Thoughts on Suffering

Lately I have heard a lot of people express then own suffering due to the fact that they can’t relieve another persons suffering. Most of this is from recovering alcoholics and addicts who are witnessing others who have been exposed to the principles of living sober and clean go back out and continue to destroy their lives with alcohol and drugs. Another incidence was that of a co-workers 14 year old nephew who died suddenly from a brain aneurism. Because of this I have taken a look at my own perceptions of suffer in others. When the young man died my boss said something to this nature “God sure has a strange way of doing things, taking a young life like that” to which I had no response but in my mind I thought, God had nothing to do with the taking the young mans life, he was a part of the circle/cycle and moved on, that and physical death happens. Concerning the relapsing of and the dying of active alcoholics and addicts, my thinking is that there is nothing that can be done for them until they are ready to seek help and that a fact of life is alcoholics and addicts die all the time because they are trapped in their disease and aren’t willing to use the available tools to escape. In some ways all this sounds really cold hearted, here is where mediation comes in, but it isn’t meant in this way. All people suffer and all people have a change to learn how to live with suffering in a positive way, free of addictions and dogma, it is their choice. Life is what it is, good and bad, yin and yang. I have compassion for those who suffer; I can empathize with their struggle, especially the ones who are living in active alcoholism and addiction and even those who struggle with Spirituality because I have been there to a greater or lesser extent. My way of understanding suffer is that to suffer needlessly for something that is out of my control disrupts the inter peace and blocks awareness of what is present in this moment. I can feel another’s pain and offer compassion in the form of helping them but I can’t remove their suffering, only they can do that. I give freely of what little I know about dealing with suffering without going too far in-depth unless the other person is willing to go with me. I feel this is all I can do as an individual. I feel genuinely sorry for the person who is extremely upset over the suffering for another and reach out to them; or who is suffering for uncontrollable conditions in their own life. I wish I know an easy way to convey to them the essence of suffering and how to raise above it a little at a time but I don’t. I can hand them a book written by His Holiness the Dalai Lama or Thick Nhat Hanh but they wouldn’t read it unless they were ready to and most are not, they read the Bible but the only answer it gives is to believe that Jesus is the son of God and he died for their sins, pray to him and all will be well, oh and go out and convert others to this way of thinking.

I am I wrong in my understanding of suffering? Am I being selfish or egotistical?