THE ROOT CAUSE OF ALL SUFFERING
“One who looks around him is intelligent, one who looks within him is wise.”
 |
We live in a world of thought, not reality. Sydney Banks once said, “Thought is not reality; yet it is through thought that our realities are created.” Each of us lives through our own perceptions of the world, which are vastly di9erent from the person right next to us. An example of this is that you could be sitting in a co9ee shop having a quarter-life existential crisis, completely stressed out of your mind about how you have no idea what you’re doing with your life when it seems like everyone else has theirs together, while the person next to you is happily enjoying their freshly brewed drink while peacefully people watching. You both are in the same exact co9ee shop, smelling the same aroma, surrounded by the same strangers, but how the world looks to both of you couldn’t be more di9erent. Many of us go through the exact same events or are in
the same location at the same time yet are having completely di9erent experiences of the world.
Here’s another example of how we live in a world of thought and not reality. If you walk up to 100 di9erent people and ask each of them what money means to them, how many di9erent answers do you think you’ll get? Close to 100 di9erent answers!
Money is technically the same thing, but it means something di9erent to each person. Money could mean time, freedom, opportunity, security, peace of mind, or it could mean evil, greed, and the reason why people commit crimes. For now, I’m not going to get into which one is right or wrong (hint: there is no right or wrong answer, but that’s for a di9erent chapter).
Another illustration of this concept is as follows: If you survey 100 di9erent people and ask each of them what they think of our current president, how many di9erent answers do you think you’ll get?
Even though it is the same exact person we’re talking about, we will get 100 di9erent answers because most people live in their own thoughts and perceptions of the world. The meaning (or thinking) we give an event is what determines how we ultimately feel about it. That meaning or thinking is the filter through which we see life from then on — because of this, we live through a perception of reality, not in reality itself. Reality is that the event happened, with no meaning, thinking, or interpretation of it.
Any meaning or thinking we give the event is on us and that is how our perception of reality is created. This is how our experience of life is created from the inside out.
It’s not about the events that happen in our lives, but our interpretation of them, which causes us to feel good or bad
about something. This is how people in third world countries can be happier than people in first world countries and people in first world countries can be more miserable than people in third world countries.
Our feelings do not come from external events, but from our own thinking about the events. Therefore, we can only ever feel what we are thinking.
Let’s hypothetically say that you really hate your job, and it causes you an enormous amount of stress, anxiety, and frustration. It pains you to even set foot in the building where you work and just thinking about your job makes you furious. When you’re thinking about your job, you’re just sitting there on a sofa with your family watching a TV show together, but you are fuming at the thought of your job. Everyone else is having a good time, except you.
In this moment, everyone else in your family is having a di9erent experience of life than you, even though the same event is happening. Just the thought of work created a whole di9erent perception of reality, even though you’re not physically at work.
If it were true that external events cause us to feel the way we feel inside, then you should be a happy camper in your living room, watching a funny TV show with your family every single time you do this activity — but that’s not the case.
Now, you may be saying that you’re only feeling this way because an external event, your job, is causing you to feel stressed and anxious. To that I’ll ask the question, is it absolutely true that every single person feels the exact same way about the job they’re working in?
Two di9erent people can be doing the exact same job but will have completely di9erent experiences of that job. It can be the most amazing experience and a dream job for one person but be another person’s worst nightmare and living hell. The only di9erence between one person and the other is how they think about their job, which determines how they ultimately feel about it.
Now let’s go back to the original scenario of you hypothetically hating your job. Remember how much stress, anxiety, and frustration it causes you when you think about it?
Let’s do a quick thought experiment about that by answering the question below:
Who would you be without that thought that you hated your job?
Take 1 minute to see what comes up for you and don’t move on until you do that.
If you don’t overthink it and truly let the answers surface from within you, without that thought, you will most likely feel and be happy, peaceful, free, and light.
Without our usual thinking about a particular event or thing, our experience of it completely alters. This is how we live in a world of thought, not reality, and how our perception of reality is created from the inside out, through our own thinking. With this new understanding, you’ve just uncovered the cause of all our human psychological su9ering…
The root cause of our suffering is our own thinking.
