“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is Optional.”
This famous quote, made popular by Haruki Murakami, is an old Buddhist saying. Today’s chapter offers a different approach to the question of human suffering, though maybe in some way both Biblical and Buddhist teaching arrive at the same idea. Throughout this chapter, Moses continues his final sermon, reminding the people to never forget the source of their freedom, the hand that feeds them, each up and down steps of their journey to the promised land. Especially the downs - each bump in the road is a test - and each test is there to teach valuable lessons:
וְיָדַעְתָּ֖ עִם־לְבָבֶ֑ךָ כִּ֗י כַּאֲשֶׁ֨ר יְיַסֵּ֥ר אִישׁ֙ אֶת־בְּנ֔וֹ יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ מְיַסְּרֶֽךָּ׃
“Know that your God disciplines you just as a father disciplines his child.”
The Hebrew word used her for ‘disciplines’ is ‘ya’yaya’ser’ connected to the Hebrew word for suffering. It brings to mind a harsher form of child rearing and education, including corporal punishment, not so long ago the norm and still practiced too often in many parts of the world. I still had some rabbis in my childhood school use a wooden ruler on our palms as punishment for talking during class.
What sort of metaphor is this for life? What kind of God inflicts pain on people as an abusive father would? Is this the paradigm of patriarchal theology we are still struggling to deal with - or to upturn?
Perhaps that’s where the Buddhist saying helps make better sense of the subtext of this verse from the Book of Words, along with some help from Harold Kushner, a wise rabbi whose classic book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" is still a compelling read.
Kushner writes about this verse in terms of parents teaching children how to manage expectations, develop moral character, discipline and trust. Some of these teachings require boundaries and limitations that may feel like pain at the time, but like muscles being trained, gain meaning and value as time goes by. Some trials and tribulations make us stronger, but it’s not as if some version of God is punishing or testing our abilities to survive:
“The painful things that happen to us are not punishments for our misbehavior, nor are they in any way part of some grand design on God’s part.
Let me suggest that the bad things that happen to us in our lives do not have a meaning when they happen to us. They do not happen for any good reason which would cause us to accept them willingly. But we can give them a meaning. We can redeem these tragedies from senselessness by imposing meaning on them.
The question we should be asking is not, “Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?” That is really an unanswerable, pointless question. A better question would be “Now that this has happened to me, what am I going to do about it?”
Suffering is optional. Perhaps what Moses is trying to convey here is that when we take the time to think and feel about what’s happening to us - both good and bad, not just the pleasure but especially the inevitable hurts and pains - we grow, expand our empathy, extend our love and our ability to be present, come what may. Pain is not personal, and how we handle suffering is how we face and handle life. It’s a lifelong lesson.
In a few weeks, on Yom Kippur, some of us will choose to fast for a full day, inflict a hardship on our bodies so that something else happens to our consciousness, our soul, a deprivation, discipline, to help us start another year with a resolve to solve what holds us back, with hopes of living life a little better. It’s not about the deprivation but rather about the letting go of desire so that we can be more present to what arises. Perhaps we get to be our own parents on such days, lovingly training our inner child, not with pain but with purpose, to keep, as wisely and kindly as possible, grow up?
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Zoom Meeting:
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