Being Present to Suffering

“Take care not to treat inhumanity the way it treats human beings.”

-Marcus Aurelius

This is Part 3 in a three-part series exploring the topic of suffering, beginning with Encountering Suffering and continuing with Guided by Moonlight.

The last piece examined an individual experience of suffering, and I’d now like to explore how we can meet the suffering found throughout the world. It may seem like everywhere you look, there is cruelty, profound injustice, and disregard for human life. We bear witness to people suffering in ways that are beyond measure. If that’s not enough, we have our own lives, with our own struggles and challenges. How do we hold all of that? Where do we even start?

Unfortunately, we are confronting a story that is as old as humanity itself. We have not yet found our way, a way that escapes our habits of hurting each other and ourselves. It can seem like every chance we have to do something different is wasted. Every opportunity to change is ignored, and we repeat ourselves. Violence, greed, and hatred go on. Suffering continues because we sustain it, day after day.

What’s particularly unique about this moment is how we encounter this suffering. Technology, for better or for worse, has given us an opportunity to experience suffering almost first-hand, in a very raw and emotionally intense way. If you wanted to, you could be plugged into every sorrow, every display of inhumanity, 24/7. Our lives can be filled with nothing but the images, videos, and sounds of people being harmed.

The benefit of this increased exposure is that calls to action and responsibility can be communicated quickly. We can learn, understand, and engage with suffering all over the world in ways that are faster and potentially more effective than at any point in our history. It also becomes harder and harder to live in ignorance, which I think is a good thing.

The downside is that this affects us in ways that we may not even recognize. If we’re not careful, our experience of the world can be fractured and overwhelming. We become aware of too much at one time, without the tools to process it. When this happens, our relationship with suffering loses its potential in awakening compassion. It becomes suffering without meaning.

Suffering is movement: an internal and external process that shifts our perspective of self and world. It is not something that is meant to be captured and held tightly. Suffering is motion, and the direction it takes in our experience is up to us.

If we are to understand suffering as a generative force, then we have to know how to engage with it. If it’s merely something to consume, to “drink from the firehose” of the world’s pain, then we endanger ourselves and others. We’re not actually connected with reality, and we put ourselves at risk for despair, hopelessness, or simply not caring at all.

Relating to suffering in a meaningful way means that we are called to be present to it. In being present, we are allowing what we observe to affect and move us: not for the sake of distress, but for the sake of change. We don’t run away, we don’t resist (deny) the experience, and neither do we fall into despair. Being present is a doorway to being made different, a path towards taking responsibility.

We might say this presence has a quality of curiosity, interest at the level of compassion or care. It’s the silent question of “What is this? What’s happening here?”. It has an almost neutral flavor to it, but not because we feel neutral about the situation. It’s just openness, experiencing the gap between experience and reaction. We are allowing ourselves to pause: because in that pause is an opening, an opportunity to see suffering for what it is and how we might respond.

Here’s an example from my current work in clinical spiritual care. When I’m called to a room because a family’s loved one is moments from death, I have no thoughts about what I’m going to do or say when I walk into that room. Most times, I am working with minimal information: a couple of names, a diagnosis, some background. Beyond that, I have no idea what I’m walking into. However, there are two things that are clear to me: suffering is present, and I want to be present to that suffering.

How do I do this? I listen. I don’t try and control the situation. I let the family or patient (if they’re able) tell me about their experience. I hear stories, concerns, needs, anxieties. I allow for their emotions to be expressed. It is not my place to assume I know what is happening and what should be done about it. Caring actions come from listening, and allowing suffering to be in motion. I don’t try to internalize it, get rid of it, or put it away somewhere. I let it be there, with curiosity about where it might go through the course of my encounter.

This family might in despair, in anger, in denial, you name it. For me, that’s not a problem that needs fixing. Their emotions are valid and understandable given the situation. A problem would arise if I was despairing, angry, or denying along with them. Again, this does not mean I’m not expressing concern or compassion. I’m right alongside them and supporting everything they’re feeling. What I don’t do is join in the suffering, to act as if I’m experiencing what they’re experiencing. I’m not. It’s my responsibility to show up, to hold them in their grief and do the needful, but not to center myself. It’s not about me; it’s about them.

This is very important. If I introduce more suffering to the situation through my own reactions, is that a helpful response? If I am as overwhelmed as they are, as afraid or anxious, how can I serve them? Embodying strength through presence, peace, and relationship is what offers genuine support. It signals that there is a way through suffering, that we can move through this moment together. Or, maybe they just need some help in holding something difficult. Whatever the situation, being present shows that I see them, and am fully there for their sorrow. This is not passively receiving what’s going on: it is an active interest in what’s unfolding.

This way of showing up is very different from how we engage with suffering generally. Overwhelmingly, we encounter suffering passively and reactively. We don’t take the time to be present, and jump straight to our personal thoughts, feelings, and judgments about whatever’s happening. There’s a time for reaction, but we tend to exploit that time. Particularly through social media, we see this often: in the comments section, in the replies, it’s a constant stew of people reacting. We think we’re responding to the situation, but often we’re living out our own personal drama, and perhaps using someone else’s suffering as the means to carry that out.

