Anatomy Of Human Suffering

Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. DOSTOEVSKY (1864). Notes from Underground, tr. Constance Garnett.

The world is full of suffering. Birth is suffering, old age is suffering, sickness and death are suffering. Man was born with power of thought, the knowledge of evil and good and the cruel thirst for worship. All of these qualities of man make him a perfect species to create, feel and survive suffering. The emotional suffering of man is a relatively recent phenomenon. Man saw that all is struggling to snatch away from him, at any cost, a few brief moments of life before death's inexorable decree. He was disappointed and couldn't fathom it alGod must have intended harmony to come out of chaos by human efforts. And then the Great Divine Plan was revealed to him provide him the much needed solace and comfort because paraphrasing Russell, what he saw was that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human geniuses, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system.

How can man preserve his inspiration in the gloomy world and its inevitable end? Man began his quest by prostrating before gods and from there follows a terrible trail of cruelty and torture, of degradation and human sacrifice, all endured in the hope of placating the jealous gods. As man's morality grew bolder, he shed the cloak of savageness and adopted worship of the Naked Power to bring the world in harmony with the world of ideals. God was there, the all-powerful, the all-good, the mystic unity of what is and what should be. What man did like in God, as if he had a choice, was not His omnipotence but His Goodness. Worship of God is worship of Goodness. Evil leads to extinction of species, goodness perpetuates. Thus, there should be no doubt about the intentions of the Providence.

The path to the temple of happiness through goodness is paved with stones of abandoned hopes. To reach there, the Self must die, the eagerness and greed of untamed desires be slain to free the soul from the empire of Fate.

Many courses may lead to the temple of happinessreligion is one of them; but only, if man can free himself from the prejudices inculcated in religion through man's evil. The cause of human suffering, according to Buddhist teachings, is found in the thirsts of the physical body and in the illusions of worldly passions. Clinging to lives of wealth and honor, comfort and pleasure, excitement and self indulgence all lead to human sufferings.

Man's suffering comes in emotions as well as in flesh. For long it was held that pain is proportional to the tissue damage, now we believe that there is more to pain than just physical damage to our body; it is a complex function of attention, anxiety, suggestion, prior experience and other psychological variables. The straight path theory of connection between the site of physical damage to brain cells isn't that straight. Pain is a complex perceptual and affective experience determined by the unique past history of the individual and his state of mind at the moment, all of which modulate the sensory nerve pattern arising from physical stimulation. There is a sort of a gate which closes or opens letting pain impulses to pass through the brain's pain centers. It's only when the impulses reaching the brain exceed the minimum critical level that we feel pain. Through training, many of us are able to increase this critical level and hence able to tolerate pain better.

The oldest method of controlling pain has been the use of opium and its derivatives heroine. Some of the most tantalizing discoveries in the field of medicine in the past 20 years have come from research on opium. It has been found that opium molecules attach to specific sites in brain cells; so specific is this binding that nothing else can bind to these sites. This discovery has evoked the concept that brain must have similar chemicals because there is no need for the Nature to devise binding sites of the exudate of the poppy plant in human brain. It is proven now that brain manufactures its own opium which provides relief of pain and some people are better able to tolerate pain because of their enhanced ability to secrete this endogenous morphine (the compounds are called, hence endorphins). Meditation, exercise and other rote acts are known to secrete higher concentrations of endorphins and provide euphoria and elation associated with morphine use. For example, joggers tell about getting the "second wind" when they get exhausted; they get so hooked on to this spike of opium in their brain while jogging that they get addicted to it. It also explains why and how some people are able to go through otherwise highly painful situations, emotional or physical, while others totally succumb to it. It is the endorphins in the brain. Endorphins also act like a reward mechanism in the brain, the divine mechanism of luring us into doing things which would otherwise be intolerable. Many a pleasures of life from eating to sexual intercourse are associated with endorphin release; one sure way Nature forces us into survival and perpetuation.

Many people still find their cure of pain in superstitious rituals. These approaches may be considered primitive by many modern standards, but when it comes to curing the elusive pain, anything that works is the right remedy.

An old farmer used to wear tight shoes and always moaned about it when taking them off. A friend asked why? The answer came, "Nothing works, the crops are bad, the cows are dying, the children have taken to drugs, wife ran away with the neighbor. But when I take these tight shoes off, I find something to thank God about. Oh! what a relief it is."