love and suffering

My post yesterday may have given the impression that I think that the spiritual life is about the avoidance of suffering. Actually, I think the opposite is true: we still suffer, perhaps even more than before, but the nature of our suffering is different.

Since tomorrow is Good Friday, at least here in Greece, this feels like an appropriate time to be writing about this.

Why did Christ have to be crucified? Could he not still have been a great moral teacher, an inspiring individual fully established in God consciousness, even the ‘Son of God’, without being tortured and murdered? What was the point of his death?

Firstly, I think his suffering shows us that he was fully human. He lived human emotions, and human pain, to the fullest imaginable extent, even to the extent of feeling abandoned by God. He was not just a divine incarnation, materialising briefly in our world to dish out some high-minded advice. No, he was also one of us, which means that we can relate to him in a human way. We can love him as the dearest and most giving of friends, and not merely as an abstract concept or a platonic archetype.

Secondly, whatever Christ’s ontological status, there is very little doubt that he died because of us. That is to say, because of the arrogance, pride and meanness of humans – in this case, of the Jewish priests in the temple and the rabble who demanded his death.

But what does this have to do with us? Can’t we just write it off as a dark historical event with no relation to our own lives? I don’t think so. His enemies were motivated by character traits that are in us all, at least in latent form. As humans, we are flawed. We have lost touch with the divine inside of us. Why? Call it ego, call it the illusion, call it the devil… the point is, we have become separated from God. A spiritual life is a commitment to healing that separation.

Finally, and most importantly, Christ’s choosing to die on the cross demonstrates for all time the connection between love and suffering. Suffering is the deepest way for us to express our love.

In medieval chivalric literature, the knights-errant would fall in love with some idealised and generally unavailable female, and would demonstrate the strength of their love by setting off on dangerous quests to find Holy Grails or slay dragons… the point of all these hardships was to express their love for the beloved. The stories are fictions, yes, but they reveal an archetypal truth.

Similarly, and perhaps more accessibly, parents suffer for their children. They usually suffer willingly, of course, but nevertheless the sacrifices and hardships they take on are still a form of suffering. It may seem perverse that our deepest expression of love is through suffering, but that is how we are wired.

Presumably, with all his divine foreknowledge, Christ could have given his pursuers the slip in the garden of Gethsemane. But he chose not to. Why? Because he chose to express his love by giving up his life: the ultimate expression of the ultimate love.

Love and suffering are forever linked. When we suffer for whatever reason – ill health, depression, disappointment – we too can express our love through it. But rather than love for an idealised maiden, or for our own children, we express our love for Christ, for the conceivable image of the inconceivable divinity.

If we can manage this, then, like St. Paul, we too can ‘rejoice in our suffering.’ And if we rejoice in it, then it’s really not suffering anymore. At least, it is no longer meaningless torture. Rather, as the expression of our love, it is possibly the most meaningful thing we can do in our lives.

How does this compare to Buddhist teaching, given that the Third Noble Truth states that freedom from suffering is possible? In ‘Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind’ Shunryu Suzuki writes that:

‘We should find the truth in this world, through our difficulties, through our suffering. This is the basic teaching of Buddhism… (So) to find pleasure in suffering is the only way to accept the truth of transiency. Without realising how to accept this truth you cannot live in this world.’

Christianity and Zen are saying something very similar here. Suffering is unavoidable, but we defeat it by embracing it. And we embrace it when we express our love through it, or when we understand that it is guiding us to the truth.

Food for thought for Watashi-wa!