The Buddha's discovery to end the problem of suffering started with the realization that life is suffering. Now I had to think about that for awhile. I'm not that sharp, you know. Yeah, I know you know.
Anyway, what I get from this is, that as long as we are alive we will suffer in some form. Birth is a beautiful suffering event form mother and baby. Many people are tortured with mental suffering from abuse, guilt, and psychological disorders. Most of us have one physical malady or another at the least. We have lost loved ones in tragic accidents, or simply from old age. Yes, perhaps to live is to suffer.
As a species, in general, we do not like to suffer. How many inventions, rationalizations and myths have we used to circumvent or delay suffering? Air Conditioning, Refrigerators, Spinal Blocks, Multiple Personality Disorder, and thousands of drugs invented to delay death and ease suffering. . . I could go on, and all would be attempted solutions to the problem of suffering.
Here's the kicker: Most of these "solutions" cause us to suffer even deeper. For instance, a person may develop Multiple Personality Disorder (or a host of other disorders) as a way to deal with a terrible experience and avoid suffering. As we know, psychological disorders are not a path to life without suffering. We create antibiotics to cure bacterial infections, and then we overuse them and develop resistant strains of bacteria for which there is no cure. We create technology that does the "hard work" for us and we get fat and live with lower back pain from sitting on our asses all day. We extend our lives with wonder drugs to cure every ailment, and often wind up in nursing homes with little quality of life. . . Again, I could go on.
Maybe the solution is simply to do as the Buddah said, and accept that suffering is part of life.
What do you think?
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5 comments:
I'm no expert on Buddhism, but I think you have to go beyond the first of the 4 noble truths:
1. all life is suffering
2. suffering is caused by attachments (our tendency to expect fulfillment from externals)
3. cessation of suffering is attainable (which speaks not of our circumstances but our reaction to them)
4. the 8-fold path
And, yes, I think there is a lot of truth to this. I think Taoism's emphasis on the transience of all things, non-effort, and a non-dualistic view of life is also helpful. Both of these perspectives seem to me very compatible with what I read in the Bible.
Trust me. I'm no expert either. Just trying on shoes to see what fits . Trying to find a more holistic style of high-heeled sneaker....
I hear you. Holistic High-Heeled Sneakers--another great band name from the mind of Roger.
Very insightful, Roger. I see things similarly. I think we were created as perfect beings (and still are), but for some reason (probably known only to God), we've been placed in this imperfect world. It is meant to break us. It is designed to cause us to learn things we could never know in the midst of perfection. Some day, we will take back these learnings and life-experiences back to the land of perfection, and live with greater richness.
But, who knows?
Hey Bruce! I don't have enough info to know if we were created perfect or not, but the world is definitely an imperfect place. Perhaps learning to deal rightly with the imperfections of this world perfects us?
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