Last week, I covered five questions for re-igniting your sex life, because I love questions. I think one of the most important things we can do in our lives is pause and reflect on what really matters. For me, living a spiritual life involves deep reflection and contemplation of the universe and my role in it.
In my classes and workshops, I have a list of what I call “soul questions,” which are designed to get students in touch with their purpose and values. Some of my favorite soul questions include:
- Who inspires me most?
- What would I do if money was completely taken care of?
- If this was the last month of my life, how would I spend it?
- What scares me the most?
- What is my heart trying to tell me?
Trying to answer these questions gets us in touch with new dimensions of our being, putting us on the correct path in life. Since there are as many life paths as there are people and each person’s task on this earth is to figure out their own unique role, no one can tell you what your purpose is. You must discover it yourself, and practicing self-inquiry will help you get there.
But sometimes I am asked, “What is the most important question we should ask ourselves.” Rather than the 36 questions to fall in love, or my list of 100 soul questions, what is the number one absolute best question of inquiry? Whether you’re asking it in meditation, journaling, or partner exercises, what question will go deeply into the nature of our happiness, meaning, and fulfillment?
While I think one of the deepest questions we can ask ourselves is Who am I?, it is always a difficult question for those new on the path, as most people have no idea who they are. That’s why I found another question that was more immediately useful for all practitioners–from novices to the more experienced.
Before I get into the deepest question we can ask ourselves, however, I first have to cover the nature of suffering in this world. Because, to understand what is preventing you from finding happiness, you must also understand what is keeping you suffering.
The Nature of Suffering
The first Noble Truth that the Buddha observed was that there is suffering in the world. Many people think the first Noble Truth is that “life is suffering,” but that is simply not true, as the Buddha also described life as being full of 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. The Buddha also observed how we are all caught up in the dualities of the Eight Worldly Winds: gain and loss, disrepute and fame, blame and praise, and pleasure and pain. The first Noble Truth just describes the fundamental human condition–we will all get sick, get old, and eventually die, and, during that time, we spend a lot of time wishing things were different than they are.
Indeed, the average human simply moves from one state of dissatisfaction to the next. We wake up thirsty, so we get a glass of water. This stimulates our hunger, so we eat some food. We get indigestion from the food, so we take an antacid… which makes us tired, so we go back to sleep. Then, we wake up with a headache, so we take another pill. And on and on, like Mick Jagger sang, “we can’t get no satisfaction.” Dukkha, the Sanskrit word for suffering, can also be described as “chronic dissatisfaction.”
In speaking to people nowadays, I might translate the word dukkha as “stress.” The average person in modern society operates from a place of stress practically 24/7. We wake up already late for work and go to sleep thinking of all the things we weren’t able to do that day. In our increasingly fast-paced, capitalistic society that embraces the hustle and the grind, most people feel that if they are not constantly moving they are falling behind.
When we really get into the nature of suffering, it is not necessarily referring to intense pain and loss; it is simply recognizing how often we want things to be different. Suffering then becomes “any time things are not what we wish them to be.” Whether our parent is on their deathbed or our new car just got a scratch, the common human experience is wishing things were different. It’s always either too hot or too cold, too dry or too humid, the television show we are watching is to boring or too confusing.
Life constantly goes in directions we do not want it to go. We get fired from jobs, close friends move away, servers at restaurants get our orders wrong. Time and time again, we are disappointed or let down. The saying “You always hurt the ones you love” is true–we end up getting hurt by the ones we love the most.
But the Buddha’s greatest insight was not simply that there is suffering, but that there is a cause of suffering, an end to suffering, and a path to get there. Such a path involves looking deeply at the nature of the mind and our constant resistance to the changing circumstances of the world. On the path we learn the truth of the famous equation: pain times resistance equals suffering. What this equation tells us is that the less resist, the less we will suffer. And if we are able to take resistance all the way down to zero, then the suffering side of the equation will also drop to zero.
This all brings me to the deepest question you can ask yourself:
When life doesn’t go my way, how do I respond?
This inquiry will tap you directly into your own unconscious reactions to the vagaries of the world, tuning you into the nature of peace.
Let’s break it down.
