Understanding Suffering

[axordil]

This is totally separate from my other discussion here, but...a God that could not suffer would be incomplete and not much of a God. One need not believe in the Incarnation to believe in the absolute necessity of the divine experiencing what we do.

[Windfola]

Yes, I think they must reflect part of the truth of who God is, in relation to His creation. How would we who are finite understand compassion without suffering? How would we understand Holiness without evil?

True. But, as I had already explained in my initial post, there is no reason to believe that an unlimited creator god couldn't have designed a creation completely devoid of that dualism which is so central to our being. Or if that was indeed not possible, it suggests that there is something even greater, outside or above the creator god, which is the thing that actually limits and defines the creation.

It seems to me that it's got to be one or the other.

[Cerin]

But, as I had already explained in my initial post, there is no reason to believe that an unlimited creator god couldn't have designed a creation completely devoid of that dualism which is so central to our being.

I'm suggesting that the creation needs the dualism in order to understand God, who Is.

The alternative would be to not have created us, but that evidently would also have been inconsistent with God's nature.

I think we come back to this idea of 'unlimited'. God cannot be inconsistent with Himself or he would not be Himself. That places limits on what can be. The limits are not on God, but on what is and can be, in view of who God is.

[Windfola]

I'm suggesting that the creation needs the dualism in order to understand God, who Is.

This too, is an interesting idea, though it is quite inconsistent with my understanding of much of human religious thought throughout the ages, which tends to suggest that our dualistic world is most certainly NOT a reflection of the nature of god, but is a result of something gone wrong (i.e. "the fall" in the Judeo-Christian tradition) and that our task is to seek the unitive love-knowledge that is god.

I think we come back to this idea of 'unlimited'.

I agree. I think this is our sticking point. I can't conceive of any limits of any kind (even a notion of a god who must be consistent with himself) that do not suggest something even larger or even more fundamental, or however one wants to think of it, than our concept of the transcendent creator god.

[Cerin]

At least we agree on what we disagree on!

[Maria]

I can't conceive of any limits of any kind (even a notion of a god who must be consistent with himself) that do not suggest something even larger or even more fundamental, or however one wants to think of it, than our concept of the transcendent creator god.

Not even self imposed limits? Like when one plays solitaire and doesn't cheat?

[Windfola]

Maria wrote:

Not even self imposed limits? Like when one plays solitaire and doesn't cheat?

:D

I think I would agree that "self-imposed" limits don't count (for me) as something larger which is limiting upon a supposedly transcendent god. However, a self-imposed limit would bring us back to the notion of a god who was in some way making "choices" about his creation and that lands us back into the thick of my original dilemma.

I do agree, by the way, that suffering is inextricably bound up with the fact of our dualistic nature.

[Pearly Di]

This is totally separate from my other discussion here, but...a God that could not suffer would be incomplete and not much of a God. One need not believe in the Incarnation to believe in the absolute necessity of the divine experiencing what we do.

I do believe in the Incarnation but agree with you, Ax.

This discussion makes my head explode. I am not much of a philosopher.

All I know is that suffering sucks and it affects me more deeply the older I get. The world's suffering, I mean, not just my own close circle.

On the question of God and suffering ... do we actually HAVE to understand God????? I'm not sure I need or wish to worship a God I completely understood ...

Suffering is one of the great mysteries. Either suffering is random or it means something and ultimately can be redeemed in some way (that I don't pretend to understand, believe me). Either way, it's horrible when you're going through it. But I don't believe that things are senseless and random ... not ultimately, although they sure as hell can feel like it to the person who is suffering.

I have much more to say ... but am too tired to organise my thoughts properly now.

And I don't feel like much of a match for any of you. That's a compliment, not a complaint.

[MithLuin]

Anyone who thinks they fully understand God is just fooling themselves .

But, I do see that people want to understand a little bit about what is going on with God....you know, part of the picture, at least.

