117. The Pain Of Suffering

The pain of suffering causes you to lash out at what you think is its cause. Your anger is real and visceral, and you cannot restrain it. You want justice and you want vengeance. But what you want most is to be free of your suffering.

I cannot see your suffering but only your anger. Your present situation doesn’t seem to merit anger, and I tell you as much. My response causes you to explode into a furious rage. You dismiss me as a fool and go off in search of others who recognize your suffering and share in your anger. But rather than mollifying your suffering, the flames of your anger are fanned by the anger of the others, and even more suffering is born.

By callously dismissing your feelings, I made a disastrous error. Your anger is a symptom of suffering, and that means there is a problem. It might be that you cannot articulate the problem, or that your understanding of the problem is deficient. It might be that the way you describe the problem is offensive to me or places blame on those who are not responsible for it. It might be that you see the problem as having a certain origin when it is actually rooted in something else. But regardless of all of this, any attempt to dismiss suffering is always a mistake.

To be compassionate, I need to be open to suffering of all kinds. I cannot limit my empathy to the kinds of suffering I have personally experienced or the kinds I judge to be valid. If someone is experiencing suffering then there is a problem — the need of a human being has gone unmet.

I must accept the problem even if the sufferer does not have the right words to explain it or they lash out at me. To be compassionate, I must listen, I must try to understand, and I must always do whatever I can to help liberate others from suffering.