How Do I Deal With Suffering?

Woke up this morning feeling heavy with feeling the suffering of others. My brother-in-law’s 5^th knee replacement, my dear friend who is still in pain from a surgery he had 17 months ago. “How,” I ask Life, “do I deal with this suffering I see in others?” My heart is in such pain. It is a dilemma because I feel helpless to relieve the suffering.

I cannot watch much news at all because it is so painful to me. I end up feeling helpless and overwhelmed. How do other people do it? Do they have stronger constitutions than I do? Are they numbed out or desensitized to what they see and hear?

I can do tonglen practice of breathing in a person’s suffering and breathing out compassion. I can do loving kindness meditation. But they do not seem to touch the pain that I feel.

As I look deeper, I think of the self-compassion gesture of putting one or both hands on the heart. Then I realize: I am the one suffering in this moment. I am suffering over other people’s suffering. I need to tend to this suffering that I feel in my own heart.

A sense of relief comes. I still feel the suffering but I know I can be with it if it is in me. I can tend to it when it lives in my own heart.

I suddenly feel connected to those that suffer in a different way. I no longer feel helpless, but now empowered, knowing in my heart that as I tend to my suffering, in this moment, somehow I am adding to the “field” of compassion and love. I am hopeful that my one drop of self-compassion will ripple out and ease other’s suffering somewhere, somehow.

Being with Suffering

With one hand on my heart and one on my belly, I breathe with the suffering, feeling the rising and falling of my breath as it moves through me. I allow the suffering to be here. I notice it and accompany it. I give it space and time.

I feel the body sensation of my suffering. It is a squeezing in my heart. Almost immediately the suffering changes. Now it is grief. Bottomless. Vast. Thousands of lost souls crying.

Not knowing if I can hold it, I continue, one hand on heart and one on belly, breathing, allowing. It changes. It’s not so vast now. It is not bottomless anymore. It’s more like a cavern and it is filled with a soft light now, not so dark.

It changes again. Sorrow comes again. The sorrow seems to go back countless lifetimes, all connected to my heart right now. I allow. I breathe, feeling the sensation in my heart and being with my experience as best I can, not trying to change anything. Just allowing.

I can feel my breath in my heart and things change again. My heart can feel some strength. It feels good.

The sorrow fades but not completely. Now sorrow and strength are together in my heart simultaneously. I can feel them both equally, side by side. My heart aches as it stretches open to hold them both. It is an achy, uncomfortable, enjoyable sensation, all at the same time.

This is life, opposites showing up at the same time, to be held, just as they are.

This is my heart today, full of sorrow and strength at the same time. I don’t want to change it. It is so rich, so full, broken yet together.