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To add more color to the Buddhist view, this is often described as a pain/suffering distinction. In this view, pain is inevitable and out of our control, but su
by akprasad 5y ago
To add more color to the Buddhist view, this is often described as a pain/suffering distinction. In this view, pain is inevitable and out of our control, but suffering as the attendant mental phenomenon can be curbed with training.
This view is summarized in the doctrine of the two arrows [1]. When asked if he still felt pain, the Buddha said he was struck by the first arrow called pain, but not by the second arrow called suffering.
[1] https://tricycle.org/magazine/second-arrow/ https://tricycle.org/magazine/second-arrow/
- brimble 5y agoSimilar in stoicism. It's not that with training physical pain no longer hurts, or that it's reasonable to expect people to curb every little nigh-involuntary in-the-moment emotional reaction to every situation, but that a great deal of ongoing suffering is in fact a choice to dwell on something unpleasant—so that much of how the world or others "make" us feel is something that's actually under our control. It's most obvious when watching kids deal with the world—oh my god, the suffering they subject themselves to for little or no actual reason is incredible, and they find it so hard to get out of the habit of harming themselves in that way—but most adults do the same thing all the time, too.