Nonduality explained: suffering.
Many non-duality teachings focus on suffering because the experience of stepping beyond your false face, revealing who you actually are, can easily be interpreted as the end of suffering. Our minds cause us so much suffering that simply stepping beyond your addiction to thought is very liberating in that way. Liberation is another word that’s used. However, I wish that nonduality teachers did not focus on this or that they focused on it differently.
Having the idea that nonduality is about the end of suffering turns it into a greedy enterprise, especially for us Western people. We simply turn it into a commodity, like another drug to take, another way to be happy, or a fabulous vacation we can have. We turn it into this “thing.” Into a completely self-involved search where we’re trying to get rid of suffering.
So, I’d like to change that conversation. Instead of saying that it’s the end of your personal suffering, why don’t we think of it as the end of you causing so much suffering in others? Globally, collectively, it would be the end of us causing the suffering of the Earth itself—climate change, pollution, or all these constant wars and conflicts and things that go on because people’s minds are just so freaking crazy. Everybody is so self-involved that everything turns into conflict. That’s a lot of suffering.
If we took the nondual search into something that we’re giving back or, even better than that, us working to put ourselves into a state of balance so that I, individually, am causing less suffering by not going along with all the pretending that’s happening all the time, wouldn’t that be a better way to look at it? The end of suffering—the end of you causing so much suffering in others.
Now, all of a sudden, we’ve taken the nondual search and turned it into this—it feels more important that way, doesn’t it? To take it out of our habitual narcissism and realize this is about everyone and everything else too. So, the end of suffering. Yeah, let’s do that.