Have you ever wondered why you keep suffering long after the actual event has passed?
Think of a time when someone criticized you – “How could you do that? She is your sister. That’s not the way a good brother should be.”
That comment stays with you for days. You start thinking: Maybe I’m not good enough. Now my family will look down upon me. What should I have done differently?
You replay the events in your mind. You go through every detail, looking for the moment when you could have prevented it. Or you look for justifications why you did what you did.
Isn’t this suffering?
Consider another situation. Your boss sends you a message: “Can we talk?”
That’s it. Four words. But your mind takes off. Is it about my performance? Have I made a mistake? Is my job safe? What will happen to my family? How much money do I have in the bank? Maybe I should update my resume.
Nothing has actually happened yet. But you have already lived through several possible futures.
Isn’t this suffering?
Or take something more personal. You and your girlfriend have been chatting regularly. Things seem to be going well. One day you send her a message: “I love you.”
She sees it. Two blue ticks in the chat. No reply. Five minutes. Ten minutes. An hour. You check the chat again. And again. Did she misunderstand me? Does she love me? Did I say it too soon?
What is she thinking? Maybe she likes someone else.
Your mind starts connecting everything you know about her, searching for an explanation. You can’t focus on anything else that day.
Isn’t this suffering?
And then here is another case. A friend insulted you a long time back. You never forgot it. Ten years later, you still don’t speak to him. You see him at a gathering and avoid him. The words were spoken ten years ago. But something is still alive inside you.
Isn’t that suffering?
Even as simple an event like your colleague did not smile at you when he passed by you can create a chain of thoughts.
So why do we get caught in so much thinking? Is it the criticism? The message from the boss? The unanswered text? The insult? Or is something else? What is happening inside our mind?
Let’s unpack it.
It may begin very simply. A sound. A few spoken words. A message on a screen. A facial expression. A memory. A physical sensation.
Something happens and a sensation appears in the body. Perhaps tension. A tightening in the chest. A sinking feeling in the stomach. A sudden heat. We may not even notice it. But that sensation triggers a feeling.
The feeling triggers a thought. And that thought triggers another thought. Then another. And another. Suddenly, what began as a few words has become an entire world inside your head.
The criticism has become: “I am not good enough.” The boss’s message has become: “I might lose my job.” The unanswered message has become: “She doesn’t love me.” The insult has become: “I can never forgive him.”
The original event was small. The mind has built an enormous structure around it. This is where the Buddhist idea of prapancha becomes interesting.
Prapancha is mental or conceptual proliferation – a storm of thoughts.
The mind takes an experience and keeps multiplying it. One thought produces another. One association produces another. Memory connects with fear. Fear connects with imagination. Imagination connects with another memory. And soon there is a massive proliferation of thoughts. Like a nuclear chain reaction. Or a viral outbreak. The original event has almost disappeared. Yet the suffering has become enormous.
The Magic Lion
There is an old story in the Panchatantra about four friends who came across some bones in a jungle. Each one began to show off their knowledge and skills.
The first said he could arrange the bones into a skeleton. The second said he could add muscles, flesh and skin. The third said he could bring the creature to life. They did exactly that.
The skeleton was assembled. The flesh and skin was added. And life was breathed into it. The creature became a lion. And the lion ate all three of them. The fourth one saved himself by hiding in a tree, because he realized the dangers of what his companions were up to.
You can watch the story here.
Moral of the Story
While in the Panchatantra, the story proves that common sense is superior to bookish knowledge, I find Geshe la Tenzin Lhabsum‘s interpretation of this story much more relevant to understanding how we create suffering. Initially, there may be nothing more than a few “bones.” A sensation. A thought. A memory. A few words someone said.
We then connect the dots. We add flesh to the story. We give it meaning. We breath imaginary intentions and motivations into those actions. The ‘I’ is born – the personalization, the identification takes place. Further, this mass of thinking then magically takes a life of its own. It becomes alive in a sense like the lion and starts to affect us psychologically.
But surprisingly, as if we don’t know what we did, we wonder in all innocence: Why is this happening to me? What did I do? Why am I suffering so much?
We forget that we created the lion, we kept feeding it. We kept giving it thoughts, memories, explanations, fears and possibilities. Eventually, it became powerful enough to run our life and eventually ruin our life.
And we may have not created just one but many lions, the many ‘I’s that Gurdjieff spoke about, each one ready to wake up and pounce based on the trigger or button anyone presses.
Just as a nuclear reaction multiplies rapidly once it begins, prapancha is the uncontrolled proliferation of thoughts. Left unnoticed, it can overwhelm the mind and prolong suffering long after the original event has passed.
So What Can We Do About It? How Can We Stop This Prapancha?
Perhaps not by fighting the thoughts. Not by trying to force the mind to become quiet. Not by replacing one thought with another. The important moment may come much earlier. Before the proliferation. Before the story. Before the mind has connected all the dots.
Just notice the sensation. Notice what happens in the body when the trigger appears. Notice the feeling. Notice the first thought. And simply watch. Without immediately following it.
The boss says, “Can we talk?” Notice what happens. The body reacts. The mind starts moving. Watch it. Don’t immediately build the story.
Someone criticizes you. Notice the sensation. Notice the feeling. Notice the first thought. Watch what happens next. Don’t add the next piece of flesh to the skeleton.
This is where mindfulness becomes important. Not as a technique for making ourselves feel better. But as the capacity to see what is happening before we are completely carried away by it. It is like the fourth friend who sees what is happening and where the thinking is leading to. Essentially, all the four of them are in our mind.
Remember that once the proliferation has exploded, it can be very difficult to see where it began. But if we learn to notice the first ripple… perhaps we don’t have to create the whole wave. And perhaps this is one of the most interesting questions we can ask:
How much of our suffering comes from what happened to us, and how much comes from what we create after it happens?
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