Accepting your suffering? Not always so...

One of the first things I learned when I started studying Buddhism was that suffering existed, and that you would be a whole lot better off if you would just accept it, instead of trying to avoid it. I took this message pretty literally and so I tried my very best to accept my suffering, embrace it even. But this summer, while I was on a jungle trek in Malaysia, I discovered that it's not so much that you have to accept suffering all the time, it's more that, if you're faced with a situation of suffering, you'd be best to accept it. But if there's a choice not to suffer, go right ahead and take that instead.

I’m in the jungle in the middle of Malaysia. This morning, I went on a “jungle trek.” My friend had warned me about this ahead of time. “It’s full on jungle,” she explained. “There will be elephants and tigers and leeches.”

I have to say that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this part of the trip. When she said it was full on jungle, I was expecting bugs, humidity, and lots of discomfort. She’s pretty hardcore, so for her to refer to it as full on jungle, I figured it had to be pretty intense.

I was most worried about the heat. I’m not so much a fan of heat, it makes me miserable. So I had been “training” for this part of the trip. I had been experiencing different levels of heat and trying to accept them: this is sweating on a plane, this is hot with no air conditioner, this is unable to fall asleep because of heat. I was prepared to be drenched in sweat and miserable but also was telling myself to not necessarily see this as a horrible thing, that it just was, that sweaty and hot was the experience of trekking in a jungle in Malaysia.

The morning of the trek, we put on our long pants and long-sleeve shirts in an effort to protect ourselves from the leeches. “It’s not really going to help that much,” she warned. “They go through everything.”

She then went on to describe how the leeches would stand up, on end, and just sway back and forth, as if they had little antennas, and wait for you to come by. Then they would jump on to you and suck your blood until they fell off. The last time she had gone trekking in the jungle, she had ended up with 25 leeches on her. They would be everywhere, she advised, and there was nothing you could do about it.

“I’m going to lather myself in insect repellant,” she told me. “That’s probably the only thing that will help.”

I pulled out my insect repellant stick, recalled what the guy at REI had said, and reread the instructions to confirm my fears. “Ummm, it says that you’re not supposed to put it on under clothing.” I explained. “The guy at REI said it’d be a like a green house effect if you did that.”

“Green house effect is the least of your worries!” she laughed. “I’d rather be hot than covered with leeches,” she warned.

So I took off my top, drenched my torso in deet, then removed my pants, and did the same to my legs. I put my clothes back on, pulled my socks over my pants, and we headed out. For breakfast we were served noodles, toast with jam, hard boiled eggs, and cucumbers. I helped myself to the noodles, torn a bit because they were both covered in red flecks (too spicy) but also had the appearance of noodles I had earlier that week that were delicious. I took the first bite and felt the burn in my throat. “Bummer,” I thought. “These are the spicy noodles.” But it was my breakfast, I didn’t have any other choice, so I ate the rest of them and thought, “This is what it’s like to eat noodles that burn your throat.”  And the burn went away, after a while.

We had a nice boat ride to the entrance to the jungle and sprayed even more concentrated deet on our socks and shoes before we entered. About five minutes in to our walk, I noticed a heat, coming from my torso. I noticed that my top was quickly becoming wet with sweat. Then I noticed the same heat coming from my thighs.  “Darn advice,” I thought. “I’m just baking here in all this insect repellant.” I looked at my friend in front of me, she didn’t have a drop of sweat on her.

“Stupid insect repellant,” I thought. “That guy at REI totally knew what he was talking about.” But then I realized that there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t take off the insect repellant and I also thought that I didn’t really know that it was the insect repellant that was causing the heat, maybe it was just the jungle and this just is.

About ten minutes into our walk, we stopped to listen to our guide explain the medicinal uses for a plant. As we stood there, my friend started to notice the leeches. “Oh my gosh they’re everywhere! I have like five on my shoes already, and I’m sure they’re crawling up my leg.” She started to scrape them off but soon realized that as soon as she scraped one off, more would jump on. We decided to keep walking. I asked if she wanted to stop at a log so that she could get rid of them but she explained that as soon as we stopped, more would attach to us.

So we kept walking, quickly. As we walked, my friend frequently checked her shoes for leeches and stopped to remove them immediately. I looked down at my shoes and saw nothing. It was clear that I was supposed to be removing leeches from my shoes but there didn’t appear to be any leeches on my shoes. Plus, my friend had told me that there wasn’t really anything you could do about the leeches, there was no way to avoid them so I had kind of accepted that I was just going to be covered in leeches, so there didn't seem to be any point in taking them off.

