MOVING on with one’s life after a painful experience is something that we all have to deal with. However, the kind of suffering that the Buddhists call ‘duḥkha‘ is particularly acute whenever we are tempted to think of the past and it can be difficult to train our thought-processes to the extent that one no longer dwells upon some of life’s more painful memories.
I read an interesting article in a Polish magazine fairly recently, in which it was suggested that our tendency to ruminate on the possible reasons why the past does not always go as smoothly as we would like leads many people to entertain negative thoughts that simply recur over and over again. One of the solutions discussed in the article was that by concentrating on some of the more mundane aspects of our daily lives we might distract ourselves away from the things that so often disturb us. For those who find it more difficult to switch off mentally, on the other hand, there is another suggestion:
“You can always pay attention to the surrounding images, sounds and smells. You can even pick up different items with different scents, feel them and try to describe their subtlety and complexity. If you learn to direct your attention away from the problem, it will become easier”.
This is considerably more difficult than it sounds. Imagine, for example, that you begin to think of something unpleasant and make a determined effort to distract yourself by counting the number of circles on a section of wallpaper. “Aha!” you say, “There are a total fourteen circles.” *CLICK* “Fourteen is the age when I was abused by my Uncle Cecil.” Thus, you inevitably end up encountering some kind of mental trigger that forces you back down the treacherous environs of Memory Lane. Another example of trying to think more positively might involve spreading the butter on your bread very thinly in order to avoid *CLICK* “ending up with a heart condition like my late Uncle Cecil.” And there it is again.
Ultimately, the only way to deal with this form of repetition is to learn to question the credibility of the mental formations themselves and this will eventually liberate us from those thought-patterns which prolong our suffering. This also involves accepting that certain things can never be changed, an approach that can actually provide a sense of closure and relief. The Buddhists would describe this as a moment of ‘cessation’ (nirodha), the third of the Four Noble Truths that stills the fluctuating chaos of the mind and which finally brings an end to everything that gives rise to negative thought.
