Misunderstanding freedom
The Buddha’s Third Noble Truth promises ‘freedom from suffering’. But when I made the mistake of interpreting this as a life free from pain, grief and sadness, I found more suffering, not less.
When I first heard the word ‘suffering’ in a Buddhist context, I protested. It did not apply to me; I listed all the reasons it did not. I’d been born into freedom: into an able body with white skin, with educated parents and enough money and health to propel me upwards into the world. I hadn’t experienced abuse or trauma. I moved through my life meeting the goals I set out for myself, without facing any sexism or discrimination. I was not one of the suffering ones.
And yet.
I’m not really suffering, am I?
Here I was, in a Buddhist centre asking for help. The same way I’d asked for help from various counsellors and therapists since I was sixteen years old; just like in that church basement of my first 12 Step meeting; in the constant seeking for connection in every conversation. I took on suggestions, I implemented strategies, I wrote journals, I learned breathing techniques.
Even with all I’d been given and all the work and effort, my mind continued to attack me from the inside. Sometimes the assaults were sharp and pointed: a voice yelling inside my skull, ‘What the f*ck did you do that for? No, don’t stop until you get it right. Do it again, do it again do it again.’ I’d whip myself into franticness, trying to make the voice stop by adding another activity to my calendar, completing tasks more quickly, exercising harder or clicking faster or showing up earlier.
Other times, my mind morphed into a diffuse cloud that settled over my body, rendering it sluggish and my thoughts torpid. In this weighted state, I could not imagine continuing with my life. Not getting out of bed, not speaking to a friend, not doing the simplest thing that would be good for me, like having a shower or drinking a glass of water.
I could point to nothing external that caused these states. Everything looked good from the outside. I should have been fine. I should have been great. I should have been getting on with it.
Most people I’d asked didn’t know what I was talking about. Sometimes I suspected they did know—knew the not-okayness that played like a bass note through their lives, as it did mine—but didn’t want to talk about it.
And yet here, instead of tilted heads, shrugs and platitudes, people met my eyes. They didn’t change the subject. They met it head-on. They said: you are not the first person to feel this. You are not even the only person. You are not terminally unique. Others had felt this, too.
When I learned the Buddha’s description of suffering meant exactly this—the dissatisfaction to which I often returned, no matter the external circumstances—the previously closed-off, hyper-personal experience became shared. Not only shared, but universal: a human predicament rather than a personal failing.
And then came the promise of freedom.
The Buddha’s Third Noble Truth is often translated as ‘freedom from suffering’:
‘Now this is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering. It’s the fading away and cessation of that very same craving with nothing left over; giving it away, letting it go, releasing it, and not adhering to it.’
- Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, Saṃyutta Nikāya (SN 56.11)
He had me at ‘cessation of suffering’. The end of my pain: no more screaming voices, weight of depression, ever-present not-okay-ness.
A way out of the storm.
Two sufferings
And yet I knew pain couldn’t be completely avoided. I’d met people who tried to convince me that everything in the material world didn’t exist, was only an illusion. This seemed delusional. If you prick me, do I not bleed? If you poison me, do I not die?
Hearing the ‘Two Arrows’ teaching gave me a way to understand the difference between primary and secondary suffering.
Just as if a person is shot with an arrow and, right afterward, shot with another one, so that he would feel the pains of two arrows;
In the same way, when touched with a feeling of pain, the [normal] person sorrows, grieves, and laments, beats their breast, becomes distraught.
So he feels two pains: physical and mental.
Sallatha Sutta: The Arrow, Saṃyutta Nikāya (SN 36.6)
I took this teaching literally. I separated out the first arrow—physical pain—from everything else: grief, lamentation, distress. And so, when later in the sutta, the Buddha promises that a ‘well-instructed student’ will be ‘free from sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses and despairs’, I decided: well, I’ll be that well-instructed student. I’ll practise with supreme dedication. I will meditate away all my pain, distress and despair.
I’ll find a way out.
And for years, I dedicated myself to that practice. Thousands of hours of meditation. Hundreds of days of study. Months on retreat.
Just as promised, my suffering started to cease.
My voices quietened to a whisper; I could talk them down. The film of depression drifted around me, but didn’t settle—more a shadow hovering, then a cloak descending. The not-okayness replaced with a fervent hope of a future free from suffering. Physical pain remained, sure: the sciatica despite my yoga practice, my numb buttocks in meditation, my twitching knee. But I learned to breathe in and out, to not move or respond. And trusted this would burgeon into ultimate freedom: a state where even excruciating pain wouldn’t pierce my equanimity. Just like the next stanza of the sutta:
Sensing a feeling of pleasure, he senses it disjoined from it. Sensing a feeling of pain, he senses it disjoined from it. Sensing a feeling of neither-pleasure-nor-pain, he senses it disjoined from it.
This is called a well-instructed student of the noble ones disjoined from birth, aging, and death; from sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, and despairs. He is disjoined, I tell you, from suffering & stress.
Sallatha Sutta: The Arrow, Saṃyutta Nikāya (SN 36.6)
It was working. The disjoining was happening. I was doing it. I was on the way to freedom.
The grief of misunderstanding
Imagine my surprise when, ten years in, the trajectory reversed.
The voices: louder. The depression: twice as heavy. And then, new layers of suffering: grief. Of the teachings not coming true. Of betrayal: you told me, and you lied.
So, I had to relearn what I thought I already knew.
I can become free from the second arrow of suffering—but not in the way I thought.
The first arrow will continue to fly and bury itself in my flesh. The physical pain of sciatica, of a stubbed toe, of menstrual cramps, of scalding flesh, of a lump in my breast.
But also the first-arrow, first-level pain of losing what I love: when I am kept apart from my grandmother and her death process during Covid; when I am separated from my parents and sister by oceans and borders; when I misplace a favourite pair of sunglasses; when I have a rainy holiday rather than sun-drenched beach days.
The first-arrow of doubt: of disappointment in the Buddha’s teachings and my own ability to practise them. Of depression: that combination of physical lethargy with neurotic and repetitive thoughts. Of irritation: the unbidden flash through my torso in response to an opposing view, my mother’s voice, someone’s face.
It is the second arrow from which I can be free. I can be free from truly believing it can be different. I am releasing the ‘samsaric fantasy’ that my life will be more comfortable or certain. All I can hope for is to let go of the craving for any of this to go away.
‘For a well-instructed student of the noble ones, clearly seeing this world and the next, desirable things don't charm the mind and undesirable ones bring no resistance.’
Instead of freedom from grief, it’s freedom from the craving for grief to stop. Instead of freedom from sorrow, it’s freedom from resistance to sorrow arising. It doesn’t have the same ring of truth, the satisfying rhetoric. ‘Freedom from depression’ is easier to frame than ‘freedom from craving for the ceasing of depression.’
But it’s the only thing that makes sense when I, once again, feel the familiar weight of betrayal settling over my body, the well-known thrumming of fear in my chest.
These arisings do not stop.
All I can do is stop resisting them.