18+ General Discussion Forum

I say suffering is inevitable because people get in accidents, become sick, and die. These experiences are almost always painful, emotionally and physically. Then there's the pain you experience when someone close to you is suffering, the pain you suffer when somebody dies. You can't have life without death so you can't have life without suffering.

Although I don't believe in the Christian sense that we are all sinners, born spiritually dead, I do believe that we are what God, (or the forces of nature), made us - and that is imperfect according to our own moral standards. We are animals with a conscience and imagination. In many ways we act like animals - that's not all bad; we have to, to survive. At the same time we can imagine an idealized, unattainable perfection. We can never meet our ideal and therefore we suffer, both from our own sense of inadequacy and the hurts imposed on us by others.

But this doesn't mean we have to beat our chests and wear sack cloth and ashes as we acknowledge our imperfection. We should use our God-given (or evolutionarily selected) brains to try to understand ourselves better and improve ourselves. We should do what we can to alleviate suffering and enjoy the good things life has to offer.

Marcia

Quote of Note: "All beings suffer." The first noble truth of Buddhism known as Dukkha as quoted in http://buddhismtaoism.suite101.com/article.cfm/buddhism_suffering_truth