The Greatest Joy

Adversities can tun into good opportunities. — Tibetan saying.

In “The Book of Joy” the Dalai Lama talks about a Tibetan Monk who was imprisoned and ruthlessly tortured for 18 years. Of the approximately 130 prisoners in this particular facility, he was one of only 20 who survived. When he was released and found his way to India, he told the Dalai Lama of his experiences and discussed the dangers he experienced. The Dalai Lama expected to hear about the dangers to his life.

Instead, the monk said that he had been in danger of losing “his compassion for his Chinese guards.”

Let that sit for a moment. I’ve been thinking about it for days and I am still trying to wrap my head around it. Can you imagine enduring 18 years of imprisonment and torture and feel even a shred of compassion for those responsible? It’s certainly not easy. Yet we have examples throughout history of people who have somehow managed to endure incredible suffering, often at the hands of others, including imprisonment and torture. Holocaust survivors, Nelson Mandela, Jesus, Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, Veterans and Prisoners of Wars, First Responders, just to name a few. Not only have they survived, but many have found a way to experience compassion, peace, and joy on the other side of it.

There is a belief among more than one spiritual tradition that joy is something that occurs because of suffering. We must pass through suffering in order to fully experience joy. Even further, the greater the suffering, the greater the joy on the other side of it. The suffering itself is believed to provide the opportunity to grow and evolve, to learn, to view the world from a different perspective and see things differently. Inherent in that opportunity is the opportunity to find greater joy.

How does a monk maintain compassion for the guards who are torturing him to the degree that his life is constantly in danger, as he is witnessing the deaths of most of his fellow inmates? It’s hard to imagine, but stay with me.

Perhaps first he simply accepts that he is suffering and that he does not control those responsible for his suffering. He knows he can only control his response to the suffering. He most likely has been taught that suffering is inevitable and can be an opportunity. He may therefore find a way to allow himself to be open to what he can learn from the suffering he must endure. He also knows that only he can decide how he will approach the suffering. He has a choice to try to hide, to try to resist, to try to fight. He knows, however, that the only way to deal with suffering is to pass through it, so he chooses to accept it and work with it as best he can.

Perhaps he widens his perspective in an effort to see his suffering as just part of a bigger picture, rather than as the only or whole picture. Rather than simply looking at what is in front of him and seeing torture and death, he takes a mental step back and sees his situation as only one of many different situations, most of them also involving suffering. The guards may be there voluntarily and enjoying every moment of the abuse they inflict; however, how could that happen to someone? What did those guards endure that would lead them to that place? Is it truly possible to inflict that kind of suffering on someone else and not experience suffering oneself? The guards may be there reluctantly, or against their own free will, out of desperate fear of what will happen to them if they do not do what they are told. What would we all do to preserve our own lives, to avoid torture, particularly if we were indoctrinated by our culture to believe that our dominance over others is somehow “right”? Until we are in that position, we simply do not know.

It is easy to judge, to blame, to think we would do it differently. We have seen throughout history, however, examples of entire cultures and societies buying into the need for atrocities in the name of self-preservation. None of those people were born with those beliefs, none of those people were born “evil.” They endured something that led them there.

Perhaps also the monk has developed a sense of common humanity with all other humans that allows him to see the oneness over the differences. He may be able to see that the Chinese guards are human as well, and simply by virtue of this common humanity they are more like him than unlike him. He may feel compassion that they are not able to experience this connection, which brings joy, knowing that the disconnection they experience brings suffering. He may therefore see that the guards are suffering too, and perhaps even more than those they are torturing because they are responsible for inflicting such suffering on another. He may believe that it is impossible to find joy, peace, freedom, or connection when one is inflicting suffering on another.

As I write this I find myself softening just a bit, able to imagine the suffering of these guards whose job it is to carry out such atrocities. In our country we have seen evidence of this. We have ourselves seen our own troops participate in horrific acts while at war, particularly during the Vietnam War. We know that most of these young men were not evil, were not killers, were not torturers. Yet, they participated in these acts out of a sense of necessity and self-preservation, having been indoctrinated into a belief that the “other” was an “enemy,” and they suffered greatly because of this. Many did not get their lives back after the war, many still suffer, decades later.

I have great compassion for our Vietnam Veterans, as do I have for all of our Veterans. How much more of a stretch is it to find compassion for the guards described by the monk? If I am able to find such compassion, then it helps me understand just a little bit better how the monk was able to do so, even while he was himself being tortured.

Granted, the monk in the story most likely had years of intensive training in the mindfulness arts such as meditation, compassion, nonjudgment, and loving kindness. He therefore entered the situation with a very strong foundation from which to rise. Most of us will never experience such intense training, and luckily most of us will never experience such torture. There is still much we can take from this and apply to our own lives.

We all suffer, and many of us can point to patterns or themes in our suffering. For some of us it’s relationship suffering, for others professional or work, for others loss, and others illness or disabilities. We often find ourselves getting caught up in our suffering, getting stuck in it. We resist it, try to get around it, try to numb it, try to fight it. How many of us simply accept it and work to pass through it? How many of us view it as an opportunity, as something not happening to us but actually happening for us, to help us grow and develop? And how many of us are willing to take that mental step backwards and, instead of viewing it as the whole world, view it as just a small part of something bigger. Perhaps there is another side to our suffering, or another way to see it. How many of us are willing to see ourselves not as sole sufferers in the world, but as simply one of billions of others just like us who are also suffering at this very moment in time? Some are suffering more, some less, but since suffering is universal then we know that all are suffering at least sometimes.

It is real that our suffering is an opportunity. As we accept and pass through suffering we can learn about ourselves, about others, about our common human bond. Our suffering is a great opportunity to practice viewing things from different perspectives, to step outside ourselves and see a bigger picture. It is an opportunity to search for the lessons, and to practice compassion and loving-kindness not only for others who are also suffering but also for those who may be the cause of ours. No one is exempt, and no one willing to inflict suffering on another is not suffering him or herself.

The Tibetan Monk in the story trained himself to hold onto his compassion for those who tortured him for 18 years, and to work through his intense suffering to find greater joy on the other side. It seems that if he can do that, most of us can train ourselves to find compassion for those in our lives who cause us discomfort, to accept and pass through our suffering to find the joy on the other side.

We, too, can find this greater joy.