Augustine (and other medievals) understood that faith seeks understanding....but that means that you start with a belief, and only later realize what it means. Kinda the opposite of reasoning your way to a conclusion. But less haphazard .

Eru, I know what you are going through is serious, and not to be taken lightly. I'm sorry if my comment came across as dismissing your feelings. I was trying to be the voice that reminded you that things do get better, that there is something to hope for. I am sorry if I made it sound like it was easy to get there or that you just had to snap out of
it I must learn to be more sensitive one of these days.

_______________________________________________________
Mith's comments to Eru address posts that were split to a new thread: Treatment of Depression. Jn

[Jnyusa]

There isn't enough time to construct an essay out of this but I tried to write down some 'bullet-point' thoughts while at school this evening.

• What is suffering? Before we can decide what suffering reveals about God, I think we have to decide what suffering is. In my opinion, 'what suffering is' is not at all obvious.

• The way we experience suffering is influenced by our culture. The emphasis that western civilization places on the importance of the individual means that suffering as well as joy will be perceived as an intensely personal experience. As with all personal experiences, we should be very careful with extrapolation.

• Physical pain has survival value. Ax mentioned this, and I think it deserves reiteration. Pain is how our body alerts us to injury. Pain that persists when the injury cannot be fled is not useful, but there is also evidence that such useless messages can be blocked. Thus we might choose to experience pain when it is useful to survival.

•There is no uniform criterion of suffering. Individuals vary in both the threshold stimulus that results in 'pain' and in the amount of control they are able to exercise over their physical response. We also vary greatly in our ability to surmount obstacles and in the existential importance we give to obstacles and discomfort.

•Does nature cause suffering? It has been suggested, and some evidence offered, that nature left to its own devices acts to eliminate useless pain. (This does not eliminate the deliberate infliction of pain by species that know how to do this, namely us.) It is believed, for example, that the neural function of prey shuts down before it is actually killed. The mouse does not have time to feel the grip of the hawk.
•• Corollary: Natural selection does work against suffering.
..................... Adaptation, by favoring survival, also minimizes the pain that precedes death, e.g. hunger, thirst, freezing, etc.
..................... It favors predators able to execute a quick kill because this is also less dangerous for the predator.
..................... It favors less virulent forms among viruses and other parasites: those that do not cause death are favored as long as the prey species has not overpopulated its niche.
..................... Adaptation toward cooperative or symbiotic modes of coexistence is favored because this promotes the survival of both species.

(Forgive me for framing these backwards. Technically it is survival that favors the adaptation and not the adaptation which favors survival.)

• Problem of Perception: The conundrum might not be caused by the existence of suffering but by our perception of suffering as something negative. In addition, for us westerns, it might be exaggerated by our tendency to take negative things very personally.

It is not obvious to me that the suffering inflicted by 'the world' is a negative thing. (Humans deliberately inflicting pain is a different issue, but I also think this falls into a different category of question from the question that Windy has posed.)

Eru, you talked about feeling bad for the past twelve years, and there seems to be a consensus that there is something wrong with this. But I have to ask, 'bad relative to what?' To whom are you comparing yourself? Is it normal to be cheerful and optimistic all the time? How often does one have to be cheerful and optimistic in order to be normal? Maybe there is nothing wrong with you and you are simply comparing yourself to the wrong model - the TV fiction of the perfect character or the masks worn by those around you.

If you feel you can no longer function in your own life, that is different. But failing to be sufficiently cheerful all the time compared to others does not mean that you are ill.

This is not an attempt to diagnose you. I'm not qualified to do that. It is only a suggestion that 'suffering' might also be caused as much by others telling us that we are suffering as by some actual physical condition. (In such a case brain surgery would not be a good solution.)

I'm sure that the lawyers and bankers and stock brokers in my neighborhood experience genuine angst when they have to choose between undertaking ever more crushing debt versus living without the SUV that all their competitors own. What conclusions shall we draw about God based on the evidence of such suffering? God knows the suffering is real but who is the one inflicting it?

