Necessary Suffering

THE DAKINI SPEAKS

My friends, let's grow up.

Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.

Or if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.

Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.

It's simple - how could we have missed it for so long?

Let's grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings.

But please, let's not be so shocked by them.

Let's not act so betrayed,

As though life had broken her secret promise to us.

Impermanence is life's only promise to us,

And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.

To a child, she seems cruel, but she is only wild,

And, her compassion exquisitely precise,

Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,

She strips away the unreal to show us the real.

This is the true ride - let's give ourselves to it!

Let's stop making deals for a safe passage -

There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.

We are not children anymore.

The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.

Let's dance the wild dance of no hope.

by Joyce Wellwood

When I was younger, I used to hear myself saying “There is a lot of unnecessary suffering we suffer, because we are refusing to suffer the necessary suffering.” Then I grew older. I noticed, that some of the old grey ones I was now rubbing shoulders with, had developed a capacity to suffer necessary suffering. From observing and trying to be like them, I learned what the dance of “no hope” is. It turns out to be a wonderful descriptor of what separates an elder from a merely older person.

I’ve known about, and loved, the poem, The Dakini Speaks, for well over a year. In all that time I have wondered, and watched groups wonder, at that last line. “Let’s dance the wild dance of no hope.” People chafe at the idea of living without hope. It has been a source of painful confusion. Maturing, which is so highlighted by the poem, is so bleak, or, so I thought.

Recently, a new thought came to my mind. It had to do with necessary suffering and the dance of no hope. I realized that the poem addressed the immature, by pointing out some elements of a more mature awareness. The poem ends with an invitation to join the dance of no hope, because that is the beginning. It is the act of giving up hope, of the human, childish, cultural kind of hope, which frees one from the tyranny of immature hope. The dance of no hope (of immaturity) gives way, when the immature surrender to it, and becomes the dance of a more mature realization, one where pain and suffering accompany growth, one where loss and gain are paradoxically linked.

The wild dance of no hope is a doorway, a portal into a new outlook. It is the moment when the process of being ripened into uniqueness is incredibly palpable. One feels an essential wonder. Hardship, uncertainty, pain and unknowing are all part of what confers important distinctive characteristics upon one, they bring out the uniqueness that each of us are endowed with, they alter us in ways that only Life can make real.  Hope, is not in our own efforts. It is in responding with all our being to what Life asks of us. The impermanence of Life, the ruthless and exquisite promise that defeats all our plans, is the very thing that uplifts us, that enables us to become full and ripe — the kind of human being who fulfills Life.

Suffering is not for the weak of heart. Nor, is aging. Knowing the power of dancing without hope, requires the belief that one can envision a way to be whole, without suffering the uncertain, and vulnerable process of creation. There is always some necessary suffering in Creation otherwise — Life wouldn’t be alive. The process of existing is such a demanding endeavor, such a bout with uncertainty. Newness only comes into being through birth pangs. Everything that has Life, has come through the gauntlet of necessary suffering. Elders know this. They are the humans who have developed the capacity to weather the storms of pain, anxiety, and fear, for growth.

Think about it, some folks assume that for Creation to have a spiritual dimension there must really be no suffering. That kind of thinking prevails in an immature world. Paradoxically, it accounts for much of the unnecessary suffering. Instead, I invite you to the dance of no hope, the dance of inevitability, the dance of the elder who has a mature realization that suffering will come, along with the newness that refreshes and renews.