Suffering in Life

[e_dog]

As the Buddha proclaimed some two and half millennia ago, life is suffering. This so-called noble truth was repeated but slipped into the background amidst a pantheon of buddhas and feel-good stirrings about compassion and rescuing sentient beings. Likewise, the stark reality of human cruelty and the sacrifice of a "God" that was the crucifixion of Christianity was forgotten in a race to conquer new converts and the banal artistry of churches and robes.

The great philosopher Schopenhauer was perhaps the first Western thinker (original thinker or theorist, that is, as opposed to the pure scholars whose works he himself relied upon) to take seriously the wisdom of the east, drawing on Upanishadic as well as Buddhist thought in developing his own philosophy that grew out of a Platonic-Kantian western tradition. For Schopenhauer, as for the Buddha, life is suffering. Schopenhauer's most pungent statement of this position is that given by a thought experiment: if you doubt that the sum of pain outweighs the sum of joy in this world, reflect upon the relative experiences of (1) an animal engaged in eating another, and (2) the animal being eaten. Satisfaction and misery are two sides of the lopsided mountain of Nature. (The mathematical symmetry of the Tao is an illusion.) Schopenhauer's pessimism goes as far as to opine that it would be better for humanity to not exist that to suffer as it does. Unlike Buddhism, then, Schopenhauer's brand of pessimism verges with nihilism, as he takes the problems of suicide and solipsism to be of primary importance.

Another western intellectual and artist, Woody Allen put the position something like this, in the flick "Annie Hall": there are two types of existence, the horrible and the miserable -- the horrible including the terminally ill or disfigured and the miserable being everyone else.

If this is true, then happiness is a temporary delusion, an illusory denial or ignorance of the basic facts of human frustration, pain and death. Does that mean that "anything goes" or that all is futile? Perhaps not. There can be different levels and kinds of suffering. Schopenhauer, like the Buddha, puts forth a plea for compassion as the ethical consequence of the perspective on life as suffering, adding, however, that the ego-less experience of true art can alleviate the problem and that death is an absorption back into the universal will. The latter points are sublimated nonsense, a Freudian might object. But at least there are possibilities of alleviating suffering. For example, sometimes the best cure for mental anguish is physical pain. (Does it work vice versa?) A trade-off of one version of suffering for another is the most to hoped for, on this view.

Instead, we could try to reject the premise that life is suffering, or at least propose that not all life is suffering. Buddhists throughout the ages have sought to make his seemingly dire view of existence more palatable. indeed, the Buddha himself added extra noble truths (that the cause of suffering, desire, can be overcome), and an eightfold path, to demonstrate a way out of the first noble truth. But the truth is one. The rest is a magic show.

[Arcadia]

Suffering is somehow a point
Last week in a marxist-oriented-learning-group most of the members expressed their "hopes" for these year in this way and I coudn´t avoid to think in buddhism:

"to have will for enjoying", "to learn without suffer". "to be concerned/afraid for the things that really matter"...

If you impose yourself not to suffer, you´ll suffer when you realize that you are suffering anyway...
Other thing is the catholic-oriented-line: the more you suffer the more posibilites to be in grace, and not matter if you suffer or not you are guilty anyway...

Is dialectics a philosophy-philosophy?

[Marksman45]

I don't think that I suffer all too much at all really.
I mean, there are short occasions of breakdown and drunken crying jags, day-to-day disappointments, but in hindsight it always seems silly. And I have a general constant undefined longing, but it's not all that bad. Certainly not insurmountable in the least.

I spend most of my time in <i>glee</i>. I immerse myself wholly in enjoying things, from the taste of my food to the feel of my clothes to the music I compulsively play on my guitar. I'm never at a loss to find things amusing. I myself am amusing to myself very often. I'm quite ridiculous, being a human and all.

I've been called "easily amused" before. I think it was meant derisively. But really it only reflected on the person who said it. He was just too difficult to amuse, because he didn't allow himself to be. He was indulging in being unamused.

I've also learned to transform some negatives. For instance, the abstract longing I mentioned earlier, I sort of enjoy it aesthetically, it's a rather beautiful sadness when viewed detachedly. And then physical pain, I've discovered that, in certain circumstances, it can be transformed from a negative into a rather exciting positive...

I figure I'm pretty darn well off. I have food, clothing, and shelter, and that alone keeps me out of a great deal of suffering. Whatever suffering I feel pales in comparison to what other people in the world have to deal with. I just tell myself, "walk it off" or "grin and bear it," then I can get back to glee.

[sooZen]

"shoot a hole in the buddha to see the light" C.B. Lee

Zen takes care of the suffering aspect of buddhism for with Zen comes joy, beauty even in the shine of spit.

Yes there is suffering, for we can feel but in feeling, we can experience what is beyond our pain and that is...enlightenment.

Life may be a series of suffering but that is not IT...only an aspect of experience for life is more than just that and the joys of life far outway the pain or should, if you are attuned.
So tune in...Hah!

Peace,
SooZen