Schopenhauer's View of Suffering

 Suffering is a part of life and not something we can avoid. It’s only when we relax into that sense of universal suffering that we can recognize compassion and turn toward it. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is useful here in the sense that he sees all sentient beings as part of a wheel of suffering. Taking his cue from Buddhist, Christian and Hindu philosophy and religion, Schopenhauer maintained that we come into this world bound by suffering caused by endless desires, including the striving for survival. What distinguishes Schopenhauer from his contemporaries lies in how he did not try to mitigate or qualify that suffering by suggesting conditions through which humans can be spared of it, somehow. In other words, suffering does not only inflict the poor, the infirm, the sick, elderly, etc. Simply by virtue of having a body that is subject to the stirrings of hunger and thirst makes us prime candidates for a life of suffering. Thus, Schopenhauer does not present any illusion that humans can progress out of suffering, concluding that ultimately we are inclined to suffering because our bodies have many biological needs which put us on a ceaseless path of desire fulfillment. It’s only when we stop identifying with the sense of embodiment that gives rise to feelings, sensations, cravings, likes and dislikes, a false sense of an enduring self, etc. that we can emerge from the suffering of life and have a true understanding of its conditioned nature, which is subject to decay and endless struggle.

Schopenhauer had a very clear-eyed awareness that life is suffering, but it’s not in vain. In fact, Schopenhauer suggests that when a person honestly follows the path of suffering, they will reach a point of no longer clinging to the phenomena as a sense of security. In fact, it’s precisely in trusting the unfolding of suffering that we can learn to let go of its individuality. We need to stop and ponder this for a bit. People tend to attach to “my suffering”, or “my fortune and lot”, to the point where we subsconsciously compare our fortunes with others. Schopenhauer even suggests that one of the greatest pleasures in life is schadenfreude. This is to say “I am so glad I don’t suffer the way that person does”. But when we meditate deeply on it, we are all subject to similar kinds of suffering in life, regardless of what paths or choices we make.

One of the deepest forms of suffering is the way that we are ultimately not always in control of the outcomes. Our decisions, even when well deliberated, are partially made, in the sense that we don’t know in advance the outcome or all the information that’s needed to understand all the consequences. In addition, even the outcome itself is not within our control. As Buddhism indicates, we plant seeds, but not all the seeds will ripen or prove to be meritorious. When looked at from the perspective of previous lifetimes, we really aren’t in the know about why things happen the way they do and when we do. Alan Watts has referred to a basic trust that whatever decisions we have made in the past turn out to contain the lessons we need to learn in life in order to become wiser. This may be a bit glib—sometimes suffering does not yield clear lessons or answers---but the central idea is that even our decisions are often based on contingent information. In the absence of any “full picture” of what’s happening or will happen to us, the only route we can go is that of trust, without adopting a clinging view of the phenomena around us.

In today’s world, we are often lulled into the comforting fantasy that certain choices will guarantee us happiness. Having the “right job”, or meeting the “right person” somehow makes us believe that we will be forever happy once we have made the right decision, and doing so only requires a certain modicum of education and intellect. The problem with this view is that there is no such thing as a stable job, and even our closest relationships are subject to change or unexpected turns. Trying to hold onto the comforting fantasy of “perfect” decisions can lead to delusory notions of fixed identity, fate, destiny etc. But even our own jobs are not who we are. I recently learned that the current role I am taking on was subject to a budgetary decision by management. I was happy to hear that my job wasn’t axed, but at the same time, it lead me to reflect: as much as I would like to fancy that I have a value to an organization that I have been in for over two decades, there really isn’t anything special about “me” that could not be replaced by someone else, or perhaps even a machine or artificial intelligence. Knowing this can make me feel either terribly insecure and grasping, or simply humble: allowing myself to acknowledge that I am not in control of what will happen to me. I don’t occupy such a privileged place in the universe that I am somehow exempt from things like economic downturns, job loss, illness, disability etc. All we can really do is pray for the best in life and for good karma, but this is never guaranteed. By contemplating and relaxing into the precarious nature of all things, I recognize there is nothing to grasp in all of this, since nothing is guaranteed to be forever.

When, on the other hand, we gently acknowledge the possibility that suffering is a universal part of life that we all must undergo in some form or another, then we will be less perfectionistic and more realistic about what happens to us in this life. We can relax into the flow of experiences, knowing that even if we can’t figure something out right away, there are possibilities to manage in the world. But at the same  time, we don’t punish ourselves for being unhappy. Also, there is a certain wisdom in recollecting that all paths involve some kind of unexpected challenge. Suffering is in all places and all directions. But, as Schopenhauer suggests throughout his writings, there is a hidden opportunity to transform through our suffering, by no longer attaching to the forms in which suffering takes. These forms are only surface phenomena. Underlying the surface of that phenomena is the nature of life which everchanging, empty and devoid of any form. Schopenhauer took his cues from Kant in suggesting this is the “thing in itself” or the “noumenal” as distinguished from the phenomena, which is only one temporary expression of the thing in itself. Buddhists might refer to it as the mind.

