Tag: suffering

On Sadness for Loved Ones

Okay, I’ll come out and say it: my soon-to-be eighteen-year-old son has a substance abuse problem. At this point it’s primarily alcohol. I am grieving.

I have learned from my early life with two autistic brothers that the sadness one has for oneself is a piece of cake compared to sadness for the pain of loved ones. I think of Mary at the foot of the cross, the archetype of all such grief, and not meaning to be melodramatic or anything, I’d so much rather be up on that cross myself. “There is a crack in everything—“ yes, and one of the hardest is watching the child I love flounder with the kind of thing I know all too well is far more powerful than his youthful self can understand.

There’s the rebuttal that most kids drink at some point or experiment with drugs, and that I’m overreacting. Maybe so, or maybe this situation is more serious than most, apart from the fact that what other kids do and what one’s own kid does are experienced as entirely different things. What I myself have done and what my child is doing are also different things. I remember that I abused alcohol when I was young, and in the process endangered and even harmed myself. My parents were lucky not to have known about most of it. I turned out “all right,” although the things that prompted me to do it haunted me for years and many of them haunt me to this day. Still, in my own case, I have a sense of ownership over my actions and their consequences, however illusory. In the case of my loved one, all I can do is stand helplessly by, after having taken the necessary steps as recommended by the wisdom of whatever experts weigh in.

The Buddha says this kind of suffering is brought on by attachment. Like all suffering, it is governed by the equation Suffering = pain + resistance. I want things to be different. I want the path before my child’s feet to be smooth and easy, at least for the time being while he is still young and not fully formed, even though I know that this wish is impossible. I am attached to him and to outcomes I wish for him. Does knowing this help? Yes and no. In the thick of it, the suffering is still there.

The Buddha also teaches that to end suffering one must give up all attachments. Is this possible, or even desirable? Let’s look at it closely. My suffering does not help my son. He does not want to see it, to have to deal with it in any way. His problem is his own. So one thing I can do for him is keep my tears to myself as much as possible, establish boundaries with him, talk to him as necessary about our expectations as a part of this household, make resources for recovery available to him, and then demonstrate that I trust him to work things out for himself.

When I was his age, my mother and I were almost literally at each other’s throats. She made it clear that I had disappointed her, and that she took it personally. I got the “I carried you in my body for nine months” speech, which in my son’s case I could amend to “Your father and I traveled across the world to get you” speech. It had the effect of pushing me away and causing me to act out more recklessly than I otherwise would have done. What creates the hardship for the child, or any beloved person, is the parent’s message that the child’s life is not their own, that they will always belong to the parent more than to themselves. No free being can tolerate such a thing.

And so I realize that letting go of attachment is not the same thing as ceasing to love someone; in fact, it’s the opposite. My son has his work cut out for him, while I have mine. I cannot take his work on myself, nor should I attempt to pile my own work on him. That is all.

 

The Three Characteristics: Suffering

Dukkha, “suffering” (also translated as “unsatisfactoriness”), is central to the Buddha’s teaching; in fact, he reputedly said, “I teach only suffering, and the end of suffering.” We’ve already encountered the role of suffering in the Four Noble Truths. Dukkha also appears as one of the three marks or characteristics of existence, permeating our lives and our surroundings through and through. There are things that please us, beguile us, hook us in; but none of these things satisfies.

When we’re young, we are full of plans for what we want to do with our lives. For most of us, these plans might include things like a career, marriage, children, a nice place to live, money to spend on necessities and a few luxuries, travel, hobbies, good food, nice clothes, and friends. Young people are encouraged by their families and teachers to look to the future and to consider their immediate difficulties to be transitory. I recall a conversation with my mother and one of her friends, during a time in my life when I didn’t fit in. “Some day,” they told me, “none of this will matter.” They were wrong: as I became an adult, the identity I formed in adolescence proved to be remarkably tenacious.

Enter the Buddha and his teachings regarding dukkha. One of my dharma teachers, Kenneth Folk, has said that “the Buddha is not your friend.” Warm, rosy predictions of a brilliant life in samsara, the turning wheel of birth and death, are entirely unfounded. Some adults in our own culture might agree with him once we hit our midlife crisis, when we realize that our fond hopes in youth have not materialized; or maybe they have, but without bringing the happiness we had expected. People may be tempted to jump ship, make a career change or look for a new partner, or buy a new house or car they can’t really afford. It might work out in the short run, but letdown is inevitable.

From time to time I imagine my life as if it had been different in some significant way. Maybe I never had the stage fright, and would be able to perform in music ensembles without stress. Maybe I had the kind of systematic focus that would allow me to work an eight-hour day, go home and relax, engage in an enjoyable hobby, and then go to sleep without difficulty. Maybe I wasn’t plagued by the grandiose illusion that I needed a big, fat career, and so would never be constantly comparing myself to others, or feeling like a failure just doing a good job day in and day out. In other words, I imagine a life without dukkha.

This Other Laurel is still a meditator, I’ve decided. She gets up early, makes herself a cup of tea, maybe takes a brisk walk around the block, and then settles down for some cushion time. After work she heads to the meditation center for a half hour sit with a group before heading home. She also volunteers in her community (because of course, she has the energy for it). She lives simply but comfortably; she is not tempted to spend more than she earns. Is she married? Sometimes I imagine her as single, but it seems like a lonely life to me, so I give her my husband, except he’s the Other Husband, also free of dukkha.

I have found a place for this paragon to live, and have even imagined her car and her wardrobe. The entire fantasy seems to be an equivalent of the dreams I had as a young person, except instead of dreaming of my imaginary future, I dream of an imaginary past. But although I can see the outer trappings of this person’s life, I am unable to make sense of what lies within. I can only try to imagine the absence of things like stress, depression, boredom, regret, negative judgments, and anxiety, all the while knowing that it is impossible.

Traveling allows us to see other places, and imagine what life might be like for us if we lived there. We read novels or watch movies and television shows in order to put ourselves in the place of the protagonist. Maybe we fall in love with one of the characters—the protagonist’s love interest, most likely—or imagine ourselves working in that person’s occupation. Such experiences help us to broaden our understanding of what it means to be a human in the world, to place ourselves in another person’s skin or context, which is an essential component of a moral education. Still, they can never be more than the product of our imaginings.

I have recently longed to move somewhere else, either to the city that is an hour’s drive from here or to a warmer climate, or maybe even out of the country altogether. These longings are accompanied by imaginings of Other Laurels living in Other Places with the Other Husband. Yet several years ago I looked out the kitchen window at the trees in my neighbor’s yard, and just realized, “This is it!” I laughed. It was so simple that I might not even have noticed. This is it, just this. This is all that is it. No other, no else. Just this.