Misery Loves Company, even the Buddhists agree!

Kiyoshi Kojin

When I was setting off for Japan in my 20s, an old friend joked that he wouldn't fly out for the wedding. As predictably as my getting involved with a Japanese woman, and marrying her, I also became interested in Buddhism. The humility that comes with age has mostly to do with our failing bodies (oy vey) but is also about coming to terms with how very not unique we are, and like our children going through the stages of youth, in time I think many of us come to see we are but people going through stages. This was my Japan Buddhism stage then …

My mom was an introvert in most senses of the word, but particularly when it came to her abhorrence of small talk and her love of a good, deep one-on-one conversation. Saturday afternoons, when my dad had a long shloff (a longstanding and very favourite habit of his developed after spending decades living in a city - Jersulalem - where if you weren’t religious there really was nothing else to do on the sabbath), my mom reserved these precious quiet stretches of time for long catchups with her sister who lives in a suburb of Tel Aviv. My mother was not a party person but she was a phone person. When my sister Noa lived for about a decade in Israel, Mum had great talks with her on the phone.

I got the same benefit from these phone chats whilst living in Japan.

My mother, ever curious, if not quite as open as she hoped to be where things spiritual were concerned, always struggled with the Buddhist ideas I tried selling her. The whole ‘life is suffering’ thing just sounded too depressing to her. I had real difficulty coming up with a rebuttal. Mirrored back to me, it did sound depressing. I found it hard to argue back, but then, I’m not the lawyer in the family, and after many decades I’ve come to realize for a guy who teaches communication for a living and writes for passion, I’m crap, as the English put it, at arguing. At least in the moment I am. Most long-form writers are like that, I think. Shit at arguing back in the moment. Coming up with that zinger. That’s why we write. Spending all our time thinking of the comebacks we couldn’t think up in the moment. You’ve likely read that idea before. It is, I think, how Aaron Sorkin has made his millions.

But back to Buddhism and my attempts to now convince if not my dead mother than one of you (there can be humour in suffering too, ya know), why there is some positive in a philosophy that seems so steeped in the seemingly most moribund of notions.

Take this particularly heavy Buddhist parable. It tells of a woman having suffered the greatest tragedy a woman can suffer, the loss of her child. She goes to the Buddha, as I remember it, pleading for some way to bring her child back. The Buddha suggests the only possibility is to see if she can procure a common spice from the house of anyone in her community upon whom death and tragedy have not visited. And so the woman does, going door-to-door to ask each and every one of her neighbours, near and far, if they have the spice, which they all do. She then asks if death and tragedy have knocked at their door. Of course these too they have all experienced. The woman cannot find a single home upon whom there has been no death or tragedy encountered. Thus, she might resign herself to the fact she can never get her child back. What she finds instead, in learning of the deep suffering of others, is that she is not alone in what she must endure.

I read an article the other day about seeking not that work which makes you happy, but rather that which gives you purpose. Why? Because happiness is fleeting. Because happiness will fail you. Because it does not last. It is indeed fleeting. You can see the vicious cycle. But purpose. That is an aim far more effective as a consistent lodestar. There will be rough patches along the way. But if what you pursue isn’t about what make you happy but rather about what gives you purpose you will withstand, you have a far greater chance of persevering (brings to mind Seth Godin and his book The Dip, about when to quit and when to stick with something - if you’re looking for more on that).

Life is suffering. The Buddhists are far too wise to simply ask of us to seek out happiness. Rather the aim is often calm or peace. I was at a funeral some years back. I remember looking round the room and having the epiphany that we all eventually have: that everyone in that funeral home, every single one of us period, will die one day. The whole room, from the elderly to the teeniest tiniest tots — we’ll all be gone. Reminds me of a joke that recurred just after my mother passed. People coming to visit the shiva house, paying their condolences and to my same-aged friends, most of whom still had both their parents (and in good health!) and likely imagined the loss of a parent as some far off abstract thing I found myself saying, If god forbid one day you have to deal with this …

If … right.

Time really is the great equalizer.

Suffering gives purpose to community in that when shared it is one of the truest ways to bring people together. Or it does when people are honest and open about it. As a half-time introvert (also known as an ambivert to use a trendy word I’d rather not use), the only parties I like are funeral parties. I’m only sort of kidding. But I honestly do like the authenticity that emerges from people at a visitation. As opposed to the self-protecting and bogus small talk that a regular party usually brings out in most people. Yawn. (Except a wedding with a good band or dj — the dancing: I can get right into that!)

What I was never able to convey to my mother on those long long-distance phone calls home, my philosophy stemming from all those Dalai Lama books and the Buddhist precepts book that you could find in some Japanese hotels (well it’s not going to be a bible, so what do you expect?), is that for me when I can reveal my suffering to another and they in turn, inevitably can do the same - I feel bonded with that person. Life is so bloody hard. It’s not for sissies, as my dad always said. Well that’s for damn sure. But it’s a whole lot less lonely when we can share our truths with others. And our truths are usually about the bumps and bruises we’re experiencing along the road that is our life, our life that didn't quite turn out exactly as planned, our life that we aim to have much purpose but that isn’t always happy.

It’s okay. Me too.