SUFFERING,PAIN,Arul Jeba Packiaraj Y.

SUFFRING, PAIN

Arul Jeba Packiaraj Y.

 

Pain and suffering are an integral part of our lives. We have come to accept them as a fact of life. We do not know that it is entirely possible to transform it into peace and joy and thus grow spiritually. The first thing to realize is that living as we do in a world of duality we cannot escape either from happiness or unhappiness. This is the world which we have divided into subject and object, hot and cold, male and female and as on. We would like to be happy and would like to avoid unhappiness. But they are really two sides of the same coin. We cannot have one side without the other – it is the nature of the world that both come together. If we have a toothache we suffer. After a visit to the dentist we are rid of the toothache and we feel happy. It is in the nature of the world that both happiness and unhappiness go together. But we can learn to transform our unhappy and painful feelings. Should we do so we gain in peace and joy? This is an internally generated state of mind.

Transforming pain and suffering to gain peace is similar to using organic manure to grow plants. We are making best use of objects which we cannot avoid in this world. Towards a phenomenology of pain and suffering: a reflection on Max Schuler's phenomenology of pain and suffering nothing seems to be more difficult to conceptualizes than pain and suffering. In pain and suffering, one discovers oneself in one's grieving solitude, loneliness, and speechlessness Passion can be regarded as the main Western term for pain and suffering. In the great majority of Indo-European languages, we can observe a semantic ambiguity in the use of the word passion. Passion expresses, on the one hand, passivity for instance when one is affected by something. On the other hand, passion is also understood as displeasure, pain and grief for instance when we talk about the passion of Christ. If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.