Meanwhile, I continued to radiate heat. My entire top was drenched in sweat and I thought, “This is what it’s like to be completely wet with sweat.” Then I reached up to brush my hair behind my ear. As my hand passed the nape of my neck, a puddle of sweat poured from the ends of my hair. “Oh,” I thought. “I didn’t know you could sweat from your hair.” My face itched so I reached up to scratch it and found that an entire layer of sweat had covered my cheek. “Bummer,” I thought. “I don’t like this feeling. I don’t like having my whole face be sweaty.” But there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t wipe off the sweat, that would have wiped off my sunscreen. Plus, I was pretty sure that it would just come back, so I just accepted it.

We crossed a river and, when we got to the other side, stopped to pull off any leeches that had found their way to our shoes. I looked down to find 3 or 4 skinny little worms, sticking straight out from my shoes. I scraped them off with a rock and then pulled of the little leech that my friend pointed to on my sock. We continued in this fashion, walking through the jungle, removing leeches, and crossing rivers, until we got to a beautiful waterfall and stopped to have lunch.

The kitchen crew at the jungle hut had packed us a bag lunch and I had been excited to see what it was because I had been smelling it from my backpack all morning. I opened the plastic container to see: a fish head, sitting on white rice next to a bag, containing a chicken leg in sauce, under which was some sort of leafy green vegetable, sautéed in garlic. “Oh,” I thought as I looked at the fish head. “I thought that you were supposed to throw away the head. I didn't know you could eat it.” But, it was lunch, I didn’t really have any other option. So, using my spork, I picked at the flesh below the eye and around the cheek, turned it over and did the same on the other side. Next, I ate the leafy greens and they were delicious. Then, I picked up the chicken in the bag. It looked spicy.

“You should try the chicken,” my friend said. “It’s really good.”

I opened the bag and stuck my spork in to the sauce to try it. “Ouch!” I thought as the chili burned the back of my throat. At that point, I had eaten enough rice, fish, and vegetable to constitute lunch so I closed up the bag and stuck it back in the container. As I closed the lid on the container, I looked at the remainders of the fish head- an eyeball, bones, and scales- laying in the rice. A voice popped in to my head, “Dude, you just ate a fish head for lunch. And you didn't squirm or cringe or get all weird about it. You just ate it, like it was lunch." (The night before, I had chosen not to order the fish for dinner because I knew that it would be a whole fish and there was no way I would be willing to pick away the flesh and bones to eat it).

After lunch, we packed up our things and hiked to the small lake below the waterfall. As my friend and I were swimming in the 'blue lagoon' she remarked, "I was thinking you should be, like, an emergency room nurse or something. You don't react to anything." I winced at the idea of being in an emergency room with all those things going on and was genuinely surprsied by her comment. I hadn't felt like I wasn't reacting to things. I hadn't really felt at all, just sort of experienced.

But her comment also got me thinking- about how I had responded that day,  about the fact that this part of my trip that I had been sort of dreading had been somewhat inconsequential,  that the heat was just part of the journey, that the leeches were just worms on my shoes, and that I had eaten a fish head for lunch. When I looked at myself in these situations, I noticed how little effort I had put in to tolerating these things and how different that felt from what I had been doing up until now.

I mentioned earlier that I had been 'training' for the heat, practicing 'accepting' it and I guess that helped with things. But I also have to admit that I had also been sort of 'training' in 'accepting suffering.' See, the night before, when I hadn't ordered the fish at the restaurant, I felt bad afterward, like I had been a wus for not tolerating the discomfort of picking at a whole fish. I felt like I was supposed to experience the suffering of ordering something you didn't want at a restaurant. (I know, it seems silly, but I'm kind of a literal person so when I hear 'embrace your suffering' I try to literally embrace  it, like hug it like it's a friend). But that day, I hadn't eaten the fish head to 'embrace my suffering' I ate it, because it was lunch.
And I have to admit that for much of my trip here, I have eaten spicy foods in an attempt to 'learn something' about suffering, to see what it's like to 'accept' the discomfort of a burnt tongue and throat, with the expectation that if I did this, the suffering would not be as bad as I thought. But this morning at breakfast, with the spicy noodles, I ate them because there was no other option but at lunch, I skipped them, because I could.

I think that's what happened today. In the morning, I was hungry. The only food I could eat was spicy noodles, so I ate them. Thinking about the burn, wishing I could have something else, those ideas didn't really occur to me because they weren't really an option- this was breakfast and so I ate it. It was the same with the fish head at lunch. It was what was in the lunch bag, so I ate it. There wasn't any point in thinking about how awful it would be or how I was going to make it better, it was just lunch. But then, when faced with the spicy chicken, I actually had an option. I had eaten enough so I could skip it. I didn't have to embrace this suffering. I didn't even have to experience this suffering. I could just tie up the bag and bring it home with me.

I have to say that this brings me great comfort. I am very excited about the fact that I don't have to always enbrace my suffering. That the point of this, at least for me, is accepting the situation. Sometimes, you really can't change the apparent 'crap' you're stuck with, so you might as well accept it. Other times, you've got options and when you've got 'em, take 'em.