Doing Something About Suffering

Suffering = Pain x Resistance. When pleasure and grasping are included, the formula can be rendered as: Suffering = Experiential Intensity x Reactivity. This opens up two pathways to end suffering: remove pain (experiential intensity) or eliminate reactivity. Buddhism is about practicing with reactivity, because that’s the factor we can bring under our control. There is freedom from suffering (based on freedom from reactivity), but there is also freedom to reduce pain when that’s possible. This leads to a question about “Engaged Buddhism” or as this talk explores: the “Buddhism of Engagement.” Engagement, based on freedom, comes from what we choose to do, not from what we feel we have to do.