Now before you throw this book across the room and light it on fire, I’m not saying that this is all in our heads and that it
isn’t real. Our perception of reality is very real. We will feel what we think, and our feelings are real. That is completely undeniable. However, our thinking will look like an inevitable, unchangeable reality to us until we begin seeing how our reality is created. If we know that we can only ever feel what we are thinking, then we know that we can change our feelings by changing our thinking. Thus, we can change our experience of life by knowing that it comes from our own thinking. And if that is true, then we are ever only one thought away from experiencing something di9erent and transforming our entire lives at any moment — through a state of no thought.
In short, the moment we stop thinking is when our happiness begins.
A Young Monk & the Empty Boat (A Zen Story About How Thinking is the Cause of Our Own Suffering)
A long time ago, a young Zen monk was living in a small monastery that was located in a forest which was near a small lake. The monastery was occupied by a few senior monks while the rest were newcomers and still had much to learn. The monks had many obligations in the monastery, but one of the most important ones was their daily routine where they had to sit down, close their eyes, and meditate in silence for hours at a time.
After each meditation, they had to report their progress to their mentor. The young monk had difficulty staying focused during his meditation practice for a variety of reasons, which made him very mad. After the young monk reported his progress, or better said, lack of it, to his mentor, the elder monk asked the young monk a simple question that had a hidden lesson, “Do you know what is really making you angry?” The young monk replied, “Well, usually as soon as I close my eyes
and begin to meditate, there is someone moving around, and I can’t focus. I get agitated that someone is disturbing me even though they know that I’m meditating. How can they not be more considerate? And then when I close my eyes again and try to focus, a cat or a small animal might brush past and disturb me again. By this point, even when the wind blows and the tree branches make noise, I get angry. If that is not enough, the birds keep on chirping, and I can’t seem to find any peace in this place.”
The elder monk simply pointed out to his pupil, “I see that you become angrier with each interruption you encounter. This is exactly the opposite of what is the point of your task when meditating. You should find a way not to get angry with people, or animals, or any other thing around you that disturbs you during your task.” After their consultation, the young monk went out of the monastery and looked around to find a place that would be quieter so that he could meditate peacefully. He found such a place at the shore of the lake that is nearby. He brought his mat, sat down, and started meditating. But soon a flock of birds splashed down in the lake near where the monk was meditating. Hearing their noise, the monk opened his eyes to see what was going on.
Although the bank of the lake was quieter than the monastery, there were still things that would disturb his peace and he again got angry. Even though he didn’t find the peace he was looking for, he kept returning to the lake. Then one day, the monk saw a boat tied at the end of a small pier. And right then an idea hit him, “Why don’t I take the boat, row it down to the middle of the lake and meditate there? In the middle of the lake, there will be nothing to disturb me!” He rowed the boat to the middle of the lake and started meditating.
As he had expected, there was nothing in the middle of the lake to disturb him and he was able to meditate the whole day. At the end of the day, he returned to the monastery. This continued for a couple of days and the monk was thrilled that he had finally found a place to meditate in peace. He hadn’t felt angry and could continue the meditation practice in a calm manner.
On the third day, the monk sat in the boat, rowed to the middle of the lake, and started meditating again. A few minutes later, he heard some splashing of water and felt that the boat was rocking. He started getting upset that even in the middle of the lake there was someone or something disturbing him.
When he opened his eyes, he saw a boat heading straight towards him. He shouted, “Steer your boat away, or else you will hit my boat.” But the other boat kept coming straight at him and was just a few feet away. He yelled again but nothing changed and so the incoming boat hit the monk’s boat. Now he was furious. He screamed, “Who are you, and why have you hit my boat in the middle of this vast lake?” There was no answer. This made the young monk even angrier.
He stood up to see who was in the other boat and to his surprise, he found that there was no one in the boat.
The boat had probably drifted along in the breeze and had bumped into the monk’s boat. The monk found his anger dissipating. It was just an empty boat! There was no one to get angry at!
At that moment he remembered his mentors’ question, “Do you know what is really making you angry?” And then wondered, “It’s not other people, situations, or circumstances. It’s not the empty boat, but my reaction to it that causes my
anger. All the people or situations that make me upset and angry are just like the empty boat. They don’t have the power to make me angry without my own reaction.”
The monk then rowed the boat back to the shore. He returned to the monastery and started meditating along with the other monks. There were still noises and disturbances around, but the monk treated them as the “empty boat” and continued to meditate peacefully. When the elder monk saw the di9erence, he simply said to the young monk, “I see that you have found what is really making you angry and overcome that.”
