Pain Without Suffering by Kevincent

Pain Without Suffering by Kevincent - November 2018 Scholarship Essay

My senior quote would be my title, “pain without suffering” which is based on a Buddhist story. I recently have converted to Buddhism over 3 months ago. The funny thing is that I personally would have never thought that I would ever become religious because I’ve always been atheist. After taking a trip to Thailand and staying at a temple overnight I saw for myself that Buddhism is about self-improvement and becoming my best self, so I decided to try it out and so far it’s sticking.

The overall idea behind Pain without suffering is that people tend to add an extra layer of emotional pain onto the initial layer of pain they feel when misfortune strikes them. I remember in the past whenever any small thing happened to me I would let it ruin my whole entire day. Even when I became more conscious about it still eventually got to me and it was a downwards spiral. It felt like no matter how hard I tried things were just going to get worse and my hard work would never pay off.

After I converted to Buddhism and started practicing self-reflection and self-restraint I started to realize that the reason why I felt like my efforts were getting me nowhere was because I wanted some sort of confirmation that I was doing well.The reality in my life was though that I didn’t need any type of approval that I was doing well. I just needed to be happy with what I have right now, and understand that things won’t always go as planned. I started to let go of my emotional pain and my suffering stopped.

When I learned about pain without suffering I learned how to finally be happy with who I am and where I am at in my life right now. Everyone who is alive feels pain and suffers, but I realized some of us deal with pain in a healthier way than others. I am happy to say that I too am able to now deal with my misfortunes, pains, and suffering in a healthy way.