On the significance of suffering
Peter’s reply to The Invitation reminded me of a conversation he and I had several years ago, which had prompted me to write my post on Buddhism and Suffering.
In that post, I concluded:
So to me, the case for the significance of suffering, once we look at it closely, seems overwhelming.
Does this mean we resign ourselves to suffering, or become taciturn? No, but it does suggest that there are whole areas of life that we may be blind to, and controlled by just the same, if we don’t consciously acknowledge their significance and respond to them appropriately. I find Buddhism helpful in doing the latter.
I would expect this to be a somewhat controversial or at least interesting claim, particularly for anyone with a background in Rand’s ideas. But six years later, the post still has no comments — so I’m dragging it back onto my home page, with this post.
What do you think?
UPDATE: See related previous discussion following my post Does Suffering Build Character?
I have read with interest several comments to “Does Suffering Build Character?”, but for me the whole answer to the question of suffering has to be collective as well as individual. Buddhism is certainly useful in responding to “whole areas of life that we may be blind to”, but the appropriate answer, again, cannot be only in Buddhism.
Your old “Buddhism and Suffering” post invited to “Consider how many different professions are almost ‘entirely’ dedicated to addressing, treating, or responding to significant forms of suffering.”. And your post asked “Have these professions succeed, in the modern world, at eliminating the problem of suffering?” The problem IMHO, to put it shortly, is that no profession, no religion, nothing until now has been dedicated ‘entirely’ to addressing suffering. That is why I propose that we develop an ‘algonomy’, a work area concerned with suffering, the whole of suffering, and nothing but suffering, as explained at http://www.algosphere.org/indexen.htm.
The significance of suffering seems more like a truism to me, but maybe that’s just a reflection of being immersed in Buddhist texts for so long. We suffer plenty in this world, not much less than in BCE India. Most notably, while modern medicine prevents a lot, it doesn’t prevent death – not ours, nor our loved ones’, which happen all with every bit as much certainty as they did in the Buddha’s time. What may be different in this age is that we are so far removed from death that we blind ourselves to the reality of it. I had a brief musing on that subject a while ago: http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/06/in-praise-of-the-culture-of-death/
On a more everyday level, most of us suffer greatly from things that wouldn’t seem like big deals: traffic jams, malfunctioning computers, misplaced possessions. We fill ourselves with anger and fear and despair, unless we can find ways to be vigilant about making ourselves happy.
What I would agree with is that Rand had a strong tendency in certain contexts to deny or attempt to whitewash the reality of suffering. Her heroes would have a happy moment and think, “the suffering wasn’t really real.” That’s not an exact quote, but it’s close.
And, when her heroes did suffer, they weren’t particularly kind toward themselves with respect to it. Roark observed his suffering like a sadistic “executioner,” if I remember correctly. He would smile at it.
These days I am a proponent of recognizing the reality of suffering as a some-times part of life, and an always potential part of life. I see a lot, not just in Rand, but in the new age world, of attempts to deny that simple fact. (“Everything happens for a reason” and so on.)
Also, I think it’s unhealthy when suffering to be self-punitive or masochistic. Some people think suffering is shameful and punish themselves in order to feel right by themselves; to me this is just adding insult to injury, and blocks the natural healing and re-adjustment process.
So in that sense I think the issue of suffering is important: I think denials of it lie at the root of many problems.
I do wonder, though, if this gets at what you are talking about. I sense you may be referring to something more.