It is what it is
How to remove suffering.
conflict of realities
Everyone suffers, but few understand why. Suffering happens when two realities in your mind collide. It’s a conflict between the actual reality of what the world is, versus your internal reality of what you think the world should be. There’s two ways to resolve this conflict: either change your internal reality to match the world, or change the world itself. As long as these two realities remain different, conflict will persist. And when there is conflict, there is suffering.
All suffering is due to this conflict.
what suffering?
When I say suffering, I don’t mean physical pain. That’s just your body’s reaction to excessive physical stimuli, like exercise or touching a hot stove. No, I mean the mental anguish you feel when the world doesn’t match your desires. Your mind is aware there are two realities, but knows both can’t be true simultaneously.
Suffering and physical pain might overlap, but not necessarily. You might enjoy a hard workout despite the physical pain. Pain from exercising doesn’t make us suffer — because we want it. Some people might enjoy ice baths, but force a random person in an ice bath, and they’ll suffer. So suffering is entirely due to our thoughts and how they relate to the external world.
Think of suffering as broadly as you might imagine, including all forms of discomfort and negative feelings.1 It includes everything from major tragedies like losing someone you love, down to tiny annoyances like running out of coffee in the morning. It can manifest as anxiety, sadness, or anger. But whether it’s a chronic pain or a late train, all suffering has the same structure: a gap between what is and what we think should be. Close that gap and the suffering will disappear.
All suffering can be removed.
begin by noticing the conflict
You have two ways to resolve suffering: change your internal reality or change the world itself. I’ll focus on changing your internal reality, and let you figure out yourself how to change the world.
Begin by noticing the conflict. Clearly something is causing mental distress, find the source of it.
Think of your internal reality as a filter you see the world through. The moment you realize that you’re looking at the world through a filter, conflict arises. The filter begins to crack. You get a glimpse of the world as it really is, and it’s different from the world you see through the filter.
But instead of letting go of the filter, you want to hold onto it. You think, “if only the world I saw through the filter was correct”. You don’t like the world without the filter. So you either pretend there’s no filter at all, or convince yourself the world behind the filter will become the real world.
We cling to these false realities when we deep down know they’re false. We hold onto them because they represent what we want — our deeper desires. Even a tiny chance of them coming true keeps them alive in our minds. Sometimes we create alternate realities when the world changes but we refuse to let go of the old.
the wrong approach
After noticing the conflict, there’s two ways to deal with it. One works. The other makes things worse. The typical response to suffering is to bury it. You push the conflict deep into a corner of your mind and pile other things on top. wrong! Once you’ve hidden it well enough, you stop feeling it temporarily. So you think this makes it go away. Problem solved?
Not really, hiding a conflict doesn’t solve it. You see, the suffering exists only when the conflict is apparent in your mind. That is, only when both realities are simultaneously occupying your mind. You can hide the internal reality or the external world temporarily. The problem is, the conflict won’t go away. It lurks in the shadows of your mind, waiting for the perfect moment to return when your defenses drop. It’s like taking painkillers for a broken bone. The pain stops for a while, but the bone is still broken.
Suppressing conflicts can be dangerous too. People often turn to drugs or alcohol to mask the suffering. Or drown themselves in work or games to stop the conflict from creeping into their consciousness. I get it. It’s hard to distinguish whether you’re hiding a problem or actually solving it. Hiding works in the short-term — after all, the suffering seemingly stops. You might think that you solved the problem. For insignificant conflicts this might work. But if it keeps coming back again and again, you’re not dealing with it correctly.
Here’s the trap: wanting too hard to remove suffering often makes the situation even worse. It creates a new conflict on top of the existing one: you want it to stop, but it doesn’t. Ever noticed when something really sucks, and wanting to stop the bad feeling makes you feel even worse? You start with the original suffering, then add the suffering from wanting the suffering to stop. This can spiral: the worse you feel, the more desperately you want it to end, making it even worse.
How much you suffer depends on how strong your desire is. There’s a psychological distance between reality and desire. The stronger the desire, the longer the distance, the more you suffer. Suffering, which can either motivate you to move mountains, or crush your being.
the correct approach
The right approach to suffering is surprisingly simple: pure observation. The solution is to just observe the conflict in its entirety, and it will disappear together with suffering. Simple, but hard. See the desire, the want, the thoughts of what the world ought to be. Notice how this differs with how things are in the world. See both realities trying to occupy your mind at once. All of this should be felt and experienced with zero judgments or justifications. Just observe.