• Losing those whom we love. This is the worst suffering of all, isn't it. How could one design a universe so as to avoid it?

No death? In a finite world, there cannot be reproduction without mortality. We can avoid the suffering of losing a child, but only by having no children. Not just in the obvious physical sense that I cannot lose I child that I never bore, but in the broadest possible sense. No life form can reproduce unless it also agrees to die.

An infinite world? That is so far beyond our conception that it would be easier to define God than to define an infinite physical universe and what it would mean to have been created once and forever in such a place.

Well, then, we are finite and we are mortal but if we never love then we can never suffer for love. Would that be better or worse?

If I suggested that every source of emotional suffering was also a source of joy, and it would not be possible to eliminate one without eliminating the other, would that change the meaning of suffering?

Jn
_______________________________________________________
My comments to Eru address posts that were moved to a split thread: Treatment of Depression. Jn

[Primula Baggins]

I just want to say, as a data point, that after the experience of having cancer and being treated (hard) for it, I now live in what I can only call joy, with a deep appreciation for every twist life has to offer, every moment of experience. And I'm not dying—as far as I know, I'm completely well.

When I think of my former life, it seems like a colorless fog of work and busyness and worry. Right now I honestly would be pleased with five more years or fifty; they'll all mean something, and I'll be there in the middle of them.

I've learned that not all suffering is, in the end, an evil.

I don't think "God gave me cancer." I think I got cancer because I live in a natural world that is subject to natural laws. God is helping me salvage a lot of good from the bad.

[Jnyusa]

People, I'm going to try to do a surgical split on this thread to separate the discussion of depression from the discussion of suffering as it relates to God.

Because it will take me a bit of time to do this (separating out individual posts) I'm going to lock the thread while I'm doing it. Anything posted now on depression, I won't be able to attach it to the new thread, so let me prevent additional posts from being made while the split is in progress.

Also, there are a couple posts that address both topics, so I will edit in links to the new thread in those posts.

Thanks for your patience.

Jn

[Jnyusa]

Ok - thread is unlocked now. Thanks for your patience everyone. I'll go through and add links to those posts that addressed both topics after the point where the thread was split.

Here's the new thread:

Treatment of Depression.

Per Eru's preference, it has been moved to Bag End.

Jn

[Windfola]

Thank you Jnyusa for spliting the thread. I think it will serve both worthy discussions well.

I'm digesting your "suffering" post and also preparing a few thoughts (all stolen) about non-attachment.

Stay tuned . . .

[Windfola]

Jnysua: As promised, here are some thoughts on non-attachement.

The concept of non-attachment, and the related idea of spiritual “disinterestedness” as a distinguishing characteristic of true charity, is explained in Aldous Huxley’s “The Perennial Philosophy”.

For those who are not familiar with this book, it is an incredible anthology of the wisdoms of the world’s great religions, placed within a narrative framework written by Huxley. It’s one of the most enlightening books I’ve ever read on the subject of religion and spirituality. Its main premise is described this way by Huxley in the Introduction:

“Philosphia Perennis – the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing – the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being – the thing is immemorial and universal.

Rudiments of the Perennial Philosphy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions. A version of this Highest Common Factor in all preceding and subsequent theologies was first committed to writing more than twenty-five centuries ago, and since that time the inexhaustible theme has been treated again and again, from the standpoint of every religious tradition and in all the principal languages of Asia and Europe.”

Even those who disagree with this basic premise (that the essential elements of divine Truth are embodied in all the great religions of the world) will find the gathering of so many quotes from so many of the world’s great saints, mystics, prophets and religious men and women from all over the world and throughout the ages, truly a fascinating and hugely educational read.

With regard to non-attachment and the related concepts of mortification and disinterestedness, here are some quotes from the book:

“Holiness . . . is the total denial of the separative self, in its creditable no less than its discreditable aspects, and the abandonment of the will to God. To the extent that there is attachment to “I”, “me”, “mine”, there is no attachment to, and therefore no unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Mortification has to be carried to the pitch of non-attachment or (in the phrase of St. Francois de Sales) “holy indifference”; otherwise it merely transfers self-will from one channel to another, not merely without a decrease in the total volume of that self-will, but sometimes with an actual increase."

