Unnecessary Suffering

Unnecessary Suffering

I once asked several people who had been in my school for a long time, and who impressed me with their being and maturity, what they felt they had achieved after so many years of work. To my surprise, most responded with variations of this concept: "I got rid of unnecessary suffering."

This statement immediately raises two simple questions: Is there useful suffering and useless suffering? How do we recognize unnecessary suffering, which, according to my friends, we can get rid?

Yes, there is suffering from which no one can escape but which, if recognized and used as energy, becomes useful, indeed necessary, to presence. Regarding real (necessary) suffering and unnecessary suffering, Ouspensky said, "Death of a friend or grief of some kind is suffering, not negative emotion. It can produce negative emotion only if you identify with it. Suffering can be real; negative emotion is not real. And, after all, suffering occupies a very small part of our life but negative emotions occupy a big part—they occupy the whole of our life. And why? Because we justify them. We think they are produced by some external cause."

If I burn my hand making an omelet, there are some moments of real pain, say, fifteen seconds. But if I want I can drag this suffering out for days: complaining to anyone I meet, thinking about how stupid I am, now everyone will see the burn, now I can't use my hand well, it's not right, and so on. Apart from those first fifteen seconds, I can do without everything else connected to this experience. The rest is just ‘I’s that want to justify and sustain a negative state. That's what the people I interviewed got rid of.

Sergio Antonio, "A Question of Presence"

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