It’s this kind of pattern that has deepened our sense of polarization, the thickening of that “us vs them” mentality. We gauge one another based on our reactions, and organize each other accordingly. Did that person react “well” enough? Did they say the right thing? Wrong thing? Did I find what they said attractive? Gross? Did they respond to suffering as much as they “should” have? This can go on and on, and in the end, we’ve gone nowhere. We still lack a meaningful relationship to suffering, and have fractured our relationships with one another as a result.

In reality, there is no “them”. There is only us. We are a part of the whole picture, even though it’s easy to think that we are responsible to some things and not others.

I remember back in 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president. That weekend, I went to the Sunday gathering of my local Sangha at that time (Sangha is a word which means “community of practice” in Buddhist circles). During their talk, our guiding teacher suggested that we engage in loving-kindness meditation for the new president. According to his perspective, it seemed like he could really use it. My community was openly shocked, outraged even. How could we? We were not like him, we would never say or do things like he does. He didn’t deserve it.

I was intrigued by my teacher’s idea. This was a liberal person, guiding a generally liberal community in a liberal city. If I had to guess, our collective politics compared to the President’s couldn’t have been more different. What was his motivation for suggesting this?

Looking closely, it was his way of saying, “there is only us”. Whether you voted for him or not, Donald Trump was our president (although many of us like to say “that’s not my president” based on our political affiliation). Further, many of the qualities that people dislike about him are also in us. Have we not experienced anger at some point in our life? Defensiveness? Bias, judgment? Hatred, ignorance? We know the burden of those feelings, and we share that experience, even if it isn’t in the same context or expression. To say “we’re not like him” isn’t completely true. Maybe we don’t live like him, or make choices like him, but we have shared those qualities at one point or another.

My teacher’s suggestion came out of the understanding that, while we as a community were aware of these negative emotions and trying to transform them, the president was not. By his estimation, President Trump was not aware that his way of being in the world was causing himself and others pain. His suggestion to offer him loving-kindness, to generate well-being on his behalf, came out of compassion. At the very least, our community could work to support his transformation: not in agreement with his choices, but in the hope that he could choose differently and live a different quality of life.

There is only us, and we all suffer. If we are to discover wholeness, we must recognize this. To separate our suffering only makes things worse. It sets in motion the “Olympics of suffering” that I describe in Part 1. Antagonizing (which is different from urgency) or shaming (which is different from offering) one another into encountering suffering only prolongs the issue. What growth, what learning, what transformation can be had from that? They are attitudes which support the very conditions for suffering that we want to change.

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It’s important not to bypass anything, and all healthy learning and growth should be uncomfortable to some degree. Suffering as we encounter it among others should feel like a direct appeal to our conscience. The urge to look away or avoid things should not come easily. If we’re not uncomfortable, then we haven’t taken a step towards the reality of others. We are likely still hiding from suffering in some way, not quite willing to face it.

Why face it? Because there is only us, and how we relate to the world affects other people. In a sense, your suffering is my suffering, your wholeness my wholeness. If I live an angry life, then I contribute to the anger that affects so many people today. If I live an ignorant life, one that avoids suffering and pretends not to hear what is obvious, then I consent for suffering to continue. If I spend my time ridiculing or scrutinizing others, then I help to make the world a more isolated, uncaring place.

On the other hand, if I know compassion within myself, I can be compassionate with others. If I live thoughtfully, I can be skillful when the suffering of others asks something of me. If I live with curiosity, I can learn to be in greater relationship with life.

Responsibility starts with how we relate to suffering from the place of our own life. The open questions are whether we’re going towards or running away, being a participant or a passive observer. The fact is, the world needs us. What are we bringing to it? More resentment, more fear, more indifference? Or more courage, more willingness, more warmth?

I know I can’t do everything. But I also believe that everything we do affects the world. I live in a country that makes weapons that have killed innocent people. Am I personally responsible for their deaths? No. Am I part of that reality? Absolutely. What matters then is how I recognize and respond to that relationship: not turning away from suffering, but neither making it my fault. If we place the weight of the world on ourselves, we will fail. We may think we’re taking responsibility: but in fact, we’re taking ourselves out of the picture. Under that terrible weight, we will be unable to move. Because suffering is movement, we need to be able to move with it in order to move through it.

I’m not in clinical spiritual care because I think I can end all of the suffering that I see and somehow take away the pain of the world. If I thought that, I’d probably burn out in a week from the effort. I’m in it because I know that everyone needs someone at some point in their lives. If I can be that person for them, if I can show up, then that is enough.

Whatever expression of suffering touches our heart, we can approach it the same way. Life is not asking us to make things perfect, to be able to right all wrongs and change every single thing that concerns us. It’s asking for us to be there, to be in relationship and live in relationship. It is all we can do, and it is all the difference.