Do you think any good comes out of suffering?

Many people do. They believe suffering refines their character, like metal in a firey furnace. No pain no gain eh? That good things in life need to be paid for with misery and sacrifice and self-denial. That happiness is not inherently deserved, but must be earned thru trials and tribulations and hard work. But is this really true? What if suffering is just plain no good at all? What if it actually makes us WORSE people? What if happiness is right in front of us, needing us only to reach out for it and grab it?

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Well, if suffering would be so purifying and so character-building, then prisons, hospitals and concentration camps would be full of enlightened people. But they don't seem to be ...

Indeed, what if?

If it would really be as simple as you suggest, then how come people don't just do it?

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I suspect that many people do. It's just that non-suffering non-complaining people don't generally make the morning headlines. We thrive on a culture of complaint. It's what drives us to keep consuming and cramming our lives with pre-packaged information, fads, and fancy gadgetry. Attachment. Wanting. Craving more. It's all part of the same cycle.

 

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I think that challenges might be necessary in order for human virtues to fully develop. It would be awfully hard to be brave in a world where fear is unknown. It would be hard to be resolute in a world where everything is easy. (That suggests some interesting questions about heaven.)

But I'm not convinced that suffering is necessary or is the point.

While there might conceivably be some value in some of the situations that elicit suffering in most people, the experience of suffering might be a disfunctional response to those situations. Mountain climbers don't climb mountains in hopes of feeling cold and tired.

No, I don't think that it's that. It's not a quid pro quo transaction.

I'm inclined to think that suffering isn't any good, in and of itself.

I don't think that's an exact quote from any of the suttas, but it does kind of paraphrase the second of the noble truths.

In the Dhammacakkappavattana sutta, Buddha's first discourse, he says that the origin of 'dukkha' (often translated as 'suffering') is 'trsna' (which can be translated as 'attachment'). In Pali, trsna literally means 'thirst'. My inclination is to interpret it as meaning something like 'neediness' or 'dependency', namely our neediness for and the dependency of our pleasures on conditions that by their nature are transitory and without lasting substance.

I guess that trsna can be both positive and negative. We spend most of our lives chasing things that we believe will make us happy, and running in fear from things that we believe will make us suffer. It's what drives us, pulling our strings like puppets. But even when we succeed in experiencing pleasure, it rarely satisfies us fully and it quickly fades away, returning us to our mad pursuit. It isn't unlike drug addiction, I guess. (Some addictive drugs might actually stimulate the parts of the brain that motivate us in this way.)

So it's a mistake to think that monastics are trying to make themselves suffer, in order to pay for and ultimately deserve some heavenly reward. They aren't trying to make themselves suffer at all, just the opposite. They are simply trying to free themselves from the condition where their psychological state is entirely dependent on transitory and insubstantial circumstance.

 

It's a complex topic.

Compare:

From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications. From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness. From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form. From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media. From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact. From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving. From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging/sustenance. From clinging/sustenance as a requisite condition comes becoming. From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth. From birth as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.002.than.html


It is ignorance - ie. ignorance of the Four Noble Truths - that is the root cause of suffering.

Clinging/craving/attachment comes in later, after ignorance of the FNT.

 

But what is considered a virtue can differ quite a lot from one person to the next. The same act can be described by one person as an act of bravery, and by another as an act of arrogance, and by yet another as an act of naivete. So which is it?

From a mainstream Christian perspective, yes. But go East, and heaven isn't portrayed as a society of the sedated. I heard a story about heaven in which one woman throws another woman down a well; and to say nothing about the pursuits and fights of the demigods. The Greek pantheon, technically, heaven, is full of strife and intrigue among the gods too.

 

Yes. Absolutely.

 

Possibly the reference to trsna is essentially Greed or avarice...

"When sharing resources is a higher priority that competing for them peace may be come a reality" ~anon

The basis of all suffering in the context of this thread could be considered as greed or the attachment to "more".

What do you think?

 

Indeed, you start to welcome death...

