Let’s Talk About Suffering
(and how to ease life’s pains)
A lot of folks in the West hear the word "Buddhism" and immediately think of karma and reincarnation. But often, those concepts—as popularly understood—have more in common with Hinduism than with what the Buddha actually taught. For me, Buddhism’s appeal lies not in metaphysical beliefs, but in its deeply practical insight: that life involves suffering, and that there’s a way to ease that suffering.
Over 2,500 years ago, the Buddha offered a radical and still-relevant teaching: that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. This isn't a cliché. It’s an invitation to wake up—to recognize our role not just as experiencers of life, but as participants in either healing or harm. Whether we realize it or not, our thoughts, words, actions, and beliefs either ease pain or amplify it—for ourselves and others.
Sometimes, our first real act of healing is simply to stop feeding the flame of suffering.
As Brad Warner puts it in Hardcore Zen, “Even if the whole world is nothing but a bunch of jerks doing all kinds of jerk-type things, there is still liberation in simply not being a jerk.”
I’ve come to love that quote because it reminds me that I don’t need the world to change in order for me to find peace—I just have to stop contributing to the chaos.
When I Stopped Trying to Win the Argument
I remember a time when I was in the middle of a heated conversation with someone I love. It started over something minor—doesn’t it always?—but quickly snowballed into a full-blown emotional standoff. I could feel that old familiar rush: the need to be right, the compulsion to correct, the belief that I had to make them understand.
But underneath it all, if I’m honest, I wasn’t just trying to win an argument—I was trying to soothe some part of myself that felt dismissed. And the more I pushed, the more disconnected we both became.
Eventually, I went quiet—not as a tactic, but as a realization. I saw clearly, just for a moment, that the fight wasn’t solving anything. I wasn’t being heard, and I wasn’t hearing them either. So I breathed. I let the moment pass without another jab or defense. I stopped feeding the flame.
And in that space, something shifted. Not immediately, not magically—but meaningfully. Because sometimes, choosing silence over one more swing is its own kind of healing.
In that silent, still space where my heart and mind met for a brief moment of respite, I realized: I could just let go and return to love.
I had wanted validation—but I didn’t need it. It was the need—or rather, the belief in the need—that had me going to W.A.R. (We. Are. Right.). That inner campaign to win, to defend my worth, to prove my perspective... that was what kept the suffering alive.
But when I let go of the need to be right, to be validated, and to be seen a certain way, I was able to listen instead. I was able to soften instead. I was able to be free instead.
Suffering Is Often Self-Created (Which Means It Can Be Uncreated)
One of the hardest truths I’ve had to accept—and one of the most freeing—is that much of my suffering has been self-inflicted. Not the pain itself, but the layers I piled on top of it: the rumination, the self-judgment, the looping soundtracks of “I should’ve known better,” or “I should’ve said this... I should’ve done that.”
It’s not the wound that lingered—it was my grip on the story about the wound.
There’s a well-known teaching from the Buddha that frames this perfectly:
Life hits us with two arrows.
The first arrow is pain — sharp, sudden, and often unavoidable. It’s the tangible hurt of living: loss, illness, heartbreak, etc.
The second arrow is suffering — the one we fire ourselves in response to the first. It’s the story we spin around the pain, the meaning we assign, the blame we cast, the resistance we grip like armor.
And it’s this second arrow where our power lies.
We may not be able to dodge the first wound — but we can choose how we respond to it. That response is what determines whether we deepen the injury... or begin to heal.
I’ve fired that second arrow into my own chest more times than I can count. Over and over again, I’ve prolonged my own pain by replaying the hurt, defending my ego, or clinging tightly to what I believed should’ve been.
But learning to pause—just pause—before reacting, before spiraling, before lashing out or shrinking in… that has become a kind of superpower I didn’t know I had access to.
And this superpower?
It’s what heals karma—or rather, our karmic patterns of harm.
It breaks the chain of unconscious cause and effect—the loop of drama and emotional reactivity that keeps suffering alive in our lives. It’s the breath between trigger and choice. It’s where healing begins.
Peace Isn’t Passive
One of the biggest misconceptions about choosing peace is that it’s some kind of spiritual bypass. Like if you’re not reacting, you must be detached or checked out. But the kind of peace I live by and teach my clients and students to practice is anything but passive.
It’s the peace of discipline.
The peace of choosing not to retaliate.
The peace of noticing a trigger and not biting the hook.
The peace of knowing your worth so deeply that you don’t need to prove it in every conversation. The peace of staying soft and humble in a world that often rewards hardness and aggression.
And sometimes—maybe more often than we care to admit—it’s the peace of sobriety.
Because the truth is, most people I know don’t just react to pain—they numb it. Alcohol, weed, pills, sugar, sex, screen time, social media, achievement, busyness—pick your poison. We don’t just feel pain and respond. We feel pain, react, and then we medicate that reaction to avoid having to truly sit in the discomfort.
But choosing peace means not checking out.
It means not pouring the drink or hitting the vape or opening the extra tab just because our nervous system is screaming for escape. It means not abandoning ourselves in the moment when we most need to stay present.
Very few of us know how to sit with pain and even fewer stay long enough to learn from it. Peace, real peace, asks us to stay.
To stay in the room with our emotions.
To stay in the conversation without trying to dominate it.
To stay in our bodies when every impulse is screaming for distraction.
To stay with ourselves—especially when we want to run.
It’s a moment-to-moment choice — one I don’t always get right. And I don’t expect my clients or students to, either.
But I keep showing up. I keep practicing.
And I invite us all to do the same.
Not to be perfect — but to cultivate just a bit more mindfulness. To stop adding harm where there doesn’t need to be any. Because that, too, is an act of peace.
Your Pause Has Power
So, why talk about suffering? Because we all feel it—and most of us were never taught how to navigate it skillfully. We were told to fight it, hide it, numb it, or turn it into a project. But what if we tried something different?
What if we just paused?
What if we got curious about our pain instead of judgmental?
What if we noticed when we were about to lash out—and chose not to?
What if we let ourselves feel without falling apart?
That pause—that breath—that choice to stop feeding the flame?
That’s where healing begins.
Final Thought
If nothing else, I hope this serves as a reminder:
You don’t need the whole world to get better before you can begin to suffer less. You just need to stop participating in your own unnecessary pain. That, alone, is a revolution.
It’s what the Buddha pointed to over 2,500 years ago—not that we could avoid pain, but that we could meet it differently. That we could respond instead of react. That we could stop firing the second arrow.
In that pause—between pain and response—there is liberation. And that liberation doesn’t begin with fixing the world. It begins with choosing peace in the middle of it.
Walking beside you, choosing peace,
— Alaric
If this reflection spoke to you, I’d love to keep the conversation going.
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✨ And if this piece stirred something in you, I’d love to hear it — feel free to leave a comment below and share your reflections. What resonates? What challenges you? What brings you peace?
Other offerings:
Books: Heart of Humanity and Living Peace
Psycho-spiritual Coaching: www.ZenCowboy.org
Thank you for this wonderful insight to life's hard times. It was exactly what I needed to hear today.