Many people have the impression that following a spiritual practice like Buddhism will mean that they will inoculate themselves from pain in life. The stereotypical Zen Master or Indian Mystic seems to allow nothing to harm them physically or mentally. They will sleep on a bed on nails, and stand apart, untroubled, from any hurtful words thrown in his or her direction. The mystic will be untroubled by any of the sadnesses or traumas that assail those who have the misfortune to be still chained to the circle of life, death and rebirth.This is one of the most profound misunderstandings about Buddhist, or at least Zenist, philosophy. This misapprehension arises from the idea that Buddha claimed that ‘life is suffering’ and that the ‘cure’ for suffering was following Buddhist practice.
Alan Watts interprets this idea of Buddhism very differently. He has no doubt that even the most accomplished Buddhist mystic will suffer pain, both emotional and physical. What a Zen master, will not suffer, though, is unnecessary pain. Because most psychological pain, at least, is unnecessary. Emotional and spiritual pain is largely self-inflicted through a distorted view of reality.
In Watts’ translation of the Buddhist ‘Four Noble Truths’ the first noble truth, dukkha, ‘Life is Suffering’, is mistranslated. Watts believes that a more accurate way of understanding the word ‘dukkha’ is ‘chronic frustration’, which Watts sees as arising from “fighting the changingess of things”. Dukkha is also the anguish that comes from trying to do things which are inherently impossible or contradictory, like trying to draw a square circle. It is the frustration you feel when desire more than you can get, when you overreach possibility
But even after dukkha has been solved by taking a right view of life, how are we to deal with the pain that is left – the pain of loss, or rejection, or failure or whatever the negative emotion happens to be? And why, in the grand scheme of things, is pain - physical as well as psychological - there in the first place?
The ‘problem of pain’ is one that has exercised all major religions, not least of all Christianity, which suggests that pain is sent to ‘test us’ and get us ready for heaven. Alternatively, it is the consequence of sin which has not been properly repented.
Watts interprets the meaning of pain in a very different way…
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