 

There are subtle varying shades of meaning in the different words we use for desire. Greed suggests an unending desire for more and more, as in money or hoarding things. Coveting seems more bent on desiring the things that other people have. Attachment can occur with things you already have, as in the desire to never let something go. Possession implies a domination of the will over the object or person. Obsession is all about fixating on one particular thing. Addiction is the overwhelming and enslaving hunger for an experience over and over again. Yearning is an aching longing for something you can't have. I think all of these are rooted in this fundamental sense of desire.

 

Is it just me, dmoe, that finds the use of the words : "we" and "us", when discussing broad topics or issues, irksome?

As in this issue, suffering. Some people seem to actually be able to learn valuable lessons from the perceived suffering of others, without truly suffering the hardships, trials or tribulations themselves.

While, at the same time, there also seem to be people that cannot even learn anything of any value at all, not just from their own suffering and the suffering of others, but also the suffering that they themselves inflict upon others!

True sympathy or empathy is not always partially nor completely existent in every "we" or "us" in this world.
Nor can there be any "across the board" consensus of the views/feelings/beliefs of the benefits, good or bad, of suffering, or of most anything at all, pertaining to the "we" or "us" in the world.

Is it just me?

Is it not improper use of the words "we" or "us", when expressing ones "truly personal" or "truly personally perceived" views/feelings/beliefs?

Just wondering?

 

Death CAN be a relief for the suffering. But that just underscores the badness of suffering. It isn't good that you are reduced by suffering to longing for death. Suffering is even more horrible in this respect. It makes death, normally an unthinkable prospect, seem like freedom.

 

I'm not sure "good" comes out of it as much as strength does; at least that's been my personal experience with suffering.

 

I like this thread.
>>>>>>>>

I think suffering is lack of right speaking, and or lack of simple goodly encouragement.

 

What doesn't kill you, strenghtens you ... or leaves you crippled.

 

I was writing a bit of "Flash" story telling the other day for fun... [word topic: Immortality]
It was about a race of humanoids somewhere out there in the universe, that devoted their entire lives [from birth] to the achievement of immortality and how they went about it.
The humorous punch line:
"Immortality or die trying"

....hence an aspect to the the nature of suffering.

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yes the attachment that provides the greatest suffering is the addiction to wanting more. IMO

"Passion"

[note, a distinction between "want" and "need"]

If you take it to the absolute, the "absurdo". Wanting the next moment in time, wanting more time, more life, is the antithesis to suicide.

For example:
"A man decides to jump off a 12th floor roof top to end his life [suicide] has determined that his suffering for "more" must end.

So in absolute "absurdo", every breath you take has it's genesis in the desire for more. An addiction to oxygen, to life, to movement, to existing....etc..
An indication of how overwhelming "addiction" is : try holding your breath for 3 minutes and observe the emotions and feelings that are revealed. [This could be an example of the suffering of addiction IMO]

Addiction = attachment that you can not voluntarily relinquish [ compulsion of desire ]

just thoughts...

I am confident that if they surveyed those Monastic monks in the Nepalese and Tibetan mountains, you would find that "physical/mental health" is vastly improved simply by containing this rapacious need for more. Devoted to ascetic lifestyles where fundamental needs [food, shelter, affection etc] are met and desires beyond such are managed better.
I would anticipate for example the incidence of Cancers and Cardio-vascular disease would be insignificant when compared to the Western lifestyle as both conditions appear to be psycho-somatic in nature and caused by the stresses associated with the constant craving for more. [more, faster, bigger, better , productivity, efficiency, etc etc and most importantly the inherent "Frustration" of non - achievement]

 

"THANK Heaven! the crisis—
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last—
And the fever called 'Living'
Is conquer'd at last.

Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length:
But no matter—I feel
I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly
Now, in my bed,
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead—
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible throbbing
At heart—ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!

The sickness—the nausea—
The pitiless pain—
Have ceased, with the fever
That madden'd my brain—
With the fever called 'Living'
That burn'd in my brain..."

"For Annie" by Edgar Allen Poe

 

Apparently, people don't fancy Buddhism ...

 

The question is too broad to elicit a worthwhile response.