-- Byron Katie
Pain is a part of life. Your back goes out, you stub your toe, bump your head or sit on a wasp's nest. Ouch! Suffering, however, is purely optional, an add on that is not part of life's original equipment. Suffering is the psychological resistance that we have to what is, especially when what is either causes physical pain or fails to live up to our personal expectations and desires. In other words, you cause your own suffering by resisting reality. That's all there is to it.
That may be all there is to it, but oh what a deeply ingrained habit it is! In a strange perverse way, we love to suffer, and we love to hear about the sufferings of others. Suffering gives life its dramatic quality, and, of course, it supposedly builds character. Personally I doubt the character building part. All generating suffering, talking suffering, and sharing suffering builds is more suffering. By indulging in it, we give up our power and legitimize the suffering-making process.
"Misery loves company," we're told. And like most old chestnuts, it seems to be true. But instead of wallowing in our misery, why don't we disconnect the whole misery-making, suffering-inducing process altogether? If suffering begins in the mind, it is in the mind that it must be dismantled.
Dismantling only takes one tool -- attention. When we pay attention to how, when and where we resist reality, we begin to see how me make ourselves suffer. We don't have to fight the suffering anymore than we have to fight any illusion. When we see that suffering doesn't exist, except between our ears, it begins to fade like a summer morning's fog.
So, when faced with suffering, don't just do something, sit there! Sit and watch. Watch as you weave your own web of suffering, and watch it unravel. Suffering disintegrates under the watchful eye of awareness. And when it does, reality, in all its beauty, shines through!
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