We need to develop an understanding of others, in order to be able to live with them, and to relate to them. But what I need to understand, more than anything else, anyone else, is myself. It's important to understand my place in the world, in the universe.

How can I achieve this understanding that I need so badly? I suspect that we all need it, but I'm not prone to telling others what to do. I look to myself first. I look to myself when I'm seeking answers to things in the world that I don't understand, usually the things that hurt.

After all, if a thing, an event, brings us joy, I'm happy to understand it for just what it is, joy! I don't question it, I don't ask "why is this amazingly joyful thing happening to me in my life right now, why?" No I don't, because the joy is enough for me. It makes me happy [in that moment], and that is enough. No questioning.

But when pain arises, when I see suffering, when I experience suffering, then I seem unable to do anything but question it. I seem to need to understand it, asking "why, why?" and, feeling the pain, I dig and search for a reason for my suffering. Do you know what that does for me? It makes me feel worse? If only I could accept pain and suffering as easily as I can accept joy. That is one goal of my study and practice of Zen and zazen. To balance my attitude, and manage my thoughts. To manage my actions, and most of all, to try to understand myself.

I am the unlocked mystery, one which the goal of the attainment of enlightenment will bring answers to. One through which I will recognise, eventually, that there is no difference between joy and pain, that they both inhabit the same space. The true understanding is to understand oneself. Because without understanding of the self, there can be no understanding of others.

This essay was written as a contribution to James Shelley's 'Week of Understanding' 4 - 11 April 2011.