Let’s try this experiment: think of one of the worst possible things that can happen to you. Right now, I am thinking about the possibility of getting laid off and not being able to find another employment. I imagine all the headaches I will have, such as dwindling finances, bills to pay, creditors asking to collect, missed payments, lack of financial stability, and even a dire state of abandonment or homelessness. Now, you may begin to ask yourself, isn’t this reason to be alarmed? Is the fact or the threat of homelessness not a way to motivate us to push ourselves hard to look for that next job, rather than throwing our hands up in despair? Isn’t fear—the fear of not having a home or place in life—not the “great motivator”?

One of the greatest myths we tell ourselves is that we cannot function without fear. This message is so deeply ingrained within us that we surround ourselves with all kinds of fears, including the fear of abandonment, rejection, poverty, lost resources, shame, poor health, degradation etc. The fear keeps us on edge, and even prevents us from sleeping at night, because this fear cannot ever be fully abated. No matter how hard I push myself at work or try to get that extra hour of time to “prove my worth” to the organization of my employment, none of this is any guarantee that I won’t lose my job, even as I push closer to the finish line of retirement. So the function of fear, more than anything, is to perpetuate a sense of lacking, striving and trying to gain advantage in our situations. We most especially fear ostracism; the frown on the face of the stranger who looks at us and deems us as unacceptable. We internalize a low sense of self-worth when others look down at us and see us as unemployable, unskilled, untalented, etc. But is that fear useful?

Sometimes fear can be effective, and we can use that emotion to push ourselves. Psychologists such as Albert Ellis suggest that we need realistic feelings of shame, guilt or sadness to motivate us to seek better conditions for ourselves. Fear, under this view, has an appropriate and normative place among all the emotions, in the sense that it can provide a needed “push” for us to clean the room we haven’t cleaned in a long time, get the job we need to get, etc. However, I think Schopenhauer wanted us to go deeper beyond the fear. We ask ourselves the question: is there something that endures after the body has become degraded, starved or “cast off” from society? Does some fundamental part of who we are “survive” the scolding gazes and glances, declaring that we are a disgrace to society? Again, those who look down upon us are equally caught in the wheel of continuous striving, and so their scorn of us is a function of how they’ve been conditioned to fear unwelcome experiences. So again—we need to ask ourselves, is there something that lives beyond fear?

In order to ask this question, we have to look closely at the nature of our being in this world. The eyes that see, nose that smells, tongue that tastes, brain that thinks: what allows these elements to come together, and what supports the world that we are creating, moment to moment, with our senses? When the phenomena are arising, what experiences those phenomena? The nature of awareness is one way of attempting to answer this question. But let’s be careful not to get confused here; we are not trying to seek an awareness that is separate from the unfolding phenomena. Rather, we are doing something more subtle here, and suggesting that there is some fundamental nature that supports every moment of unfolding, and it’s inseparable from phenomena. We need not detach ourselves from anything that is happening to us to look for this mind.

If, while experiencing this present moment, I am aware that it’s just like a dream—a conglomerate of interconnected elements—then I will become less and less attached to the body that I take to be fundamentally real and “mine” forever. I can loosen myself and become less defended, knowing that awareness is not limited to this body. Even when people are shaming me and calling me the worst person in the universe, what is the mind that experiences the totality of this moment? Is that mind confined to some label that points to a singular “I”, or does it somehow encapsulate that whole experience in the moment? Why would “I” think there is only a single “I” in that experience? Or another way of putting it: if a big wave crashes over a small wave, does the small wave get “defeated” by the big wave? Does the small wave even “die”, for that matter? Think about it: a wave does not really exist independently from the ocean, and is even one “form”, albeit brief, in a total ocean. To attach to one wave is to make the mistake of believing that our existence is defined by this one temporary shape that changes every moment. Even seeing a “wave” and labelling it as such is a delusion of the eye, which happens because we put together different elements of the experience to make the standard shape that we then label as “wave”.

If we don’t internalize the view that our bodies are nothing more than waves, we will end up going in the opposite direction of solidifying the body into a discrete, solid sense of self. We then make the mistake of believing that the mind resides within the body. If this were the case, however, how could we possibly even see “outside” the body, and why don’t we see “inside” the body if the mind somehow “resides” there? By identifying less with the form in which our thoughts take and more with the underlying awareness that allows thoughts to arise and disappear, we become less stuck on thoughts of gain and loss. We will see that trying to gain money, attention, compliments, praise, fame, security, etc. is not that much different from a wave trying to protect itself against other waves. It’s simply impossible for the wave to keep a fixed and secure shape and is, in fact, continually changing with factors such as wind, movement, temperature, tidal forces, etc.

The problem is that most people don’t feel this way, and we even try to avoid this realization. This is because we internalize the fear of something terrible happening to us, by mothers, loved ones or others. Unless we are able to penetrate past this fear, we will always be miserable because we are constantly waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop. We don’t recognize that this is only a temporary state of being that is bound to change to something else. We need to see that this fear is not based on anything, and to see past this script of motherly concern is the ultimate compassion we can give ourselves as well as the world. We need to stop internalizing the idea that we are confined beings who are just this body, with this fixed state of being. We are actually more than this. And suffering is the illusion that comes from attachment to forms. Fear is not necessary. It only exacerbates the sense of being trapped.