How We Should Suffer?

Here I ask the question: how should we suffer? Asking this question presupposes another question, which is Why we should suffer, a question I’d like to explore with you before progressing to the ‘how’ of it. Suffering is more than pain. If we cast an eye over the dictionary, it is defined primarily as to undergo or endure; and secondarily as to go, or pass through, or be subjected to, a painful experience. Pain is an immediate sensation, and usually experienced physically even when it is caused by abstract rather than concrete manifestations. Moral or emotional pain produces biological effects – the now-cliched idea of ‘heartache’, or the more contemporary notion of the ‘breakdown’. The language we use to express emotional pain reflects that physical quality: we speak of being wounded or hurt. Grief is a pang for which we seek healing. We also speak of metaphorical pain – the agony of separation, the stab of betrayal. But physical pain is only ever a symptom – it is a message our body sends our brain, telling it to stop or avoid the action causing the unpleasant sensation. Pain is a healthy reaction: it insists that we be in the here and now. We are not distanced from pain: by its very nature it cannot be avoided or overlooked as it is a message that requires and receives our prompt attention. When we feel sudden and acute agony we are one with the pain, present to it while it lasts. Dealing with it and overcoming it take all our attention. We assume, perhaps falsely, that pain will have an end. When pain does not conform to this expectation; when in fact it becomes part of our life, is experienced long-term, we acquire a measure of distance from even acute pain. We move from a helpless position in which instinct takes over to a place where we are consciously aware of what we are undergoing: we suffer. Pain is centred in the body, and stills the mind to all but itself; suffering is experienced by more than our body. As Eckhart says in Sermon 13: