Finding a deeper confidence
‘I don’t think there’s enough suffering in my life at the moment for me to fully wake up.’
I’m chatting with a friend. We’d been talking about practice, about a particular teacher we both loved. “And yet,” I said, “I’m not watching his teachings online but watching videos on how to ferment vegetables, or how to develop the perfect note taking system!”
Another friend of mine is like a dog with a bone when it comes to practice. They seriously want to get enlightened, and they probably will. They have a desperation that I don’t have.
This friend has struggled with very dark mental states over the years and they never want to feel that way again. Other friends have experienced great grief, loss or illness, like many of the great practitioners of the past.
The right amount of suffering
Buddhism tells us that human beings are uniquely primed for what is called awakening or enlightenment. That the human state, with its balance of pleasure and pain, is exactly what we need to ‘wake up’. The problem is we need just the right amount of suffering.
As a general rule, if there’s too much suffering in our lives, it will overwhelm us. You might be familiar with an image called The Wheel of Life. It’s often displayed at the doorway of Buddhist temples.
Yama, the Lord of Death, holding the Wheel of Life from The Welcome Trust
The Wheel of Life depicts the whole of life with all its many realms, or states of being, as well as showing a path to Nirvana. When there’s incredible suffering in someone’s life, we could say they are in a hell realm. In the face of so much suffering it’s hard to practice the Dharma. That said, it’s not impossible to wake up from the very depths of despair. I’ve heard stories of people who’ve done so.
On the other hand, if there’s not enough suffering in our lives, then where is the motivation to practice at all? It’s as if we are living in a ‘god realm’ enjoying all the pleasures of life and, continually distracted by them, we’re able to ignore our own mortality and that of others around us.
Take a moment to ask yourself where you are on the spectrum? Is there too much suffering in your life or too little? It might seem strange to be wondering if you need more suffering in your life!
After that chat with my friend she sent me a voice note, “I was just laying in the bath thinking about our conversation. You must have come to the Dharma with a problem or a question, something you needed to solve. So did you find the answer to your question?”
Isn’t it great to have friends that ask such good questions?!
What is the question that drives your search?
I’d came across Buddhism when I was 20 years old. What was the problem I came with? Life was okay. I’d trained to be a hairdresser, I had friends and a good relationship with my family, but the big question for me was, “Is this really it?”
I couldn’t bear the idea of a conventional life, a life without some deeper meaning or orientation. I’d looked for that meaning in music, in culture and in drugs. And there were glimpses. Listening to ecstatic music in my car parked on the pier in the little seaside town where I lived. Reading the poetry of Jack Kerouac and the Dharma Bums - Let slide sweetly, The transformations, Of the thinking. Taking acid at a folk festival and finding a magical world of beauty and love. But they were only glimpses. I got bored.
I often say that I didn’t come to Buddhism through suffering. But as I write this, I see there is a kind of suffering in wanting a deeper meaning in life and not being able to find it.
I texted my friend back, “I came to Buddhism with the question, ‘There must be more to life than this’. And what I’ve discovered is that there isn’t. This is it. But it’s enough. And everything is going to be okay.”
It was an off-the-cuff reply, just words that came in the moment. Afterwards, I wondered what I meant.
I came to Buddhism looking for something. Something big. Something like ‘The Ultimate Meaning of Life’ (yes with capitals). I didn’t find it. What I found was a way of letting go of the searching.
There’s no longer a sense that life is lacking anything, quite the contrary. Sitting here drinking black coffee and writing to you, it all seems to carry a great meaning -but it doesn’t mean something else, something more, something in capitals. It means ‘sitting here drinking black coffee and writing to you.’ And there’s nothing missing.
One can look at the path to ‘awakening’ in terms of what we find along the way or what we lose.
I seem to have lost the sense that something is missing. I think I’ve found trust. You might call it faith or even confidence. Not confidence in something that is going to occur in the future, but confidence in the here and now.
I love the term ‘trusting confidence’. Confidence can seem to imply certainty, but what about when you have no certainty about anything, yet you trust life? You trust yourself, you trust the universe.
Maybe that can be called trusting confidence. A wabi-sabi confidence. A deeper confidence.
My friend texted again, “You were happy, then you were sad, then happy again." I replied, “That’s it.”
It was like this: you were happy
It was like this:
You were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.
It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.
At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent – what could you say?
Now it is almost over.
Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.
It does this not in forgiveness –
between you there is nothing to forgive –
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.
Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.
It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.
Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.
By Jane Hirshfield
Whether you feel there’s too much suffering in your life, or suspect there might be too little, I like to think that Red Ladder Studio can help with both.
You’ll notice there’s often an emphasis on the teachings that contain hard truths, like impermanence, death and disappointment.
But I’m also a firm believer that this impermanent, incomplete and imperfect life of ours is full of beauty. That the Dharma can be a way of falling more deeply in love with life, while, paradoxically, learning to let go of our attachment to it.
This post is from the Creative Buddhist Newsletter that goes out twice a month, sign up to get it delivered straight to your inbox.
‘Unshakable: Discover your innate confidence.’ The theme of the new Dharma Bundle, out March 1st 2025.
Find out more about the Dharma Bundle here or sign up below ↓
A ‘bundle’ of dharma resources, thoughtfully made and beautifully packaged.
