“Suffering & Happiness”
by Kelvin Chin
Life After Life Expert & Meditation Teacher
Although I was Buddhist in many former lifetimes, I no longer view this world in terms of suffering. To me, this world 🌎 is and can be full of enjoyment on many levels — mental, emotional and yes, physical. Buddhists would not agree with that. They view this world as just a “way station” along their path to get to the real world after Nirvana.
Thus their views on suffering and taking on the suffering of others here abound. Because this world is merely illusory to them, and of lesser importance.
I do not agree with that.
Moreover, others’ suffering does not affect my ability to be happy. My being deeply empathetic and sympathetic to their suffering is not mutually exclusive with my individual happiness. If it was, I could never do the intense healing work I now do with so many clients who are suffering so.
Instead, I view my mind as a sovereign entity, as are all our minds I think. So when I help others who may be suffering, I can feel their pain without taking on their pain. That’s the crucial distinction.
And so my happiness is independent of theirs.
To me, that’s an extension of how and what Jesus taught us about love. When we “accept others for who they are,” we do not become them or take on their suffering. Yet we can be fully empathetic with them. That is truly loving them — and being able to help them the most from our independent state of happiness.
I resonate with Jesus’s view rather than Buddha’s.
I hope that perspective helps you in your personal pursuit of happiness.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within Meditation and coaching others in their self-growth for 40 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.TurningWithin.org.