Resistance and Easier Said Than Done

Something that's challenging about Buddhist philosophy is that many of the words don't really mean what they seem to mean because they are used in different ways from the way we use them normally. So we tend to misinterpret them and resist the lessons that they offer. Resist is one of those words. Detach is another. Those are but a few.

Recently I read something that said that suffering equals pain times resistance. It was an interesting article, but it didn't really do much for me at the time. I just kind of filed it away. Today in restorative yoga her intention was self study. Yin yoga is always about letting go and letting gravity take over. It's about giving in. Letting time and gravity do the work.

Recently I wrote about letting things be instead of letting go because sometimes trying to let go is doing work itself. It is effort and letting go is about no effort. All of those things are resistance. The teacher today talked about what is holding us back from letting go. I don't remember if she used the word resistance, but it hit me. She talked about sometimes our body is holding us back. Sometimes our thoughts hold us back and today with our self study we should try to figure out what was holding us back from giving in to the poses.

It made me think about the idea of suffering equals pain times resistance and the Buddhist idea that suffering is optional and suffering comes from attachment. We can't always get rid of the pain, but we can get rid of our resistance to the pain which creates the suffering. Here's where the misinterpretation of words comes in.

Detachment doesn't mean to be cold and unfeeling. It means figuring out how to work through it. How are we resisting. Denial and being cold and unfeeling is actual resisting and creates suffering. So feeling the pain is not resisting and allows us to move through and suffering can dissipate eventually. Denial and forced detachment is lying to yourself and is actually more attached. I love irony and paradox!

The thought of the phrase "easier said than done", Khris's hated phrase, wandered through my head as well. I thought about it as a way of resisting pain before it happens and therefore creating suffering in the sense that people don't try things because of fear of pain or fear of failure. They are avoiding pain. But they are suffering nonetheless because they really want the results of the ideas that are "easier said than done", but they are afraid of the work or of the pain that they perceive will come along with it.

I'm not an easier said than done person, but my resistance sometimes comes in the form of the idea that people don't understand me. I fear my feelings will be hurt because people don't get my choices. So I don't open up or share things. I don't ask for help. I fear being judged.

So what's the lesson from this equation? When we feel like we are suffering, can we examine where the pain is and ask ourselves how or where we are resisting the pain. The pain may not go away, but maybe we can find ways to stop resisting and help the suffering go away.