“Why do we have to suffer?”

I’ve asked myself this question countless times, genuinely wanting to know the answer…and the solution.

Life is precious, but it’s also cruel…and ugly…and disappointing.

Most of us only want the first part. We want happiness. Love. Passion. Positivity. But we don’t want suffering. We find it hard to cope with death, sickness, breakups and all the difficult emotions they trigger.

According to Buddhism, suffering is essential:

The situations that don’t make us feel good are exactly what we need to attain liberation.

The Four Noble Truths are the essence of Buddha’s teachings and explain the concept of suffering beautifully:

1. The truth of suffering (Dukkha)
2. The truth of the origin of suffering (Samudāya)
3. The truth of the cessation of suffering (Nirodha)
4. The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering (Magga)

Although we know that suffering is an integral part of the human experience, we avoid it at all costs. It scares us because we don’t know what to do with it. Unlike happiness that might be easier to keep, pain is unpredictable. It may last for years, leaving a deep emotional or physical wound.

That’s why the First Noble Truth is the most difficult one to accept. It’s extremely tough to understand the complexity of life and accept its darkest parts. But that truth is also the most beautiful one because we can’t survive without suffering. Life would be so dull without pain.

If we identify the causes of our suffering and accept their existence, we will understand that maybe we suffer because we deserve to be happy. We deserve to experience the best parts of life and free ourselves from unpleasant thoughts and emotions.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the renowned Buddhist monk, wrote the following:

“The lotus flower is not possible without the mud. Understanding and compassion are not possible without suffering. I would never want you to be in a place where there’s no suffering, because in such a place you wouldn’t have a chance to learn how to understand and be compassionate. It’s by touching suffering that we have a chance to understand people and their suffering. By understanding our own suffering and the suffering of others, we begin to know what it means to be compassionate. It is only against a background of suffering that we can recognize our happiness. 

I remember during the war in Vietnam we wanted so desperately just to have a cease-fire for twenty-four hours—twenty-four precious hours with no bombs dropping, no one being killed. But if we have not lived through a war, we don’t know how to appreciate twenty-four hours of peace, twenty-four hours without the horrors of war.

So we need suffering in order to recognize our conditions of happiness. No lotus flower can be without the mud.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

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