Authors, statesmen, philosophers, poets, artists, musicians, and of course, teachers have all long-asked questions about the meaning of human suffering. In his speech upon the occasion of Martin Luther King’s assassination, Senator Robert F. Kennedy looked to the ancient poet Aeschylus for a riddled response to this question. Famously, he spoke to the American people, who were full to the brim with nation-wide lamentations, saying: “Even in our sleep, pain , which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” 1 Most often, when we speak or think about human suffering and the illumination of its meaning in our lives, we rely upon images of light and darkness. Consider, for instance, Giordano Bruno’s sixteenth century description of the turmoil-filled soul’s movement from ignorance towards understanding as a journey up from darkness into the light:
Like felons used to the darkness, who come up to the light when freed from the depths of some gloomy tower, many trained in common philosophy, and others, will be clutched by fear, seized with astonishment and … thoroughly unsettled. 2
This manner of speaking about suffering is perhaps most familiar to us. Here, we experience darkness as a bane and light as a balm—albeit one that might expose us to feelings of confusion and perplexity. However, we ought to be aware that the metaphoric portrayal of the soul’s illumination as a movement from darkness into light is not the only way to think about the meaning of our suffering. Consider, for instance, a contrary articulation of its meaning, equally profound and equally true, that is offered by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke : “You darkness, of whom I am born / I love you more than all the fires / that fence in the world, / for the fire makes / a circle of light for everyone, / and then no one outside learns of you.” Here, darkness is an image for how we experience our Primary Beginning, and our elusively, only-intimated Source. Rilke continues: “But the darkness pulls in everything, / shapes and fires, animals and myself. / How easily it gathers them. / Powers and people / and it is possible a great energy / is moving near me. / I have faith in nights.” 3 Observe how wonderfully here Rilke’s imagery speaks of the erotic attractions and the sacred pull of mystic night! What undiscovered countries Rilke reveals to us in his preference for night over day—especially when we are ordinarily acclimatized to suppose that only light and the coming into day leads us towards higher truth and understanding. How much deeper we might go in our own quest to understand suffering! Indeed, although we seek out the light in various ways, there is much to be learned from, and sought out, in this darkness.
The compilation you are about to read is designed to entice readers to consider suffering from multiple perspectives in both light and darkness. Fundamentally, this book concerns a forbidden topic for inquiry: suffering in teaching. On the one hand, to call it “forbidden” may seem like an exaggeration to many of you who are seasoned teachers; you are only too aware of how common it is for teachers to speak about the difficulties, the injustices , the lack of consideration or appreciation, as well as the trials and abuses they must endure on a daily basis. Indeed, teachers often seem to engage in competitions regarding “who has suffered more” in the profession. At particularly difficult times of the year, such as when we must stay late for Parent Teacher Interviews, when we are swamped with mandatory volunteering obligations, or when we are racing to hit report card deadlines, teacher complaint contests can sound humorously similar to Monty Python’s “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch in which the interlocutors try to outdo one another’s sufferings, dismissing each other’s pains as a “luxury.”
But on the other hand, we say it is a forbidden subject for inquiry because almost as soon as we began this writing project in early 2016, we were warned many times and by diverse people about using the word “suffering” to name our investigations. We were cautioned that uttering this word will make people uncomfortable, and that it will scare them off. It will discourage contributions and confuse people. We were told it “gives off the wrong message.” Moreover, we were told that our use of the word “suffering” will turn off publishers, chase away readers, and fatally deplete sales of any book.
Despite these warnings, we affirm that there is great significance and meaning to be found in the consideration of suffering, and in recognizing that all people suffer, including teachers. Therefore, whether it is out of a certain stubbornness of spirit, or whether it arises from our steadfastness in the pursuit of truth, we have opted to stay the course in our investigations. After all: simply because inquiry into the subject of suffering in teaching is considered taboo or dangerous is no reason to avoid such an investigation. We have stood our ground. And, of course, certain among the prophecies issued to us have come to fruition.
Many of these predictions began to come true almost immediately when an excellent writer, teacher, and wonderful friend of mine who was initially interested in helping to edit the book bowed out. She became disillusioned with the project, partly because thinking about suffering in teaching felt so taxing—especially during those short, precious, summer months, when what we really want to do most is to relax, to forget, to put-aside, and thereby to revive from the grueling nature of our craft as teachers.
Shortly thereafter, many more very fine teachers who we approached, knowing they would be able to share rich perspectives on this subject, declined our invitation and said similar things by way of explanation. Some of them, unsure of their compositional abilities, simply felt unqualified to write; but others who harbored a writer’s passion nonetheless were still reluctant to participate; many of them had witnessed much suffering among their own students over the years, and they felt like they themselves had “never really suffered” by comparison. Still others remarked that they couldn’t identify with the topic: teaching, in their view, is a “pretty good gig” with “little to complain about.”
And yet, it’s important for readers to understand that this book isn’t a litany of complaints or grievances either.
In the process of compiling the diverse contributions contained in this book, we likewise spoke with a number of our colleagues who had suffered a great deal, but who were not yet finished with their turmoil; still deeply embroiled in facing their own personal storms and torrents, they could not find the distance or peace needed to articulate their experiences, or to lay claim to the grand meaning of the events unfolding before them and within them.
