The Buddhist tradition posits that all life involves suffering, and that we suffer because we cling to things that are essentially impermanent. We cling to people and relationships, roles and titles, wealth and status, thinking that these things define who we are. And when they prove to be temporary we suffer at their loss.
At a certain level it makes some sense. But it seems to me to be a one-sided view of attachment, an attachment to outward forms of self-identification, as though seeing oneself through the eyes of the surrounding social structures.
I am coming to believe that there are other forms of attachment as well. I believe in some cases that it is the suffering that happens first. Social structures do not bestow titles or wealth or status equally. Some of us are presented with mere fragments of what should have been loving relationships, or a place at the table. When our first experience is of suffering, not of status, then this is how we begin to build a sense of self. It is what defines us, what tells us who we are - abused, unappreciated, divorced, rejected, unwelcome.
This form of suffering and self-identification may be the deepest form of sin, for it is a harm to the very essence of one's soul. It is sin that must be released before the soul can discover its true purpose.
The significance of Jesus' suffering, then, is that by willingly going to the cross he not only released any self-identification regarding equal status with God, as the hymn in Philippians reminds us, but that he also did not allow that suffering to overwhelm his essential identity as God's Beloved. He endured it, walking into it with eyes and heart open to it, rested from it, and rose triumphant, breaking the bonds of suffering and sin.
Release of one's suffering, seeking the Self that lies below those layers of pain and fear, all of this is possible - and we know this because Jesus did it. He showed us that it's possible to walk straight into our pain and suffering and walk through to the other side, identified as God's Beloveds, just as Christ was.
This post connected with me on many levels. Most of all it reminded me that there are two ways to look at suffering, and the grief and heartbreak it entails. One is to resent one's own suffering, considering it to be somehow 'unfair' and wanting it to end. The other is what both Christ and Buddha describe: looking at the world's suffering and feeling that same heartbreak on the world's behalf. Buddha aimed at 'desire' (which can also be described as 'longing.' Christ aimed at 'love.' I think both of them were talking about aspects of the same thing. What hits me the hardest about the Christ Way is that it is imbedded in the Judaic core principle of "Love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your understanding." What I've been struggling to articulate is my sense that the whole mystery of the Christ Event revolves around love. Not abstract love, but true affection: plain old ordinary love. And, when what we love gets destroyed, inevitably and unfairly, and it's our fault-- well then, our hearts just break and we are inconsolable. But then, the coeval truth of the resurrection bounds up in our hearts and gives rise to the shout "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death!" Love cannot die, because it is both the source of all our grief, and of all our joy: together in one unity. No distinction, no division--that's the still point where Buddhism and Christianity converge. Anyway, I'm still working this out 'in my understanding'.....
ReplyDeleteI was inspired by your profound insights into, as you describe, “the deepest form of sin” that harms “the very essence of one’s soul.” And how, in essence, the only way out is to "walk through"—never bypassing or escaping; we must forge ahead and “walk straight into our pain and suffering” in order to reach “the other side.”
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