The Value of Suffering - NYTimes.com
Jared Sperli stashed this in life
Stashed in: Zen, Empathy, Awesome, Meaning of Life, The Internet is my religion.
To save this post, select a stash from drop-down menu or type in a new one:
Wise men in every tradition tell us that suffering brings clarity, illumination:
For the Buddha, suffering is the first rule of life, and insofar as some of it arises from our own wrongheadedness — our cherishing of self — we have the cure for it within. Thus in certain cases, suffering may be an effect, as well as a cause, of taking ourselves too seriously. I once met a Zen-trained painter in Japan, in his 90s, who told me that suffering is a privilege, it moves us toward thinking about essential things and shakes us out of shortsighted complacency; when he was a boy, he said, it was believed you should pay for suffering, it proves such a hidden blessing.
Suffering is essential for empathy:
As a boy, I’d learned that it’s the Latin, and maybe a Greek, word for “suffering” that gives rise to our word “passion.” Etymologically, the opposite of “suffering” is, therefore, “apathy”; the Passion of the Christ, say, is a reminder, even a proof, that suffering is something that a few high souls embrace to try to lessen the pains of others. Passion with the plight of others makes for “compassion.”
9:56 PM Sep 08 2013