Do you choose suffering?

Let us assume, for the moment, that you can escape all suffering by applying mindfulness. (I don't necessarily believe that, but I'll leave those details aside for now.)

You could then set up the following syllogism:

P1. You can escape suffering through mindfulness.

P2. You do not practice mindfulness.

C: Therefore, you choose to suffer.

With some malice, you can rephrase the conclusion:

C: Therefore, your suffering is your own fault.

Err, no.

That ignores one very important factor: You first have to know that there is indeed a way to mitigate suffering. You have to realize that mindfulness can help you. More than that, it is not enough to hear about it - you don't grasp its potential until you realize it from your own practice. And that comes at a huge cost: Time and patience.

Most of our culture, almost all of tv and youtube, all our upbringing teaches us the exact opposite: There is suffering, and you escape it by steadfastly ignoring it, or otherwise by bitching about it and blaming others. And benefits have to be immediate, or they are irrelevant.

In other words, the above syllogism ignores that you do not know about mindfulness, and it takes time and dedication to find out about it, and your ignorance is not your fault. For most of us (including yours truly), this means that we had to hit rock bottom before we were prepared to learn about practice.

Of course, now that I have practiced for a few years, I no longer have the excuse of ignorance. I still blame others, and I still blame myself, and I still do mindless stupid stuff - but each time I realize what I'm doing, I try and laugh a bit about my own stupidity, get back up and do some sitting.