The Dark Way, the Bird Path, the Open Hand: Some Notes on Suffering

The tenderness in her voice. That’s what struck me as I listened to the voicemail an old friend left me recently. She told me how everyone she knows is suffering, broken.

Some have been ill for years and can’t figure out what’s going on. Others have gotten a diagnosis and don’t know if they will survive. Or they’ve lost the people or careers that they loved, or have passed the mid-century mark in their lives, and what of their dreams? One downright wept when told, “You are a wonderful parent. You are doing the best you can.”

At the end of her message, my friend asked if I would write something about suffering. My first reaction was a rush of compassion for her, and well, everyone.

My second reaction was the realization that this was the very question that had changed the course of my life almost 30 years ago.

After I graduated from college, I went to seminary to become a pastor. While I was there, it became painfully obvious to me, a 23-year old, that I had no idea what I could say about God to parents whose child had just died. I had no answer for suffering, no thing to say that would make it bearable.

So, I quit. In one sense, I’ve been lost ever since. In another that decision turned me from pastor to pilgrim, searching for the holy, seeking an Answer that will satisfy.

My 23-year-old self might very well have been right—that no answer about suffering will ever truly satisfy. That may be the point. If we can never have an answer to suffering, where does that leave us? Where does it lead us?

There are all kinds of directions we might go. For instance, it might be helpful to imagine that suffering is like gravity—it affects us all, and it does not care. If that’s the case, then how do we meet suffering?

Another possible direction is “the dark way, the bird path, the open hand.”

Let me explain. You might have heard of koans, but you might not but sure of what they are. They are a part of the Buddhist tradition, and they are meant to bring about enlightenment. The idea is this. Imagine your brain is a dog, and in particular one of those breeds of dogs who need to work, who need mental stimulation, to calm down. Like a Border Collie.

Koans give the mind good work to do, something to chew on. These “brain bones” are meant to bring about spiritual awakening.

The koan I’m thinking of tells of a pilgrim who was once asked what his teacher had been teaching him. He answered, “The dark way, the bird path, the open hand.” This doesn’t make sense.

And that’s the point—it’s a chance for the restless mind to gnaw and turn over and examine and get curious. This koan gives us three ways we might examine and get curious about suffering:

1). The dark way:

I live across from a slaughterhouse—it’s a small one, only one or two cows at a time, about as humane as you can get. But when I am sitting in my chair in the dark mornings and writing, I can hear the cows in their trailers, bawling.

And then the bawling stops.

And it breaks my heart.

And I love a good hamburger.

And I need protein and iron because of all the yoga I do.

And I decided to do my best to be a vegetarian, because one of the main principles of yoga is ahimsa—non-harming.

And I went to an acupuncturist who told me not eating meat was harming my body.

So what choice do I make? Because to eat, especially meat, is to do violence. We must eat to live and things (even a carrot) must die for us to eat. This is at the heart of how the world works.

Put that way, it’s dark, right?

Is there anything in our current world right now that doesn’t feel like the dark way? The world is on fire. We fight with words and weapons. Entropy—or the fact that everything, everything, will die and decay—is at the very heart of our existence, which means sometimes, it feels as if the dark way is the very fabric of the world.

That’s why some refuse to believe in the divine, because eating and entropy are just two of the facts of life, and not the happy Facts of Life from the 80’s, where all you needed was big hair and 30 minutes to solve every problem. If these dark ways are at the heart of the world, what kind of divine being would create such a creation and why in the hell would we want to worship them?

But the world is dark in other ways . . . and these are the places where we can change things.

Someone once asked the Dalai Lama, “Your Holiness, what do you think about self-hatred?” He looked confused and had to ask the person, “What’s that?” He had no idea that it was possible to hate the self.

Can you imagine?

The dark ways of the Western world lead us to hate ourselves and others . . . and unlike eating and entropy, these are entirely within our control. We have constructed the world in such a way that this is what we, this is what our children, are experiencing. And we know the cost of these things, and yet we keep doing them anyway—myself included.

It might not feel possible, but if we have arrived at these ways of being where we feel like we are never enough, never okay, by God, we can figure out ways to change this. And we must. For ourselves. For the young who inherit this world. If we want to hand them more than asps and adders, let’s get busy, shall we?

The dark way gives us a chance to acknowledge that which we have no control over (think Serenity prayer) and it demands we pay attention to what we can change. And do something to change it.

