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Is suffering necessary?
A Facebook conversation:
Me - a status post: May all living beings be well, happy and peaceful. May no harm come to them. May no difficulties come to them. May no problems come to them. May they always meet with success. May they also have patience, courage, understanding, and determination to meet and overcome inevitable difficulties, problems, and failures in life.
Friend: I wish we could all get our learning completed under those criteria. I think that often beings need to - what we might call suffer- to learn.
Me: So, is suffering necessary? If so, to what degree of suffering is useful, and where does it become harmful?
Would a life devoid of suffering be somehow inferior to a life with suffering? If it were inferior, then one could argue that the condition of not suffering is, in itself, yet another sort of suffering.
This is interesting and needs consideration.
Anyone know what the Dharma says about this? Is suffering necessary?
Me - a status post: May all living beings be well, happy and peaceful. May no harm come to them. May no difficulties come to them. May no problems come to them. May they always meet with success. May they also have patience, courage, understanding, and determination to meet and overcome inevitable difficulties, problems, and failures in life.
Friend: I wish we could all get our learning completed under those criteria. I think that often beings need to - what we might call suffer- to learn.
Me: So, is suffering necessary? If so, to what degree of suffering is useful, and where does it become harmful?
Would a life devoid of suffering be somehow inferior to a life with suffering? If it were inferior, then one could argue that the condition of not suffering is, in itself, yet another sort of suffering.
This is interesting and needs consideration.
Anyone know what the Dharma says about this? Is suffering necessary?
0
Comments
The willingness to engage in the practices that will free us from Samsara is a directly connected to how much we are aware of our suffering abnd our being ready to change.
Many, who as a result of thier Karma are surounded by worldly pleasues are not ready to alter thier life to practice the Dharma.
So , I think that suffering is a needed springboard to propel us toward the Dharma Teachings.
Can you explain again, in different words. I am struggling to understand.
People suffer because the events of thier life affect the mind. The Buddhist teachings, sometimes refered to as the Dharma Teachings are a way to train the mind to accept any event that arises without suffering.
Our willingness to change is connected to the events that are a part of our life. For example a person might change the way that they eat or exercise as the result of a heart attack. Of course many people will wait until something happens in order to change, while other people might make a choice to eat a healthy diet because they do not want to suffer a heart attack. This is a very individual choice with many options.
In some ways the Buddhist teachings are the same way. They are a path that a person can follow if they think that they are in pain and would like to have that pain end and be replaced by a feeling of peace and relaxation.
I am sure that you can think of people who have a lot of money and fame and are able to lead very comfertible lives and never really be affected by the problems that most of us face on a regular basis.
Often, these people are less willing to put the time and effort into a spiritual practice because they see no need, while others with less worldly goods will be more eager to try to train the mind to ease thier pain.
Basicly, the more pain that you are in , the more willing you will be to get treatment, so I think that suffering is needed before one is willing to put in the work to change.
I hope this helps.
No, I think that's a good way of putting it.
I got that. This now comes around full circle to the metta quote I started with: "May all living beings be well, happy and peaceful. May no harm come to them. May no difficulties come to them. May no problems come to them. May they always meet with success. May they also have patience, courage, understanding, and determination to meet and overcome inevitable difficulties, problems, and failures in life."
Does this metta not imply a wish for a life without suffering, as my friend seems to have inferred? (See the first post in this thread)
(I really don't mean to be a nit picker on this issue, but find the subtle differentiation interesting to consider.)
Other than that, I don't understand exactly what you trying to inquire about.
I think, based on nothing but intuition, that one could be born into a state of nirvana (and/or not loose it to life's processes). Certainly extremely rare. Perhaps these are the people of god legends. It is not rational to think that one in this state of nirvana, having never suffered, has a different state or quality of nirvana than one who has "worked" for it with suffering.
I'm talking about appreciation of such a state. If there is no point of reference there is no point
We don't revel in our humanity (the animal that we are) after all. Religion and science both are ways to try and to get us into another state of existence.
And yeah, theoretically, one might be born in Nirvana, but everything is impermanent, and I'm sure outside conditions would make our baby-selves grow into very normal human beings as time went by and the brain evolved. Yes, because I believe nirvana, suffering, joy or whatever else are all about brain function, like anything else in this world.
At the same time mind and body interpenetrate.
It's true that our experience is our experience....I remember when I was a kid and talked with my older brother...I was all giddy because I thought I was so smart - I ventured the possibility of me actually being a god and "you all" and everything around me being a product of my imagination.
True, that!!
Suffering is inevitable, a result of the way we view reality.
However, those who have easy lives are rarely as motivated to find a solution to those who suffer more. Therefore, in an indirect way, suffering is more likely to lead to freedom from suffering.
Whatever our social or financial status in life we all experience dukkha -suffering, or that which is hard to bear,including of course, discontent, unsatisfactoriness and mental conflict.
Dukkha, together with anicca and anatta is one of the 3 characteristics of conditioned phenomena.
As for what the Dharma says about suffering, we hear about it in the Four Noble Truths
here:
http://www.buddhanet.net/4noble.htm
Kind wishes,
Dazzle