A brief discussion on suffering

Naive tone throughout this discourse, however, one important part is the distinction between pain and suffering. The rejection of 'life is suffering' is contradictory to Buddha's teachings, and I see that suffering can permeate through life, as it is inherent to our goal seeking mechanism. Life is suffering and struggle by its very nature, although we may try to deny it - which was exactly what I tried to do when writing this post. It is quite clear that I was trying to avoid suffering and deluding myself. All beings and creatures struggle at times and although we might not be in pain all the time we are prone to suffering, we are human after all. Now, there is a distinction to be made between physical pain and suffering and I guess that was the only point of value here. I was clearly not enlightened and I still suffer just like everyone else from time to time. This avenue is worth exploring further, and I hope to gain more insight through meditation here. Ghost 2013

Thats the thing. the innitial instigation OF suffering is pain. i mean, it sounds obvious, but its often overlooked, or the pain is seen as suffering and then judged as wrong or something, reinforcing and perpetuating the pain and creating suffering. buddhas thing of "life is suffering" isn't really right. its more that life is pain, which is then reinforced by subjectivity and spins out into that feedback thing. i mean, its like calling a severed limb an injury and the phantom pain afterwards an injury too.

Totally with you there. "Life is suffering" don't fly and negative thoughts and feelings are useful to an organism so as such, should not be judged as good or bad. There is no suffering now just pain that arises and then fades away. It's innacurate to say we suffer anymore, because suffering is the cognitive dissonane caused by the feedback not the pain itself. Sometimes you get caught up in it briefly and then you go back in to presence and its more like an annoyance.

Although, unpleasant emotional experiences do  not become any more pleasant as such and its not as though we can suddenly stop mulling shit over when it hits the fan. I've just been so used to calling pain suffering I've never actually distinguished between the two until now.

So pain is just a constiuent part of the experience of life that arises and fades away. Its the same as saying happiness is life. It don't mean nothing, although suffering is a major constituent part of life filtered through a false self. There you go, are we safe to add "life is suffering" to the proverbial scrapheap too?

The only thing that holds suffering together is your thoughts about it. pain = good. suffering = bad. knowing the difference = hard. This is my experience anyways and the preceeding sentence is full of subjectivity too. from a life thats seemed to be strung together from one painful event to another I kinda spun this web, seeking pain, cos pain is feeling, and i've been so apathetic to just about everything for so long that serious strongly felt emotion was something that i aspired to experience. But that same apathy also had with it a kind of fearlessness which led to... well... not a lot of actual suffering, despite the horrible things that happened in that life. Above i should have said "avoiding pain" instead of "avoiding suffering" really

Yeah its a subjective sentence but its true objectiveley kind of thing... Pain is useful, suffering is not.

I was geared towards avoiding pain at all costs, I felt strong emotions so much I always wanted to avoid them. So we are polar opposite in that respect but I know all about being strung from one painful event to the next. As I said before I've been so caught up in labelling suffering and pain as the same thing, its only now that it makes sense to make a clear distinction, or in fact we actually CAN make a distiction between the two.

Its a psychological thing more than anything really. its a game people play with themselves. the fear of the pain reinforces its significance so when it does happen it becomes intolerable and so inflated with false purpose that it seems like the end of the world. Think about them guys on wall street that throw themselves out the window when they go broke. Thats the worst thing they could imagine ever happening to them. not the actual thing. the thought of it. its their whole life purpose and it all comes crashing down in an instant. all the suffering that preceded the climax culminating in a gigantic explosion of pain that was so intolerable they couldn't go on living with it a second longer.

Yeah right, seen this happen before. Som guy near here got ripped off with 250,000 dollars so he threw himself off a building. Theres so much identification with this stuff its insanity really but the thing is people can actually realte to this and I'm sure you have heard people say "if I was him I would top my self too". Of course it may be a bit in jest but theres just an assumption that any of this stuff is profound or meaningful in some way.
There was a guy mxxxxxxx, from xxxxxxxxxxx.com (i recon he's enlightened, others dont, i'm not pushed) but this exact thing happened to him. he went broke. entire world view shattered. and that moment was when he realised he didn't exist. the self in his head committed suicide rather than his physical being. I'd call that cowardice and an explanation for his weakness. but its an entirely plausible way for a person to realise they're not really there by accident.

