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Relation between physical and psychological suffering?
ravkes
Veteran
Buddha urges us to work with the mind, to effectively see through illusory concepts, opinions and belief through the use of meditation.
Once liberated, how much of an affect does this have on illness, sensational pain etc.
Can I really go up to a starving child and say it's all in his head?
I feel as if Buddha's teachings are incredibly effective in the West where our basic needs are met, however are our thoughts really that powerful that it could also have profound effects on bodily pain and discomfort?
Could it be that pain could be felt, just as pain is without suffering? Therefore, pain just like every other thing in this world is without quality, without any inherent value? Thus making suffering impossible?
Is suffering even real? Is this stupidity of likes, dislikes, wants, desires, greed, anger, love, etc. all just taught to us? Could someone actually experience starvation the same way as they would experience the opposite?
Once liberated, how much of an affect does this have on illness, sensational pain etc.
Can I really go up to a starving child and say it's all in his head?
I feel as if Buddha's teachings are incredibly effective in the West where our basic needs are met, however are our thoughts really that powerful that it could also have profound effects on bodily pain and discomfort?
Could it be that pain could be felt, just as pain is without suffering? Therefore, pain just like every other thing in this world is without quality, without any inherent value? Thus making suffering impossible?
Is suffering even real? Is this stupidity of likes, dislikes, wants, desires, greed, anger, love, etc. all just taught to us? Could someone actually experience starvation the same way as they would experience the opposite?
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Comments
'course pain can be felt just as it is without suffering. It takes a lot of meditation though... eventually pain becomes just another sensation without the suffering.
Suffering is real, but it's usually unnecessary. When someone dies, it's appropriate to grieve, for example. However when your shiny new iThing breaks, it's not. It's appropriate to be dissatisfied with your life when you're starving (as in less than 1 meal per day).
So, while it IS possible for that child not to suffer... it's not going to happen by you saying it. That would just be insensitive.
You may know that many meditators refuse to take anaesthesia when they go to the dentist. You may have also noticed that if you have a constant pain for long enough, you stop noticing it. Obviously that pain is still there, but you're not obsessing with it... it's just there.
Does that address your question at all? I am not sure what you were asking.
Physical pain is "dagnabbit, I seem to have broken my leg!"
Psychological pain is "Holy moley! This means my holiday is off, and I won't be able to go to the dance with my date on sunday, and this is going to mean hobbling around on crutches for at least six weeks, and then maybe physio, and I've got exams coming up, and the exam hall is on the second floor, and the elevator is out of order, and I won't be able to drive anywhere, and...." so on, and so forth.
The Twin Arrows of Suffering.
Suffering the pain, and suffering everything else associated with, but not necessarily triggered by, the pain.
The one incident I read about which absolutely convinced me without any shadow of a doubt that all psychological pain is self-inflicted, and can be eradicated, was when I read the Monk's words:
The one thing of which I was most afraid during my imprisonment in Tibet was "That I would lose my compassion for the Chinese".
THAT is eliminating psychological pain, even though the physical pain was never far away.....
Wow great quote. Inspirational.
No, because it's also in that child's stomach and body. Feeling of hunger is real, it is a signal from your body to your brain, telling it that the body is running low on vital chemicals. Feeling of "suffering because of hunger" is a psychologically conditioned interpretation of that signal. You can be starving and not suffer psychologically, but it's probably pretty hard to develop such ability.
It sounds like you are saying "can we really overpower the feeling of hunger?" I don't think that it's about overpowering, it's more about disconnecting or weakening the mechanism that triggers emotional pain in response to starvation. If you try to overpower it, you will only make it worse - that would be suppression, which doesn't seem to lead to good results in the long run.
No - because there is ocean of difference between what the Buddha taught and nihilism which is the result of what you seem to be thinking here.
Suffering is real. If there was no suffering then we would not need to generate the motivation to release all sentient beings from the depths of samsara.
Buddhism is not an escape from life into some sort of nivana death like state devoid of emotions and feelings.
What the Buddha taught is that we have to learn to hold both realities simultaneously in our mind - which is the realization of a Buddha.
In the meantime we should generate compassion for all migratory beings remembering that all have been our mothers at some time.
Blessings.