Endurance Experts

A Perspective on Suffering from an Eastern Millennial Living in the West

Kenny Damara

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532675751
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

In a highly-connected global village, the flow of worldviews from East to West (and vice versa) has great potential for good, but also some dangerous pitfalls. What are some of those potentials and pitfalls, and how do they relate to the way in which we respond to the suffering we experience? How do those in the millennial generation and the generations that follow--whether living in the East or the West--stay committed to God and others through their suffering?Endurance Expertsbegins the journey that explores the answers to these questions and more.

Chapter 1

Suffering and Salvation in Circles

Have you ever watched a hamster on a running wheel? It runs inside a moving circle, seemingly with an immense sense of purpose, but gets nowhere. This is kind of hilarious to watch! Similarly—although it’s not hilarious—living in ignorance about the right way to respond to suffering causes us to live like a hamster in the circle of a running wheel. In order to get somewhere, rather than going nowhere despite much movement, we need to know how to respond intellectually and experientially to questions such as, “Why does suffering exist? And how should I face suffering in my life and in the world around me?” These are questions we all ask during life’s toughest moments.

People have always wondered why suffering exists and how we are to respond to it. Like many people today, Siddhartha Gautama—the ancient Indian prince who became the Buddha—also asked these questions. The life of the Buddha and his search for truth are a warning about the reality of suffering, the impact it can have on a person, and how to respond to this reality.

The Suffering of the Buddha

Historical accounts tell us that Siddhartha Gautama was born in Kapilavastu, near Nepal. Buddhist tradition has it that his father, King Suddhodana, wished to shield Siddhartha from the ills of life that were driving people of his time to seek salvation through the rigorous means of asceticism.1 Like many parents today, he had dreams of what he wanted his son to become. Suddhodana wanted Siddhartha to be a great king who would further their empire. Despite his father’s efforts, Siddhartha did discover suffering when he ventured outside the protection and comfort of the palace.

As the story goes, Siddhartha’s discovery of suffering was the result of three or four successive visits to Lumbini Park, where his attention was held by things that seemed abnormal to his princely eyes: a decrepit old man, a diseased man, a dead man, and finally an ascetic.2

On each of these trips he was accompanied by one of his servants, who gave him an explanation of the suffering Siddhartha saw. When at first Siddhartha came upon the old man, he was perplexed by the fact that humans grow old, and wondered if this would happen to him. He learned from his servant that all humans grow old and weak with time. On his next trip, he came upon a sick and dying man. This too shocked him, and he learned that humans fall prey to sickness and disease. On the third trip, the commotion of a man being carried to a funeral on a bier arrested his attention. His servant explained that the man was dead. He learned that all humans are born and must die one day. He was deeply disturbed by the reality of death.

The reality of suffering in its various hues shook Siddhartha to his soul . . . just as perhaps you, dear reader, are deeply disturbed by the reality of suffering in the world, and in your own life.

On yet another trip, Siddhartha saw a religiously-clad man, who had a serene expression on his face and seemed to have found spiritual victory. I am making a pure guess, but a highly plausible one, that having seen all this, Siddhartha probably asked, “What does one do with so much suffering in life, and how does one emerge victorious like this serene man?” At any rate, he did not know how to respond to all that he had seen, and so after these encounters, he began his search for the truth. He was determined to find the reason for suffering and the remedy for it.

Accounts relate how Siddhartha travelled to various teachers and sages, from whom he sought truth, only to be disappointed each time. Later he retired to the forest to seek truth on his own through severe discipline and meditation, so much so that at one point when “he touched the skin of his belly, he took hold of his backbone.”3 After six or seven years, when he realized that this extreme method brought him no peace or liberation, he resorted to the “Middle Way,” a system with neither the rigors of meditation he was going through nor the normal pleasures other sages were permitting. One day he finally found “enlightenment” when he was sitting under the serenity of a large tree. So it is said that Siddhartha Gautama had become the Buddha, the enlightened one, the one who had conquered suffering and was able to affirm,

I am freed; and I comprehended . . . ignorance was dispelled, knowledge arose, darkness was dispelled, light arose even as I abided diligent, ardent, self-resolute.4

The Buddha was born, or rather self-made: the one who, through the powers of his mind and heart, had supposedly escaped or overcome suffering in the flesh. Wouldn’t many today give anything to escape or overcome suffering through this Middle Way philosophy? Sadly, many today, thinking it possible, have bitten into the worm of the Middle Way methodology—hook, line, and sinker!

Salvation in Circles

As I observe these events in the life of the Buddha, I can’t help but notice that his quest for truth and salvation may have come full circle after all was said and done, so that in the end he arrived at no better conclusion than when he first began. There is something about Siddhartha Gautama’s perception of salvation, and what it means to be saved or liberated, that makes me think he never arrived at the state of enlightenment he claimed—or that this “enlightened state” was actually one of even greater darkness and deception than when as a young prince he was shielded from the reality of suffering by his father. What he said on two significant occasions causes this suspicion in me. First, what he said upon supposedly being enlightened, and second, what he said on his deathbed.

At the time of his so-called enlightening, notice that he said, “I am freed . . . ”5 Whenever a person claims to be free, it begs three questions. First, who or what are they free from? Second, what bound them to what they are now free from? And third, who freed them from what they could not resist being bound by? Please think about that sequence for a moment.

To answer these questions in the case of Siddhartha: He was freed from suffering; ignorance bound him; but then, who freed him? He answers this in the same quote above, “I abided diligent, ardent, self-resolute.”6 Many years later, on his deathbed, he said, “All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation.”7 Or as another version records,

The master opened his lips a last time, “All things individual die—strive earnestly—to find liberation—” his last faint words mingled and were lost in the breeze that stirred the sal trees.8 (Emphasis mine)

Several things are conspicuous about Siddhartha’s notion of salvation. First, it is something a person must gain for themselves by abiding “diligent, ardent, self-resolute.” You must “work hard” to gain it, just as he did. But once you have gained it you still have no hope, because—in his own words—all things, including the one who has gained his own salvation, “die”; they are “changeable,” and “not lasting.” Where then has a person who has worked hard to earn his own salvation arrived, when at the end of his life he comes to die, and is trusting in that same hard work which is “changing” and “not lasting”? If the hard work is “not lasting,” has he not arrived at the same point where he began his quest for salvation, to once again begin that hard work? Isn’t this a circular notion of salvation? Hasn’t the person gone around in circles time and time again, only to arrive again at the point where they began, of having no assurance of being saved or liberated?

This is what I’d like to call the doctrine of “Salvation in Circles.” It is actually an oxymoron, because true salvation does not see people being led in circles, but ultimately liberates them with the truth from the circular rut of lies they are caught in, allowing them to progress onward. I call it Salvation in Circles only to illustrate the worldview it represents: that of believing one has been liberated in life, and then admitting the hopelessness of one’s self-saving efforts when faced with the reality of death.

As you read, I wonder if you see your life described here. In your quest for meaning and satisfaction, are you running around in circles looking for someone to save you?

By Salvation in Circles, I actually mean no salvation, no liberation, at all. It is present bondage, and if the circle is never straightened out, it ultimately leads to damnation; that is, to a future of eternal bondage. It may appear to be salvation or “nirv...