I read the whole 40 - 50 pages of that battle one sunday afternoon and from that it motivated me to post on RT saying I'm not going to stand aside and spectate anymore. I would guess he was "enlightened" too from his description but the same thing happened to Tolle in a way, the arse just fell out of the concept of self suddenly. Interestingly that guy seemed to be against enlightening other people. I can't be arsed to look but I distinctly remember him saying I don't like what RT are trying to do. I would say that motivation is preserving his "reverence" as an enlightened. If everyone was ewnlightened he wouldn't be so special - loss of perveived status/ value.

Fuck this is so simple. Its so obvious the brain is simply doing this programmed routine. Timothy Leary proposed this years ago its bang on the money. Even suicidal thoughts are rooted in survival initially. The suffering and feedback spirals from pain which has a positive intention for an organism i.e to alert the organism it is moving away from survival. Its the dissonance that spirals out of control with a large momentum of feedback and it can even overwhelm together people if the circumstances are "tragic" enough e.g your example.

What are the stats for depression? I'm pretty sure that 1 in 2 people get depressed in their life time or is it more? I'm surprised that everyone can hold it together so well when there is this filter of insanity on everything. Its mind blowing really...

 oh. and the desire thing.
"I want x thing because it would be cool to have and would add value to life in some way"
"I want x thing because it will define me and say something about me"
only one of those will lead to suffering. regardless of what its applied to its the motivation that ties people up in knots.

Yeah true both kinds of thoughts do arise, even now the second kind of thought still arises but its not bought in to anymore. The motivation then would be the brain moving towards value in either case so that figures but the second type, is just a conditioned version of the first one basically. In fact I'm going to use the idea that there is no intinsic motivation other than survival and this would originate in the form of "object". Then after that there is a thought about a thought. Check your experience do you still have type 2 thoughts and then you realise that you don't need to buy in to it anymore? I can say they have drastically cut back but they still arise sometimes, even though the brain has seen that there is no self. So the desire is rooted in the object itself then an attachment is formed or it is not. There are two distinct stages; desire then attachment or non attachment to the object or outcome.

So then we would have to say desire comes from the survival instinct so then you would say: "survival is the root of all suffering" and then its a simple case of saying life is the  root of all suffering because it is the product of survival and we can whittle it down further to  simply "life is suffering".

However we know this to be false as the suffering actually only arises through attachment, we are proof that non attachment = no suffering. Then we have resolved desire is the root of all suffering and life is suffering and we can shove them both in to the same fetid trash can.

Utterly foolish here. I guess the notion of suffering again seemed absurd to me at that time, however, desire is the root of all suffering and it makes no sense to conjoin this with the survival instinct. Indeed it is rooted in it but trying to merge them is clearly absurd. Ghost 2013

My two-pennerth worth: http://v4vivality.blogspot.com/2011/02/suffering-soccotash_22.html
I may end up linking to that post actually when I get to the last stage. It really is that simple how thought influences suffering, you have done a good job of explaining it for the layman. The fact is the frame of reference to the suffering influences it. Mind over matter, simple as. Remeber that guy who fell down the mountain and his mate cut the rope and he crawled down. Survival instinct so strong he crawled miles with a broken leg. The body would have taken over from the self (well thats already happening but from his view through the illusion) and the pain would only have been felt when he stopped to take a breather. In fact I remember him saying something along the lines, All I could think of was getting down to the bottom. That is not him deciding to have courage, this is the raw survival instinct of the organism. FFS every reply here is a blog post in itself, this is the last time I'm talking to you lot unless I get some free time!!! ;)
I think I've just resolved the pull of survival and push of death, in this case it would clearly be the former. When under stress this is the thought occuring, I've gotta watch touching the void again. Needless to say the guy in this would be like: "I didn't know I had it in me". Thats right because theres no you to control this inner strength, there is just the body  in survival mode working overtime.

Here's a thing not on suffering per se but, I see McKenna mentioned here, and it reminded me of a phrase he and many others use. "The integrated state". What does that mean? There is no you to be integrated, so what's being integrated? ... You're character/ego. It's probably un-killable, as such the only thing to do once you're enlightened is to stream line the ego so it fits with enlightenment. It would explain why so many stooges put forward "you are love" and "you are consciousness" they are reshaping the egos of their followers to integrate their ego into the flow of reality. Problem is that integration is not enlightenment and without enlightenment integration is useless
I've not read Jed's stuff, thats the fifth time this week I've heard his name... I really ought to check him out.