I think they can be pretty helpful, not that they're going to eliminate your pain or anything, but a little good perspective can go a long way. After a bunch o

I think they can be pretty helpful, not that they're going to eliminate your pain or anything, but a little good perspective can go a long way. After a bunch of reading and thinking and doing (ie practice) it seems much easier to deal with pain and discomfort. They are both still there, but if it's 20 degrees to cold for my clothing it's not that big a deal and awkward situations are actually pretty funny now, even in the moment. So, the Taoist stuff deals mostly with the nature of reality. Buddhism tends to run the gamut but has a lot to do with your experience, and Epicureanism is sorta like Buddhism, but with more heavy language and serious attempts to remove any hint of internal conflict and paradoxical teaching (those can both be handy teaching tools). All of them, to varying degrees, teach that you can alleviate suffering through proper response, though it might be more accurate to say you can refrain from creating more suffering. The mind is like the body. When you get cut you clean it and bandage it and leave the thing alone. Anything else directly messing with it is just hindering the process, however, you can help yourself by doing things like making sure you have a good diet and get plenty of rest. The above three teach you about diet and rest and so on, but for your person.