2). The bird path

My cancer diagnosis process was, like many, long and filled with uncertainty. I seemed like a best-case scenario, until I wasn’t. What’s funny is on the drive to every appointment I had, I saw a rare and beautiful bird—except for the appointment where I learned I had to have chemo. Then I only saw crows, picking at a dead rabbit along the road.

I adore birds. I am constantly scanning the skies and the fields for hawks and eagles, sand hill cranes and turkeys. I see them as signs, so when I didn’t see a beautiful bird on the way to that appointment, I knew I was going to have to have chemo.

Many cultures have looked to the winged ones for signs, because they seem gifted with powers most of us only dream about—soaring, flying, living light.

The bird path rises above the mundane, bring you closer and closer to heaven. It also teaches us about wings. In order to fly, we need opposing energies. We need light and dark, we need to ground and rise, we need to work and rest, strive and surrender.

Finding this balance can feel exhausting—just one more thing to do in a life that is already putting far too many demands on your over-taxed system.

That’s something else about the bird path. Birds not only now how to fly; they know how to nest. They know how to sit with what is fragile, protecting it and keeping it safe until it is fully winged and ready to fly.

The bird path also teaches us perspective. When we are suffering, we are in it. When I was sitting in the chemo chair and my life was falling apart, I was neck-deep in it. It was often so overwhelming I could barely breathe, and I kept putting my hand to my heart, because my heart literally hurt.

I didn’t pray while I was going through treatment or the end of my marriage. Why?

I didn’t think I was worthy.

Now, I can look back on that self with love and compassion, because I have perspective. I am in a better place.

That’s the thing about suffering—it is hard to follow the bird path when we are in it.

One way we can do that is to bring the higher perspectives of our future selves (and there will be many) to our present sufferings. What might they say to you? What wisdom and kindness might they offer? Can you trust yourself to their presence and love and care?

3). The open hand

Imagine getting zapped with killer X-rays every weekday for four, five, six weeks. That’s what happens when you do radiation. You show up at the clinic every single day, you force yourself into the mold your body was forced to take one day so they can zap you in just the right spot, you hold your breath for what feels like forever, and you come back the next day and do it all again. Soon, you begin to recognize others who are doing the same.

A woman and I showed up for our radiation appointments at the same time every day. One day, we struck up a conversation. She told me how much she liked my hat.

I thanked her, and then she went on to say that she only had one hat.

Because I didn’t feel comfortable wearing a wig and, more to the point, because I love to shop at thrift stores, I had a plethora of hats and scarves.

So the next day when I arrived, I handed this woman a gift bag. Inside was the hat.

You’d have thought I’d given her the world.

The one thing that consistently made my suffering bearable was helping others, the open hand.

What I learned that day, and many days since, is that if I am suffering and struggling, chances are many other people are as well. If I want support, someone else probably needs support. If I need kindness and care . . . .well, you get the picture.

When life hits us upside the head with a sucker punch, it can be so damn easy to turn our hands into fists and come out swinging.

When we are afraid, it can be easy to clench our fists and hold on tight.

When we are suffering, it can be easy to curl in and close down. To hide.

If you are reading this, then God knows, you have suffered, too. We have all suffered.

Or are suffering, right here, right now.

That sucks, and it’s hard, and we don’t know how or why or when it will end, and none of us has a magic wand to stop our suffering or the suffering of those we love. Life is numbingly ordinary and excruciatingly hard, and there are days I don’t know what the point is. There are days when I demand an answer: is this it? Is this what the divine really intended for me and those I love and the entire human race from the beginning of time to kingdom come?

Once upon a time, I was out walking in the woods, and I passed through a stone gate and came upon a bevy of overturned canoes. In the only blue canoe, I caught sight of a mink . . . bathing in rain water . . . even though the lake was 10 feet away.

Why?

I don’t know.

There are things we cannot know—the beautiful and the terrible. But let me just say if my current self could go back to that self in the chemo chair, I would urge her to pray. I would hold her. I would convince her she was worthy and enough.

I would tell her that she would one day be sitting on a couch, surrounded by little dogs who loved her, living in a community of friends and loved ones who magnified the good in her, who wanted to see her become her fullest, realest, most authentic self. One who feels and fears deeply, but who keeps showing up to see what she can learn next.

I want you to know, dear friend, I hear you. I love you. I hold the mess of you and me and everyone else in the world in darkness and light—so I thank you for asking me about suffering.

And if you were to ask me tomorrow what I think about it, I can promise you I’d write something completely different.