What is Suffering?
Suffering is pain. Suffering is art. Suffering is depression. Suffering is love. Suffering is damage. Suffering is desire. Suffering is guilt. Suffering is a cycle. Suffering is to be. In a finite world of humans with desire, humans infinitely want. Life is already filled with endless instances of suffering, physical maybe mental, but it’s all suffering. Essentially suffering is the direct feeling of dread that comes after failure or succession in life. A means of which your own achievements and obstacles can affect you in a negative way, or the way you live and think in your life. If anything, suffering is to be human. To experience. To become wiser from the depths of something in life that can be so cruel.
All life is suffering. Everything that lives and grows is filled with suffering. At least that is what the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer believes. In his work “The world as will and representation” he states that life wants, and because life wants it remains unfulfilled. That even after human desires are fulfilled, we demand more. Everything around us can last forever but humans simply cannot. Making us meaningless and insignificant. Schopenhauer gives us one solution to this “constant suffering” as he might call it. Asceticism. In order to break the cycle of human suffering one must have discipline and not be driven by desires. Schopenhaur also points out that humans are always on their way to death. In the end everything dies and is pointless. Some might say that Schopenhauer's point of view can be pessimistic. Brutal Almost. Some of Schopenhaur’s points are justifiable, although is it safe to say that when you can’t find a reason to live, in that instance the only thing you have to look forward to is death?
Living beings are trapped in an endless cycle of suffering by just existing. Day in and day out, life after life wandering with no purpose. “Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, pain, sorrow, grief and despair are suffering.” In Buddhism there exist four noble truths about suffering. The truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering. Buddha’s teaching points out that we all experience suffering, yet in his teachings it is not meant as a negative but as a way of seeing reality for what it is and giving a way to deal with suffering and rid yourself of it. Craving things like material goods, desires, and even immortality are at the root of suffering. Budhha explains that these things we might desire can bring suffering when one is not satisfied with them. In order to rid yourself of suffering one has to achieve Nirvana by meditating, having good moral conduct, and developing wisdom and mindfulness. A state free from suffering and the cycle of rebirth reaching spiritual enlightenment. Giving the expectation that there is an end to suffering. Suffering being life.
Suffering is raw humanity. Not in the sense that suffering is life or that it’s a cycle you need to overcome but in a sense that suffering is a fundamental feeling for humans. One that has to be felt in order to know what it’s truly like to overcome. To know what it means to live and to grow. To lose and to love. I believe suffering is not something that has to be overcome but something that has to be felt in order to know what it’s truly like to be human at its core. Suffering is vital in the same way happiness is, just not for the same reasons. Meant to make us stronger, wiser, and more aware of life and its many obstacles. Suffering to put it simply is to exist, but if suffering is to exist, Then does it mean that it has meaning? Does it mean it’s growth?