure, gain, praise, and fame but avoiding the other side of the coin.

But doing this makes us play-things of our environment, rather than masters over our mental well-being. Hence, for most people, their inner tranquility depends on the whims of the universe. As the Buddha stated, and I quote:

"When gain, loss, status, disgrace, censure, praise, pleasure or pain arise for an ordinary person they do not reflect: 'Gain (etc.) has arisen for me. It is inconstant and subject to change.' He (or she) does not discern it as it actually is. He welcomes the gain and rebels against the loss. He welcomes the status and rebels against the disgrace. He welcomes the praise and rebels against the censure. He welcomes the pleasure and rebels against the pain." End quote.

The Buddha describes the human predicament; being trapped in the wheel of suffering, living our lives in constant pursuit of what we desire, and rebellion against what we’re repulsed by. This mechanism leads to despair, as we always fear losing what we have and encountering what we avoid.

But if we look closer at the reality of life, we’ll never find what we seek if we let our hap...