Imagine sitting alone in a completely silent and empty room. Take a conflict that causes you suffering. Now imagine the thoughts surrounding that conflict across you in the same room. You’re carefully and quietly observing all the thoughts. New thoughts will come up, including judgements about what you’re looking at. They’ll try to pick a fight with you. Don’t bother. Just give them the same treatment and observe.
If you’re lucky, you might find a ladder that takes you deeper through the chain of thoughts that explain the initial conflict. Each step helping you understand the next one. Perhaps you’re insecure about your looks. Ask why, and you might find you’re afraid of being alone. Ask why again, and it traces back to how you didn’t have any good friends as a kid. You’re trying to see the entire process of how you formed this specific picture of how the world should be - free of judgement, denial or suppression.
You can’t think your way out of an issue created by thoughts, you need something else. This kind of watching uses a different part of your brain — the part that senses rather than analyzes. It’s less thinking the thoughts, and more seeing the thoughts. A subtle but crucial difference. Follow each thought where it leads. Notice how they are not distinct from you — they’re part of you. Typically our default reaction is to reject such thoughts; instead we should notice how these thoughts are part of us.
Confronting your innermost conflicts is hard though. Your mind will do anything to avoid facing them. Even thinking about them can feel scary in a visceral way, like touching something forbidden. But maybe suffering is just a coping mechanism? A way to distract your attention away from deeper conflicts. Put another way, maybe suffering is a call for attention? A call you should answer. It’s a signal that something is wrong, requiring attention. If you feel lost with a problem, just follow where suffering leads. The scarier and stronger it feels, the more important what it’s pointing to.
Something interesting happens when you look at the conflict closely enough: what you want merges into what actually is. The internal reality ceases to exist, leaving only the external reality. The conflict dissolves. You feel an intense sense of freedom.
The suffering is no longer there.
which suffering to remove?
You might be tempted to remove all suffering altogether. Doing this would make you ‘enlightened’.2 But suffering isn’t completely useless to us. It plays an important role as a source of motivation. After all, conflicts can also be resolved by changing the world to match our desires. Our mind uses thoughts to create these conflicts, motivating us to resolve them. While having a conflict feels bad, the act of solving it can bring significant satisfaction. A life without any conflict would mean a life without motivation to do anything. This quite frankly would be an empty life.3
The trick is finding a good balance. Our desire for meaningful conflicts is rooted deep within our bones. Too few and we get depressed. Too many and we burn out. Suffering over what is worthwhile is part of life. Besides, without suffering you would throw pleasure away as well.4 We don’t really want that, do we?
So which conflicts should we keep? Well, if conflicts exist to motivate us, then keep only the ones that drive you to change the world in a worthwhile manner. Otherwise they don’t deserve to exist. You cannot undo death, nor can you change the past. Suffering over what you cannot change is not worth your energy. I previously wrote about problems worth solving, which might help you choose worthwhile conflicts.
Here’s a simple rule: you can resolve any suffering in your mind, but you can’t always change reality to match your desires. Choose only the suffering that is worth bearing to motivate you to act and change the world. Everything else should be observed away.
it is what it is
When you realize that it is what it is, the gap between what you want and what exists collapses immediately. The conflict no longer remains. With it goes the suffering. This isn’t about suppressing desires or passively resigning to external circumstances. It’s about deeply seeing your mind and the thoughts that occupy it, free of judgements.
Once you experience letting go of a harmful conflict, you understand real freedom and control. The highest level of life satisfaction and personal freedom comes from only having conflicts that matter. Ones that generate energy and joy. Remember though, if you want it too much, it becomes a source of suffering. But perhaps this suffering is worth having, at least temporarily to motivate you to remove the bad ones?
Suffering is created by our mind to make us act. The desire to end suffering can drive us to move mountains. But sometimes the answer isn’t moving mountains. Sometimes it’s just watching them carefully enough to realize they don’t need to be moved.
…I know. This felt like it was written by some guru trying to sell you their online course and meditation retreat. What can I say. It’s an important topic so I had to write about it. I’m satisfied if this resonates with just one person, or leads to just one less unnecessary conflict.
Parts of this essay were inspired by Jiddu Krishnamurti’s thoughts. If curious, I recommend his book Total Freedom.
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I know, it’s a broader definition than how people typically use the word. But we need a term that includes more than just physical pain. ↳︎
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Funnily, wanting to remove all conflict creates another conflict. Considering the fluidity and randomness of our thoughts, I find this conflict impossible to solve. ↳︎
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Sorry to say, but the monks in Buddhist temples seeking Nirvana are on a fool’s errand. The only time we’re truly free of all suffering is when we die. ↳︎
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Suffering and pleasure are two sides of the same coin, just like positive and negative prediction errors. ;) ↳︎