I think that if I had known this back then, I would have spared myself a great deal of anguish. I am referring to the third kind of suffering spoken of in Buddhism—the so-called “all-pervasive suffering.” Because I was definitely suffering, and with a depth greater than anything I had experienced up to that point, yet I could find no rational reason for feeling the way I did. On the contrary, the major issues in the external world that had troubled me for years had already been resolved, and it was difficult to find any rational explanation for my inner state.
And yet I felt deeply empty and unhappy, and my inability to understand why drove me to intense reading. Over time, what I encountered in books began to bring clarity and understanding to the processes I was going through, and a significant part of that I have already shared here on the site. The most accurate word to describe this kind of suffering, however, I found in Buddhism—in the teaching of the Four Noble Truths, which explain the nature of dukkha (human suffering). This teaching speaks of three different kinds of suffering, the third of which is all-pervasive suffering or the suffering of conditioned existence. The reason for this suffering is that the individual directly experiences the impermanence of all conditioned things. It is the subtlest of all forms of suffering—it becomes perceptible only after the weight of the other two has diminished.
Usually, we are familiar with the other two kinds of suffering—“the suffering of suffering” and “the suffering of change,” both of which are connected with the frustration of our desire for a life without pain and our need for security. The suffering of suffering arises whenever a person resists accepting the fact that pain exists in life and that it is a normal part of being a human being in a body. The suffering of change is described in Buddhism as the suffering produced by our attachment to permanence, which conflicts with the fundamental existential fact that everything in our lives changes, that we cannot indefinitely hold on to what brings us pleasure and joy. What was initially experienced as happiness and enjoyment later turns into a source of suffering. The third kind of suffering is described as “so subtle that, against the background of the habitual state of mind, ordinary beings do not perceive it; it becomes conscious only when the first two kinds of suffering have already weakened.”
For me, it is not difficult to see the connection between this description of all-pervasive suffering in Buddhism and what Jung says about analysis—namely, that external problems must first be resolved in order for a person to be freed for an encounter with deeper inner problems. Although this principle has its exceptions (processes may unfold in parallel, even without external resolution), one thing is certain: the encounter with the deeper layers of psychic life is painful.
What is nigredo in Jungian analysis (depression as an archetypal experience and the beginning of the individuation process) is the dark night of the soul in Christian literature, the dense pain-body for Eckhart Tolle, and all-pervasive suffering in the Buddhist teaching of the Four Noble Truths. It turns out that the causeless, deep sadness and unhappiness, inexplicable to the rational mind, does in fact have a cause—and although different authors and traditions give it different names, they are referring to the same phenomenon. It is the activation of spiritual processes, because the time has come for ego-based strategies of dealing with life to give way to forces of a higher, transpersonal order.
The most characteristic feature of this kind of suffering is a deep sense of emptiness and loneliness, arising from the experience of impermanence and the realization that sooner or later everything disintegrates. In my own experience, this was accompanied by the feeling that a thick wall had descended between myself and the outer world. The fact that the wall was transparent—that others could see me and I could see them—did not make it any less real. In fact, this wall was one of the most real things I have ever experienced in my inner life: the birds were there, people were there, entertainments were there, the sun was shining in the sky… and yet nothing could evoke joy simply from their existence.
This state was described best by one of my clients whose young son had fallen ill with one of the most complicated forms of diabetes, requiring constant monitoring of his blood sugar levels, since any deviation was life-threatening. A device had been implanted in the child’s body to continuously display his blood condition after every meal, emotion, or event. “The most impermanent thing in life is my son’s blood sugar level,” she said during our session. Before the diagnosis, she had been an exceptionally positive and joyful person—she delighted in birds, grass, everything. Small things brought immense joy; she was filled with friendliness and love. After her son’s diagnosis, however, her life became a nightmare. Finishing her story, she added, “Now even the birds outside and the sunlight in the leaves fill me with revulsion.”
We turn to spirituality (or psychotherapy) when we have a problem—when we suffer. The difficulty is that if the questions we ask arise from all-pervasive suffering, ego-oriented psychotherapy cannot help. It can certainly assist in resolving human problems—but only if our suffering belongs to the first two categories. That is its task: to help us achieve our desires through the power of mind, intention, and will. But when the time comes to encounter the deepest layers of psychic life and we experience the suffering of conditioned existence, our desires begin to change and weaken. This cannot be otherwise, if inner transformational processes have brought us to the point where we constantly perceive impermanence. The moment we desire something, we also see its end. We see how sooner or later it becomes something else—how birth leads to death, possession to loss, meeting to separation. This is the gift of all-pervasive suffering: it penetrates to the very core of our bones, reaching layers inaccessible while we remain in the trance of sensory perception. The thick transparent wall descends so that we may go deeper.
The First Noble Truth of Buddhism states that life is suffering: “Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering; union with the unpleasant is suffering; separation from the pleasant is suffering; not getting what one wants is suffering; in short, the five aggregates of attachment are suffering.” The Second Noble Truth tells us the cause of suffering—desire. As long as we remain bound by desire, we will continue to be reborn into embodiment, and embodiment means limitation and impermanence, birth and death, illness and aging. The Third Noble Truth teaches that the cessation of suffering comes only through liberation from desire, and the Fourth explains how—through right practice (the Noble Eightfold Path). Freedom from desire is freedom from suffering, and suffering itself can be experienced not only as pain or sorrow, but also as dissatisfaction and the sense that something essential is missing.
When we enter the stage of all-pervasive suffering, the force of desire begins to weaken naturally. The danger here is falling into the trap of the “desire not to be,” which accompanies depressive states—the wish not to experience the world, to be nothing, to be free from painful feelings. Buddhism describes three channels through which craving flows: (1) desire for sensory pleasure, (2) desire to be, and (3) desire not to be. Depression corresponds to the desire not to be. When the time comes, this desire too must be relinquished, because it also sustains suffering. It becomes clear why various authors recommend not action, but neutrality (M. Tamura), presence (Eckhart Tolle), meditation (Osho), or the transcendence of opposites (Jung). These are different terms for the same thing—the appropriate way of relating to the third form of desire and suffering.
Thus, causeless suffering does in fact have its cause: the time has come to part with many things to which we have long been attached. When we succeed in this separation, it is natural to allow ourselves to grieve. But this will no longer be the tearing anguish of impermanence or the burning rage that life is not as we wish it to be—it becomes a natural sorrow for the limitations and losses that life inevitably imposes. This process concludes in humility and surrender as a way of life. Only then do we understand that this was the true meaning of what we went through—something we could not comprehend while immersed in it. Causal explanation, which seeks reasons in the past, gives way to teleological explanation, which seeks the cause in the future—in the goal of our development. Then we understand Jung’s words:
“I do not create myself; rather, I happen to myself.”
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
See also the article “The Third Kind of Desire.”