The Choice
I want to start with the last word of the question–respond. Why start there? Because it is the most important word and the most important task for us to do. We must learn how to respond rather than react.
From a spiritual perspective, most humans are asleep. We are deeply conditioned to think and respond in certain ways, largely guided by unconscious behaviors and mental patterns instilled in us by our parents, families, societies, and culture.
If you see a new phone on a billboard and find yourself deeply wanting it, then the advertisers have already won. Your desire is conditioned, causing you to react to the advertisement instead of responding to it with an inquiry of whether or not that phone will actually bring you happiness.
You probably know the famous quote by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, “In between the stimulus and the response, there is a choice. Within that choice, there lies our freedom.” Our task is to increase that space between stimulus and response so that we may respond from a place of love, compassion, kindness, and understanding rather than a place of reactivity, which often breeds anger and violence.
The pandemic has put stress on all of us, and people are caught up in more chronic stress and reactivity than ever before. We see videos on social media of people responding to events that do not go their way, often times acting in violence and anger. We have seen passengers assault airline staff, customers yell at restaurant owners, and all sorts of temper tantrums you might expect to see only in children.
The question When life doesn’t go my way, how do I respond? could also be framed, “How do I relate to difficulties?” or “How do I relate to suffering?” because suffering is any time life does not go the way that we want.
The response isn’t always anger. For example, when you were a kid and your parents punished you by saying something like, “We are taking your phone away, and you are not allowed to go out this weekend,” how would you typically respond? One teenager might run to their room, sobbing, while others might yell back in defiance or create separation, trying to avoid their emotions altogether by muttering “I don’t care.” If we don’t look seriously at our own mental patterns, we will stay stuck in those same layers of reactivity.
Fortunately, the mind is pliable, and every challenge in life is an opportunity to re-wire the mind in ways that serve us better. After all, when life doesn’t go our way, that is the best time to heal and grow.
Grist For the Mill
It’s easy to be at peace in the world when everything is perfect. When the sun is shining and the weather is beautiful and we just hiked to the top of mountain to bask in the glory of the world, life is good. But, when the weather changes and we are soaking wet on the way down the mountain, that may be the most beautiful experience of all, because it provides an opportunity to ask, “When life doesn’t go my way, how do I respond?”
It was Carlos Castaneda who observed that the “basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as either a blessing or a curse.” I love this quote because it exemplifies the duality of craving and aversion with which we’re all quite familiar; the quote also points to the path of spiritual awakening that involves seeing every circumstance in life as an opportunity for healing and growth. This turns you into a warrior, just as the question When life doesn’t go my way, how do I respond? is designed to do. When you meet resistance, when life is tough, what do you do? You make the best of it.
So the next time you are on the way to work and suddenly find yourself in slow-moving traffic, that is the perfect time to observe your own thoughts and reactions to things. Do you tense up, get angry, and frustrated? Do you see the beginning signs of road range, shouting expletives at the cars around you? Or do you get sad and wallow in your own self-pity, thinking “why does it always happen to me?”
Instead of either reaction, you could ask yourself, “When life doesn’t go my way, how do I respond?” and learn to observe those unconscious mental patterns and transform them into something better: to become conscious. In his book, “Peace is Every Step,” Thich Nhat Hanh recommends using brake lights as a reminder to simply sit and breathe. In this way, we can use the times that life doesn’t go our away as an opportunity to return to and deepen our spiritual practice.
One of the things we discover is that encountering suffering–whether in ourselves or in others–can actually awaken the heart of compassion inside of us. Even our own suffering can turn into something beautiful if we are able to face it with mindfulness and open the heart of compassion to give ourselves the love that we want and deserve. This is why Naomi Shihab Nye opened up her famous poem “Kindness” with “Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things.” When we are able to touch those moments of suffering, when life doesn’t go our way, it has the capacity to awaken a heart of love.
See For Yourself
I could continue talking about all the ways I love this question, but, as you practice inquiry, it is one for you to discover on your own. The next time life doesn’t go your way, the next time the doctor cancels your appointment, your partner says something unintentionally hurtful, or things do not go as planned, see if you can drop out of the trance of reactivity and shift to responding in a way that serves your life and your love.