“Our kingdom go” is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of “Thy kingdom come”. For the more there is of self, the less there is of God. The divine eternal fullness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing and acting. Mortification or deliberate dying to self is inculcated with an uncompromising firmness in the canonical writings of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and most of the other major and minor religions of the world, and by every theocentric saint and spiritual reformer who has ever lived out and expounded the principles of the Perennial Philosophy.”

He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. I John: 4

“We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge, and when the love is sufficiently disinterested and sufficiently intense, the knowledge becomes unitive knowledge and so takes on the quality of infallibility. Where there is no disinterested love (or, more briefly, no charity), there is only biased self-love, and consequently only a partial and distorted knowledge both of the self and of the world of things, lives, minds and spirit outside the self.”

Clearly, the concept of non-attachment means non-attachment to (i.e. letting go of) the separative self which is characterized by typical egocentric self-interest. The “disinterestedness” associated with non-attachment refers to the ability to love only for love’s sake, with absolutely no thought whatsoever for what we might receive in return. As Huxley says: “Charity is disinterested, seeking no reward, nor allowing itself to be diminished by any return of evil for its good.”

Or, as St. Bernard describes it: “Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit.”

It’s a standard, I daresay, that few of us manage to achieve.

[Jnyusa]

Windy,

Thank you so much for calling our atttention to this book. I had no idea that Aldous Huxley had written something like this.

The Buddhist ideal of non-attachment is one that I find very attractive. It is not something that I had associated with western mysticism, and now that this connection has been pointed out to me I find it intriguing.

My own spiritual ... conclusions ... (for want of a better word) have traveled in a slightly different direction in recent years.

The “disinterestedness” associated with non-attachment refers to the ability to love only for love’s sake, with absolutely no thought whatsoever for what we might receive in return.

I appreciate the desirability of this goal! - especially as alternative to the acquisitive or opportunistic self-interest that dominates most of our lives most of the time. But complete non-attachment is not only rarely obtained, it is also unattainable by physical beings. I think there is a careful balance to be struck between "disinterestedness," as indifference to whether a particular reward will be given by a particular person, and ingratitude, as indifference to the fact that we are constant recipients of rewards from others, both physical and spiritual.

The Buddhist monk who goes out with his begging bowl every day is made aware that his sustenance is a gift from others, but I think it is hard for most of us to remain cognizant of just how interconnected and dependent we are. Everything that sustains our life is a kind of gift, dependent on the willingness of others to be socially connected to us, to provide us with things in exchange for what we provide to them.

It is a mirage that we can disassociate ourselves from this. I might join a cloister (if there were such a thing for Jews) and remove from myself the reminders of my attachments, but unless I lie down in bed and do absolutely nothing until I die of doing nothing, I cannot get rid of those attachments but only conceal them from my awareness.

The mystics and saints of legend who go off into the desert or forest to disassociate themselves from the distractions of the world and commune with God ... even if they were able to make this a permanent commitment instead of the traditional forty days and forty nights, they can only do it because there are others who are willing to go on working and living in society and marrying and giving birth to saints who go off into the desert ...

If we all tried to abandon our social connections, that would be the end of all of us. The existence of the saint is made possible in quite a literal way by the willingness of others to forego the luxury of sainthood.

It seems to me that there is spiritual danger inherent in disinterest just as there is spiritual danger in self-interest, if it ends up leading to self-deception and ingratitude toward the fabric of human relationships necessary for our existence.

I guess I would say that my personal goal is not to get beyond caring about rewards but to get to the point where I am aware of every reward.

