Suffering is the only qualification
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John Aufenanger
 May 22 2023
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    There is a tiny number of truly great ideas in our history, but an inexhaustible supply of great band names. Today's great band name is: Ohio Roadkill. I see it as a Punk Country-Western outfit.


    A fellow in his 80's used to come to an AA meeting I attended from time to time. He walked the few blocks from his apartment to the meeting site. Dead now - long ago. Occasionally, he'd talk about "the cure you fellas were offering," and express gratitude. He was sober about 40 years. No one corrected him - out of respect, or more likely realizing it wouldn't be understood - but of course one of AA's founding principles is that there is no cure for alcoholism, so it really isn't a cure they're offering, but a change in a person's fundamental identity structure - perhaps not a major one, but sufficient at least to make it possible to stop drinking. AA, as I have said before, is a very deep progressive method for bringing about spiritual awakening. Because its primary purpose is so single-pointed - release from alcoholism specifically - this is almost a "secret." But, if one doesn't stop at sober and just keeps at it, the 12 Steps contain all you need.


    In fact, you already possess all you need for Awakening, and indeed all you need for Enlightenment itself, assuming a difference.


    Just like everywhere else, people in Spirituality and Nonduality and related circles can get really hung up on terminology, especially on line. Something about the Internet just brings out the uptight prick in a person. Why? I don't know. Ironically, its anonymity may have a lot to do with it. It happens in religious circles too. Perhaps you know all about that. Imagine the friendly neighborhood Gospel study group getting into a fist fight over a translation or interpretation. Of course it happens. 


    You may also recall that film from a few years ago, "Anger Management," with Jack Nicholson and one of those new comedy kids. At one point, they manage to incite a bunch of Buddhist monks to riot. Funny stuff.


    There is political correctness, as we know. It's that same confusion of the conceptual and the experienced, the idea and the self. So, that's why I said in the last post that "Self" and "No self" are the same: they're words. People argue about this, as well as many other terms. A cloud of "spiritual correctness" hangs over a number of on line discussions. Nonsense. There aren't any "right" words for that which is beyond conception. Just feel into what people are trying to say and you will understand what they are trying to say.


    One of the perspectives that I first encountered in AA has stuck with me: People go to church not because they're holy, or holier than thou, but because they know they are not. Likewise, people go to AA not because they have tons of wisdom to share with the world but because they spent the last 20 years crawling around in their own vomit. People experientially investigate their true natures in Spirituality not because their lives are wondrous adventures of pure bliss but because they suffer, and they know it.


    Buddha's First Noble Truth - we all know it: Life is suffering.


    Maybe it doesn't seem that way. For most of my life I would not have said I suffered because I defined suffering in a very limited way. I enjoyed a truly wonderful childhood full of love and happiness - not necessarily "full" in the literal way that Mary is full of Grace, but in the relative sense. Especially when I encountered other children who were less fortunate, this was plain. Later I would meet people whose parents had abused them, neglected them. Even in the throes of my own 20 years of alcoholic behavior, there was a "part" of me that held the idea of my own suffering at a distance. Surely, my own obviously self-induced problems did not compare with those who truly suffered. I never lacked food, a roof over my head. I never lacked the support of my family. Later, when I sponsored Vietnam vets, I heard some stories that confirmed me in my belief that I never really suffered. I was comparing my experience to the experiences of others.


    But the Buddha himself began his life as a prince. I don't believe I knew that at the time. He lived in a literal walled garden - a paradise. He enjoyed every luxury and privilege. Extreme, excessive wealth. And it was he whose First Noble Truth is "Life is suffering." What could he, whose life was so much better than mine, know about suffering?


    Perhaps you know the story. The young prince we now call Buddha took several sojourns out of his Earthly paradise to see the outside world. His father agreed to these expeditions only once he had guaranteed that his pampered boy would see only good things - happy people living happy lives. The streets were cleared of any unpleasantness. But the gods had other plans. The young prince saw a desperately poor and elderly person, and a funeral procession, and a few other sights that taught him about the existence of suffering, albeit not his own. But he did learn that he too was subject to it. 


    Still, we might say it's pretty extraordinary that he would later define Life as suffering, but to coin a frequently used phrase in AA, the young Buddha "identified," and did not "compare." He did not compare his experience with the experiences of others but identified himself with their relatively greater suffering. He knew perfectly well the only thing distinguishing him from these greater sufferers was his privilege. The ability to do this is called Compassion. Identify; don't compare. The gods chose well.


    Suffering is the only qualification for the spiritual life, and no one born does not suffer. I had to enlarge my definition of suffering. It's more accurate to say it enlarged itself. I was 60 before I admitted to having truly suffered. I had known pain - perhaps not as much as many but more than some. I had known heartbreak and grief, and sorrow, loneliness, and these sorts of common experiences. But also, I had known a deep and devastating form of suffering that the Buddha called "unsatisfactoryness." Life, on the whole - and this had occurred to me at an early age, though I had suppressed it - was... wrong. Unsatisfactory.


    Imagine the first war movie you ever saw. I can remember the first one I saw. "Wait a minute," one might say, "What's this? Why on Earth does this exist? It makes no sense. It's wrong. It's unsatisfactory." Imagine the first time you were pushed in the mud by another kid. "Wait a minute..." and so on, and so on. This is wrong. I started asking "When does the Real Life begin?" This cannot be it. It's too stupid. This is a shadow world.


    The Buddha was a compassionate kid. I wasn't terribly compassionate, but I was very smart, so what I did with this realization was to decide that most human beings are too stupid to live. Imagine the first political speech you ever heard. Is such stupidity as politics even possible in The Real World - the world that "should" be? I was "shoulding" all over myself. "It shouldn't be this way." I chose not to participate in the world of Stupid, and stupidly drank myself nearly to death in my effort to escape it. That's suffering. It took me many years to understand: yes, that too is suffering. Do you understand this?


    That's why you already possess all you need for Enlightenment.


    I'm in Western New York State, by the way, in the Seneca Nation. I have a Nutri-bullet with me. It's amazing. I could puree a cheeseburger in this thing. So I needn't worry too much about eating solid food after my dental surgery, (and of course I can have all the ice cream I want.) I am so happy to be free of the discomfort, and of course the worry about systemic infections that I've been kicking down the road for so many years. In a few weeks I can get my temporary dentures fitted. All's well on that front.


    Peace, friends.


    philosophy spirituality buddhism suffering alcoholics anonymous
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