Interpersonal Suffering, Hunger, Fears

     “When I came to understand suffering as including interpersonal suffering and saw the origin of this suffering as interpersonal hunger, the Buddha’s teaching on the three hungers came alive for me. And once I saw how these three hungers (for sensual pleasures, for being, & for non-being) worked in the interpersonal realm, my understanding of them as personal hungers deepened also. I came to understand the craving for interpersonal pleasure as both the urge for pleasant stimulation by other people and the fear of loneliness this pleasure often masks. I saw that the hunger for being was also the hunger to ‘be’ relationally – that is, the hunger to be seen, and its obverse, the fear of invisibility. The hunger for nonbeing, I came to understand, was not only the urge to escape this crazy and painful life but also the urge to escape existing in relationship. Inherent in this urge, I saw, is the fear of being seen, the fear of intimacy.
     I came to understand these hungers as almost elemental forces that, sustained by my ignorance of their operation, had kept me locked in confusion and stress. I sensed that beneath their murk, clarity and calm had always existed, even if I didn’t know how to access them. It seemed that each of these hungers had somehow prepared a campsite in my heart, even before parental conditioning or cognition meddled with my essentially luminous awareness.”

Kramer, G. “Insight dialogue. The interpersonal path to freedom.” Shambhala, Boston, 2007.           http://metta.org/

Photo: Steve McCurry   http://stevemccurry.com