I can't imagine a life without suffering. Suffering allows one to appreciate the positive moments in life. Living a life of constant luxury and opulence is bound to get dull and boring. Suffering keeps us on our toes, it can allow us to navigate through life using our brains and not our brawn. I see suffering as keeping us sharp.

However, there is a stark difference between the types of suffering. Physical suffering, mental suffering, emotional suffering, spiritual suffering etc. Those starving in developing countries are experiencing physical suffering. Those who live meaningless lives in the developed world have either mental, emotional or spiritual suffering. In many cases, all three.

Not all types of suffering have the same effect on an individual. Even within the same type of suffering. "My muscles feel like they're about to tear themselves apart. My entire body screams in agony. It feels like constant torture, every movement is agony. Dayum, that gym session was good." Now, imagine that last sentence was replaced by "I wish i was dead. Please end it now". A person being tortured. Is there any benefit to experiencing torture? I can't think of any, but many of us are willing to torture ourselves to become healthier. Obviously the amount of pain we inflict on ourselves through exercise is nowhere near the amount of pain that we would feel from a sadistic torturer. So i guess that begs the question, at what point does suffering turn from positive to negative?

I would say it depends on the outcome.

Suffering that leads to improved health or cognitive function overall seems good.

Suffering that leads to injuries or trauma is bad.

Then there is the grey area suffering that can do both: For example improve fitness but cause a mental trauma (as in an athlete with over bearing parents).

So for what it is worth, in my opinion, there are 3 types of suffering: good/bad/gray that are a function of the end impact on the individual. I also think we should work to only allow good suffering. For well intentioned folks, eliminating grey suffering should be a focus as it can sometimes be difficult to recognize even when trying to not lie to oneself.

Heavily based on the person experiencing the suffering. I think it revolves around how we view the intended outcome. When we put ourselves in difficult situations in hopes of personal advancement (i.e - a massive dose of DMT in search of ego-obliteration or running 10 miles every day), we decide in that moment, "yes", these difficult tasks are something we're willing to experience in order to achieve specific results. But our perception of these tasks may distort over time and results may vary. When we no longer see these tasks as worthwhile, just view it as another routine, or we consistently see results that are contrary to our intended outcome (yet keep pursuing said outcome without any enthusiasm), the suffering turns from a positive character building exercise to a form of torment. Now we are putting ourselves through hell without the hope of achieving some greater goal, which I do not believe has any benefit.

edit: beat me to it, loveall

I swear someone addressed this before. Something about the inherent truth of dukkha and some sort of path toward liberation.

there’s a fine line between pleasure and pain

Crazy in the coconut.

tseuq

What about those that seek pain for pleasure??


Suffering is universal. Everyone has,to some degree, inherent never-ending suffering of some type or another. You can't really compare one individual's suffering with another either. It's apples and oranges.

Take 100 people and put them in the same stressful situation. It doesn't really matter what the situation is, more than likely you will have 100 individuals with 100 forms and magnitudes of suffering over the same stimuli.

Look at all the actors, rock stars, and other various people who you think have life by the proverbial balls with everything one could possibly want, and they end up killing themselves, O.D.ing., or going bat-shit crazy with a complete meltdown. It's easy to say "I could handle that fame and fortune no problem," but you can never truly put yourself in their shoes, live their life, or experience their suffering.

It's all relative. Sure, there are definitely people who have it worse than others, but I don't believe that makes anyone's suffering less or more significant.

All suffering emerges from the relation we have with the suffering of the body and its inevitable conclusion: death.

Our culture thrives toward the lowering - and even the annihilation - of physical suffering and death. This desire to control what is precisely loss of control, and the reminders of loss of control, generates immense suffering, in all size and shapes. We have a traumatic relationship with loss of control and it created a need to possess, ourselves at first and, since we are the world we live in, the world in second. Since the world is not made to be possessed, it dies.

Suffering can be understood when one experience the Essence and become immortal. He now knows that he is beyond all ephemeral shapes and forms and he can die without fear but confidence and calmness. Suffering is not an issue and the world is seen as perfectly fair, making us sharper and stronger through all its incarnations, the winds, the sun, just as the rains, the nights and the winter.

One who seeks to escape that seeks to escape his body. As such he will try to use his body less and invent infernal detours to get what he want: Immortality, the realization of the Essence, the nature of human consciousness. Man wants to be whole, eat his own tale ... So he seek immortality in the material realm. Whereas knowledge used to be passed on orally, through the body, he will fixate it outside of himself in a glimmering glass of artificial light. That world that is that off the mind, the illusion his thoughts can create, he will materialize them. Now they exist, reassuringly. As do thoughts, they comfort him, they make grand plans to escape the moment and end the pain, to do yet less of what is painful.

So we get a society where you have to merit, work hard, to get more comfort. More illusion. We all seek to live as Kings, quite the only ones who would not walk to move but would be carried by others. We cut their heads and now wander in feverish reveries of immortalisation, not in history books or administrative papers but their offspring: snapchats and films. More lively they are, better technology truly, and only the beginning it is, in the evolution of the object and the fall of man.

All of that and my little cousin, who spend his life on lame Youtube video or before a computer, his smartphone or video games in utter comfort, ask me innocently if it would not be so great if we could end suffering forever ...

Embrace the struggle.