Life is Suffering?

Did the Buddha say "life is suffering?" Many of us seem to think so. In fact, though, we don't know; he certainly didn't speak English. Even to suggest that we question this age old assessment on human existence courts incredulity. Of course, life is suffering. Most of human history seems to validate this hard truth. Philosophical doctrines have been invented to account for the suffering and tried to give answers and treatments. Religious systems like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism among the major ones and numerous others all strive to give some sense to our existence and suffering. These systems promise a meaning, relief and ultimate reconciliation while the atheists among us may have their science to comfort them while they seem to rest in the knowledge and acceptance of final oblivion after they're gone. There is no sense in asking the question, why. And the vast majority of us without a deep commitment or understanding of religious belief or practice seem to muddle along with a watered down version of Stoicism mixed with a large measure of Hedonism in our dealings with the inevitability and ubiquity of suffering. But what is suffering exactly and is life all about this? What then do we mean by the word life and suffering. As I write these words I'm in pain. My lower back is still somewhat sore from shoveling snow a few weeks back and one of my lower back molars feels "hot", a chronic condition that comes and goes. Is simple pain suffering? Or is suffering paying attention to the pain, wanting it to stop and being helpless to make it stop? Can we be in pain and be unaware? Do we then suffer? Then again, there is the mental component to all forms of pain- the anticipation of it as in various anxiety states related to bad things happening to our bodies sometime in an indefinite future. Is worry suffering? A state of mental anguish of not knowing the outcome of events that happen to you or your loved ones or upon certain decisions you have made without clear knowledge of the consequences of those decisions. We live and living does seem to wound us no matter how hard we try not to get wounded. But is life, is living itself suffering. Finally, there is life in the sense of organic bodies existing and then dissolving back into nonexistence as bodies. But do bodies inherently suffer by merely being bodies? We're brought back again to the question: what do we mean by the words suffering and life?

The phrase, "life is suffering" seems to equate living or being alive with the state of suffering. The Buddha seems to have made this equation and we can leave it at that for now. I strongly suspect, though, that the original words and meanings attached to life and suffering that the Buddha had in mine were vastly different than what our English language can justly render now. We don't and can never have the benefit of once again speaking with the Buddha to get a clarification. And so this is what has come down to us; this is what has happened to our language and this is how we speak to another now. This is what we must investigate.

The word suffer is a transitive verb which is derived from Latin, sufferere, sub-'from below + ferre 'to bear'. Suffering basically has the connotation, "to bear with." Hence living with respect to the phrase "life is suffering" is something we put up with, we bear, shoulder, tolerate. Moreover, the use of the word suffering in conjunction with life does seem somehow to imply that life itself is not intrinsically valuable and that a true value ultimately transcends this life that we have. Now, whether or not the Buddha felt or viewed life in this way is hard to say since, again, all we have is "his doctrines" that have come down to us through translation and interpretation. But clearly, the phrase, "life is suffering" seems to disparage life itself and that any movement that enables us to focus our attention away from the contingencies of life are valuable and what should be developed. This is problematic, though. If we confuse spiritual development and a spiritual "life" as moving us away from our ordinary earthly existence, then it is not hard to see how this would distract and divert our energies and imaginations away from making a better world for ourselves and our posterity. Why bother if this life is not the true meaning of our existence. Why work towards making things really better for our children and our children's children if in the end we believed that our true 'home" was not here but rather in some transcendent realm beyond our imagination?

So, the phrase, "life is suffering" does seem to have a the connotation that life is something that we must for the interim of our earthly existence in bodies, to put up with, to bear as a burden. But is this so? Is this the only way to look at life and suffering? A full exploration of this very important issue can not be entertained in a short essay. But, a look at what we may mean by life is in order. There are so many definitions that we are understandably confused at times.  Life seems to be everything. Everything that we struggle mightily to hang onto even to the point of giving it up in various forms of self-sacrifice. The word "life" is an abstraction and symbolic. But it points to the very basis of my existence from its physical aspects all the way to the eternal and spiritual. Paying attention then to that must be important. But then why is "life suffering." If it is so precious and important why do we characterize that to live is to suffer, to experience the need to bear with our existence. Here is a subtle point that we can go home with right now: precisely because life is so fundamental and precious that we are always prepared to suffer, to bear it even when in the course of our lives we do experience pain and fear( which is a potent form of pain). Of course, there may come a point when the pain is too much to bear then is it not to a greater life that we want passage to? I think life is suffering to the extent that we naturally do everything we can to bear the wounding and the pain, that we always seek to extend even beyond an incarnated one into an eternal transcended one. Camus, I believe, was right. At the very least he was onto something basic when he proclaimed that the only true philosophical problem is the question whether to live or commit suicide. And with this Camus puts life at the very center of our values. And with the question of suicide, the question of freedom joins in. If we are always free as our ability to not only contemplate suicide but to carry out the deed seems to indicate, then life is the most fundamental item in that equation. All our values seems to turn on this one value, life itself. To live or not to live to paraphrase that famous Bard, then exemplifies the basis of our freedom and the worth of our lives. It seems to me then that the phrase, "life is suffering" while it may at some level appears to paint a terrible picture of our existence, an existence we best be done with, that we best find ways to make as tolerable as we can, does not have to mean that life itself is valueless or meaningless. On the contrary without life, we would know no freedom nor value, nor even have that consciousness of beauty and love that freedom and a fully developed value framework supports. Life is the very ground, in a word, literally of our existence as consciousness beings. To live and to be conscious may indeed be the same thing. And from the womb of a living being we have a life only to return in organic dissolution to a greater life eternal. A quiet wisdom may in our solitude and peace ease our suffering or make us smile mysteriously.