The Solution to Suffering,

A brilliant theoretical mathematician is leaving his office at the University and going down the hallway in a great state of excitement when he runs into a colleague who is a leading Behavioral Biologist.   The Biologists asks the Mathematician why he is so excited and the Mathematician tells him that he has just conclusively solved the mathematical equation for the cause of suffering.  The Behavioral Biologist says that’s astounding,  what is it?  The Mathematician replies that the mathematical formula for suffering is the difference between the point of the way things really are and the point of the way we want things to be.  And the greater the distance between these two points the greater the suffering.

Stunned the Behavioral Biologist says this is truly amazing, I have been doing independent research on the perceptive abilities of all animals and my research has just proven conclusively that humans are the only animal that can perceive two points of reality, these being, the point of the way things really are and the point of the way we want things to be.  The amazed Mathematician replies that he wants to discuss this further with the Biologists and suggests that the two of them go to the local pub and discuss it over a drink.

On the way to the pub the two brilliant scientists are deep in conversation  when they bump into a fellow colleague who is a world renowned theoretical physicists.  He can see the excited state of his two esteemed colleagues and asks them what has happened.  The mathematician proceeds to tell him that he has solved the mathematical formula for the cause of suffering, which is of course the difference between the way things really are and the way we want things to be, and the Biologists explains that in his research he has discovered that humans are the only animals on the planet who can perceive both of these points.

The Physicists almost speechless says to the two scientists that incredibly he has just finished his paper on reality and has proven beyond a doubt that the only point that really exists is the way things really are, And conversely the point of the way we want things to be is not real and does not exist.

All three brilliant men immediately see the implications of this last finding and agree to continue onto the pub to discuss their realizations.

In the pub the three men after several rounds and much conversation, are in an obviously depressed and down state when the waiter asks them what has them so distressed? They proceed to tell them of their individual discoveries and that when added together it becomes apparent that humans are the only animals on earth that suffer and that they suffer over a point of perception that does not even really exist.

The waiter, a Toltec, nods his head in understanding and walks away carrying the gentlemen’s  glasses for another round of drinks to drown their sorrows,  and wonders if he should point out to the 3 brilliant men that they themselves have fallen into the illusion of perceiving the reality that does not really exist. If they had the awareness to accept that humans do suffer then they themselves would have shifted  their perception to perceiving things the way they really, are and would step out of the illusion of the way they want things to be and could end their own suffering. 

Which reality do you perceive in your own life?  The way you want things to be or the way things really are?

Leo van Warmerdam