The Deepest Cause
La causa más profunda
A reflection on how misidentifying the source of suffering leads to partial understanding, and how the real issue lies not in circumstances or thinking alone, but in a fundamental belief about what we are.
The Deepest Cause
A reflection on how misidentifying the source of suffering leads to partial understanding, and how the real issue lies not in circumstances or thinking alone, but in a fundamental belief about what we are.
If we believe that circumstances are the cause of our suffering, if we think it is the politics, the work, the relationships, then there is misunderstanding. I am talking always about the deepest cause. What is the deepest? If we think it is the circumstance or the relationship, then a false belief is operating there.
From circumstance to the internal
Now, if we come to a realization that the cause of suffering has to do with something internal, with the thought process, with the psyche, then there is an understanding. We are coming closer to truth. But it could be partial, not a complete understanding, because we might think it is thinking alone, just the process of thinking. So there is partly an understanding and partly an incomplete one.
Thinking is not the problem. But because we have this general sense of what happens in the thought process, we are close to a truth. It is a discovery: the problem is not my circumstance. That is not the deepest problem. Obviously, there are problems in circumstances that need to be addressed. I am talking about the deep cause of the absence of well-being, the sense that something is always missing no matter what.
The belief underneath thinking
The cause of that is not thinking alone. The thought is the belief about what I am. I know that, expressed this way, it could be heard and understood in different ways. But it has to do with knowing what I am. The thought process that seems to become a struggle is the way in which we are constantly reinforcing this belief.