How does understanding your own suffering help you understand the suffering of others?
by Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering
Suffering is caused by the egoic mind, the sense of self, or what we call “me” or “I.” This is a core teaching of Buddhism as well as Hinduism and Taoism. It’s an ancient idea that has merit if you were to delve deeply into your own sense of self.
We are all made of the same stuff. We are all expressions of a singular movement called consciousness. As physical beings we are made out of the five elements of consciousness. On her Yoga Sanctuary website, Jennifer French posted, “According to Vedic science, when Spirit (Purusha in Sanskrit) takes form as life it is called Prakriti. Prakriti is made up of five elements from finest to grossest: space, air, fire, water and earth…Every individual is a microcosm of nature and therefore contains all five elements.” We can call these five elements the fundamental building blocks of everything in this physical reality. And in this physical sense, we are all the same thing, yet with a different arrangement of the elements.
What is this self—the person you believe you are?
If you were to try to find it, you would not be able to locate the person you think yourself to be — the sense of self, or “I.” It is intangible and cannot really be found. It’s just an idea, a belief that is subject to the changing nature of thought and memory.
It takes a great deal of observation and persistence to try to find this “I.” It is a belief created out of an accretion of thoughts, beliefs, memories, attachments, and so on. These form a picture of a person with a certain name, job title, family position, religion, political bent, likes and dislikes, achievements and losses, and so on. This is a temporary, changeable, short-lived sense of “I.”
Without the egoic sense of self, what remains?
If you remove this “I,” this egoic self, by understanding what it is not, then all that remains is the physical body and consciousness. The physical body is not sentient; it is a functioning biological machine of a temporary and changing nature. And when you remove the egoic self from the equation, you are left wondering, “Who am I?” This is an important question, because it turns the egoic mind in upon itself. If you ask the question with sincerity, persistence and a sense of keen observation, then you find something that has been here all along — consciousness.
Since there is only one consciousness — one singular movement of life that contains all of what exists — this makes you the same as everyone else.If you understand that the nature of suffering is caused by the egoic mind and all of its attachments, identities, and misbeliefs, then you also understand that everyone who has an egoic mind, a sense of self, also suffers. The suffering may manifest in myriad ways, but all of it is made out of the thoughts contained in, and arising out of, consciousness.
If you can find yourself at the core then you know what everyone else is made of as well.