Many more educators who wanted to write could not find the time to write, for teaching is such a busy and demanding way of life; ironically (given that the Greek word for “leisure” is schole , from which we derive our word “school”), the life of a schoolteacher does not easily provide us with the undivided leisure in which deep, reflective writing is born and thrives. Writing, after all, involves difficult and uncertain labor mixed with quiet solitude and contemplation. Writing about teaching in particular requires a contemplative commitment, and it demands sacrifices from us in other areas of our life. There is a kind of self-inflicted and voluntary suffering in the art of writing. Invariably, writing takes valuable time away from our other duties and interests. We must carve out a space for the activity of writing ; we must relinquish significant portions of our “down-time” to engage in cloistered, solitary, and quiet contemplation, which naturally means forsaking opportunities to spend time with our precious loved ones and our friends. Writing is, in fact, a kind of self-imposed state of exile from the active life and the workaday existence in which we are so deeply immersed as teachers and as servants of the public good. And even having taken pains to carve out such a space, we must then set about the difficult task of inhabiting that space, and of cultivating a resilient and daily patience that will allow that space incrementally to affect us through its dark and uncertain processes.
There is love, tenderness, and gestation in the activity of writing . Out of care for their subject, writers must build a kind of nest in which the spirit is prepared to be receptive for the unfolding of what will eventually be written; they must make themselves available for impregnation, outflow, and the overflow that pours forth when the birth pangs of writing finally come. For these and many more reasons, the task of writing about our teaching-lives and the meaning we derive from our experiences as educators can be frustrating indeed.
Still others among those we approached were a bit suspicious of the project’s core emphasis on our suffering as teachers. This focus, they accused, is unseemly! Teachers aren’t supposed to speak about such things, after all: “It’s not about you: it’s all about the children! Put yourself, your ego, and your own hurts aside! Serve others. There is your transformation.” And they have a point.
The teacher’s life is one of public service and devotion to the common good. We’re supposed to care only about addressing and alleviating the suffering of others—namely, our students. Hence, to such people, this book appears to lend itself to navel-gazing and self-indulgent complaining. At the very least, they were concerned that our project might lead to certain misunderstandings among the readership regarding teaching. After all, focusing on our pains tends to make those pains bigger. It can easily distort the significance of our discomforts and work against the development of insight. Similarly, although teaching is a difficult job, we don’t want to make it sound harder than it is, or less fulfilling than it is. This group of critics worried that writing a book on such a taboo subject would sound a discouraging note in the profession among its primary audience: teachers and student-teachers.
However, readers should know that this book is intended to inspire, to enthuse, to create solidarity, and to enlighten rather than to discourage them from the teaching-life.
For a number of years, I have from time to time encouraged my high school students to write letters to Patch Adams . Patch is an international teacher of love for one’s neighbor. He is a wonderful man, a humble doctor and hospice director; the founder of the Gesundheit Institute, a world philanthropist, an itinerant clown, and notably immortalized by Robin Williams in the 1998 film bearing his name. Patch loves to hear from young people. His life is so busy in the service of others all around the world, but he has always responded to every letter either my students or I have written to him. When I approached him by snail-mail back in 2016 about the possibility of contributing to this book, Patch responded politely in his cryptic scrawl: “I chose at 18 to never have another bad day as a political act for peace, justice, and care for all people and nature, and have not suffered for 53 years.” Then, with a chuckling tone, Patch continued in his letter to me, “If you have food and a friend – what are you bitching about?”
Patch deals with enormous suffering every day in his vital work. He has a deep knowledge of human suffering that informs all his practices, which he tells me are aimed at teaching “love as an intelligence .” In much agreement with Patch, we’d like to think that the contents of this book are aligned with that same understanding of teaching.
And yet all of these precautionary notes and reluctances are not the only challenges of writing about a topic as provocative as our own suffering. Indeed, to a certain extent, Buddhist understanding militates against the writing of such a book. Buddhism embodies one of the longest-standing, greatest spiritual and philosophic traditions of thought, analysis, and writing concerning the nature and the meaning of suffering. When we began this book, I thought for sure that it would be relatively easy to find Buddhist writers willing to share their thoughts on our core subject matter.
Not so.
Red flags began to rear up when the Sensei at our local Shinran Buddhist temple here in Calgary very politely informed me that the adage most often attributed to Buddha that “Life is suffering” is actually misleading. He pointed out that the Sanskrit word dukkha , here translated as “suffering,” actually means something more like “unsatisfactoriness.” So if we were to write a book on dukkha in teaching, it ought to be called “The Unsatisfactoriness of Teaching.”
Unfortunately, there is something so… unsatisfactory about that title! Unsatisfactoriness is such a cerebral-sounding word. Unlike the word “suffering,” it doesn’t grab you by the guts or speak to your whole being in a visceral way. Moreover, unsatisfactoriness doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, nor does it capture one’s attention or inspire great interest as a book title. So once again, we pressed forward against all the best advice offered to us about the dangers of our inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge about this elusive, forbidden beast, uncomfortably named our suffering.
Similarly, I have a friend with whom I have corresponded over many years. He now lives in China where he tea...