The Joy of Suffering
Almost all spiritual traditions and religions include stories of deep suffering, Jesus especially and Buddha included. Buddhism is a whole tradition based on understanding suffering and how to alleviate the unnecessary levels of suffering for humankind and all other beings. Jesus and Buddha both also taught about the transcendent potential of suffering - if we allow it to take us on that kind of journey.
Suffering is more about how we perceive an experience than about the experience itself. Once we remove the victimhood and the ego stuff then suffering is just something that happens sometimes. i.e. it happens a lot less frequently than it does if everything you ‘don’t want to happen’ or ‘don’t like’ is labelled suffering.
I see a lot of suffering in my job as a volunteer hospital chaplain for Buddhists and nonconformists. I actually visit anyone in my ward areas, regardless of spiritual tradition, as I am open to them all. I see suffering caused by the state controls and regulations that do not allow humans to be fallible and real people. I see suffering caused by under-funding and cutbacks in the NHS. I see distress caused by people’s own fears about their condition, more than anything I see this, and I feel such deep compassion for them but I know this is mostly not the time in their life to tell them how to do things differently — to think and view life differently. Just…
