# Suffering

The existence of suffering (*dukkha*) is the first Noble Truth.

> The Buddha called suffering a Holy Truth, because our suffering has the capacity of showing us the path to liberation. Embrace your suffering, and let it reveal to you the way to peace. (Nhat Hanh, 2015, *The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings*, loc. 149)

By saying we should "embrace" our suffering, Thich Nhat Hanh is not endorsing a masochistic approach. In fact, Hanh breaks with tradition by replacing suffering with nirvana in the [Three Dharma Seals](/CORpCVC-RJWGnkhCRTt8Ag). Instead, we should recognize our suffering, care for our suffering, and transform it.

> The work of mindfulness is first to recognize the suffering and second to embrace it. A mother taking care of a crying baby naturally will take the child into her arms without suppressing, judging it, or ignoring the crying. Mindfulness is like that mother, recognizing and embracing suffering without judgment. So the practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather to cradle it with a lot of tenderness (Nhat Hanh, 2014, *[No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering](https://archive.org/details/NoMudNoLotus/page/n13)*, 26-27)

Hanh uses the allegory of "The Arrow" to caution us against compounding pain with suffering.

> There is a Buddhist teaching found in the Sallatha Sutta, known as The Arrow. It says if an arrow hits you, you will feel pain in that part of your body where the arrow hit; and then if a second arrow comes and strikes exactly at the same spot, the pain will not be only double, it will become at least ten times more intense.
>
> The unwelcome things that sometimes happen in life—being rejected, losing a valuable object, failing a test, getting injured in an accident—are analogous to the first arrow. They cause some pain. The second arrow, fired by our own selves, is our reaction, our storyline, and our anxiety. All these things magnify the suffering. Many times, the ultimate disaster we're ruminating upon hasn't even happened.
>
> We may worry, for example, that we have cancer and that we're going to die soon. We don't know, and our fear of the unknown makes the pain grow even bigger.
>
> The second arrow may take the form of judgment ("how could I have been so stupid?"), fear ("what if the pain doesn't go away?"), or anger ("I hate that I'm in pain. I don't deserve this!"). We can quickly conjure up a hell realm of negativity in our minds that multiplies the stress of the actual event, by ten times or even more.
>
> Part of the art of suffering well is learning not to magnify our pain by getting carried away in fear, anger, and despair. We build and maintain our energy reserves to handle the big sufferings; the little sufferings we can let go.
(Nhat Hanh, 2014, *[No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering](https://archive.org/details/NoMudNoLotus/page/n23)*, 47-48)

:::warning
:mag: An aphorism related to this is that "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." -[Reagle](/aMHS5-Q2R8OfdyUIipHtbg?both)
:::

## We are not our pain

> When an unpleasant feeling, physical or mental, arises in him, the wise man does not worry, complain, weep, pound his chest, pull his hair, torture his body and mind, or faint. He calmly observes his feeling and is aware that it is only a feeling. He knows that he is not the feeling, and he is not caught by the feeling. Therefore, the pain cannot bind him. When he has a painful physical feeling, he knows that there is a painful physical feeling. He does not lose his calmness, does not worry, does not fear, and does not complain. Thus the feeling remains a painful physical feeling, and it is not able to grow and ravage his whole being. (Nhat Hanh, 1987, *Old Path White Clouds*, 43).

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###### tags: `Buddhism`