Cattāri Brahmavihārā

I don’t know why but it has suddenly struck me as completely strange that we look away, bury our heads in the sand and “don’t want to know” when we are confronted with suffering. Now, this may not be everyone’s response to suffering and it is certainly not the only thing we do to escape it but it is the strategy that I seem to have defaulted to recently. And, of all possible ways to meet our suffering, wilfully ignoring it and half-wishing it away seems like the worst possible response in terms of the Eightfold Path: how can we comprehend suffering if we turn away from it at every opportunity? As yet I’m unclear what to make of this and I need to proceed a little more gingerly than usual with myself as I have been rattled yet again by the ebb and flow of life and battered about by the worldly winds. Still, it is worth contemplating just how we meet our suffering as understandng it is the key to freedom.