I've found that this is something I do have to force to the front of my mind, and when I'm able to spot where ... recompense ... has been given, but perhaps in ways that I wasn't expecting and therefore didn't appreciate at first, then it becomes much easier to let go of hurts and find sources of ... well, love, joy, etc. ... in situations that might have appeared at first blush to be entirely negative.

It's sort of like looking for the silver lining except that I'm looking for it specifically in the kinds of ripples created by our interconnectedness.

Jn

[vison]

Wonderful post, jnyusa. Excellent.

[Maria]

It seems to me that there is spiritual danger inherent in disinterest just as there is spiritual danger in self-interest, if it ends up leading to self-deception and ingratitude toward the fabric of human relationships necessary for our existence.

Someone once recommended a book to me, "Choose To Be Happy" which turned out to be basically Buddist detachment theory-- and I only got halfway through it because the entire concept raised the little hairs on the back of my neck in horror. My complete "gut" reaction to it was that if you do what they were recommending, you miss the entire point of life! It would be like reading a book and constantly reminding yourself that it isn't real and it doesn't really matter anyway. You'd absolutely ruin the experience.

What they were saying to do was envision life as a pendulum- and right now you are out on the end of the pendulum experiencing lifes ups and downs to the max. What they were recommending was a series of mental exercises that would allow you to ascend the arm of the pendulum so that the swings of up and down were reduced to a minimum- with the goal being the fulcrum where there are no swings anymore. I don't like that idea! I want the UPs, they are fun! I can bear the DOWNs, for the sake of the UPs. Sometimes I use the concept briefly when I desperately need calm for some reason- but to aspire to that condition as the ultimate goal of life seems terribly wrong to me.

[Windfola]

Sorry for the long pause.

Jnyusa said:

If I suggested that every source of emotional suffering was also a source of joy, and it would not be possible to eliminate one without eliminating the other, would that change the meaning of suffering?

This is a very interesting and astute question.

I am not sure whether it changes the meaning of suffering, but I do believe it reflects the truth of the duality of our universe and existence - a truth which we creatures generally recognize, but a truth which an omnipotent, transcendent god need not have utilized in his forming his creation. No?

[Jnyusa]

... a truth which an omnipotent, transcendent god need not have utilized in his forming his creation. No?

I'm not sure.

The alternative would presumably be to have the joy without the accompanying potential for suffering?

Let me come at the question of duality from a different angle.

I had a sort of revelation about twenty-two ago, while out walking my first daughter in her stroller. It was not a revelation about pain but about beauty. And it turns out that this idea was pretty old hat, but I know next to nothing about Aesthetics so to me it felt like a revelation.

I was standing, looking at a cluster of wind-bent cedar trees in our neighborhood, and thinking how hard it would be to find a person who did not consider them surpassingly beautiful, and bemoaning by extension the overdevelopment that robs us of so many natural beauties ...

... when it suddenly occurred to me that there was something miraculous in the fact that what we consider to be beautiful is actually the world as it was created.

How fortunate that the attributes if this world in which we were placed (originally) coincide with our aethetic sense and give us joy rather than dismay.

Why should it be so? I mean, thinking about it within the scientific paradigm, the aesthetic sense is probably as difficult to explain as our experience of spirituality. That satisfaction and joy we feel when something is harmonious - whether a piece of music or an elegant equation - the transcendence we feel in the middle of a cathedral forest ... heck, the joy of a dog allowed to stick his head out the window of a moving car! These seem to me pointless from an evolutionary perspective ...and yet they are very real and confluent and near-universally shared. The fact that we (and other animals) have this capacity for pointless joy .... this seems to me a tiny miracle, a little bonus that contains, possibly, a larger truth about our existence.

It's not precisely duality, but rather conjunction of two different attributes that had no necessity of being conjoined.

So I ask myself whether duality might not be conjunction seen in a different light.

It's hard to think how suffering might be cast as a symptom of conjunction if we are limited to the perspective of one linear lifetime, but I am not sure what other ... realities ... we might be participating in. I suspect that there could be perspectives from which everything is unifying in some way, rather than breaking down and separating.

Jn