How To Avoid Suffering

There’s a way to avoid suffering.

Spoiler: It’s uncomfortable.

If suffering is pain in the physical body, you can:

• Endure it.

• Take something to help you endure it.

• It will be too much even for your body, and there will be nothing you can do.

If the suffering is internal:

• Is related to a past event,

• Is related to the future,

• Or is something that is happening to you now?

Past & Future Suffering

Whether it was in the past or the future, you have no way of changing what has been or knowing what will be.

Because you’re either considering something that has been and now no longer exists or something that may (or may not) be and, therefore, does not yet exist.

So, this is suffering based on what does not exist.

Does it make sense to suffer from something that does not exist?

Present-related Suffering

But if it were in the present, what generates suffering for you if not your judgment toward what is happening?

Is this helpful judgment to you to live in this specific present moment?

Yes, Because then I can continue to complain and remain what I am.

No, Because I don’t want to suffer anymore.

So, will thinking and brooding help you change things?

What can I do now at this very moment?

Is it your views of yourself toward events that determine what you are and how you use what little time you have to dictate your life?

Or will you take back who you are and act moved by what is right and useful for the common good?

The choice is yours.