434. Suffering Is Loss

All suffering is a kind of loss. I want to escape from suffering, so I try to control my attention and actions towards that goal. But in doing so, I lose the opportunity to reach the more joyful life that I could be living. That this loss occurs only because I’m attached to my own intentions is a tragedy.

I don’t need to suffer, but I do because I’m not well-accustomed to existing as the kind of being that I am. I reflect on my experiences and I automatically judge them to be good or bad, which means I form intentions about the world around me. This entirely ordinary human capability causes me to be sucked into attachment. And the result of attachment is always suffering and the loss of joy. This loss is not valuable. I do not gain anything by suffering more. I’ve already suffered enough to understand suffering, provided I’m willing to examine it.

The problem is not simply that I’m distracted by persistent feelings of suffering — grief, anger, stress, anxiety, regret, and so on — but that I allow myself to react to these feelings. I try to escape from suffering, which only produces further attachment and further suffering. Escaping from suffering is not feasible because new attachments will always continue to form.

My only hope is to eliminate suffering at its source. To do so, I need to discover how to release myself from attachment in each and every moment of my life. This is no easy task. It requires enormous attention to the very personal attachments I’ve formed throughout my life and to the very real suffering they regularly produce for me.

I must allow my attention to freely and openly investigate these things, to sit with them long enough for them to become clear, and this can be painful. But it is only when I am fully aware of the relationship between my attachments and my suffering that I will understand that attachment is not only unnecessary but intolerable. And then I will finally bring an end to the tragedy of suffering and allow joy into every corner of my life.