Are any in this life free from travail? And if not, than doesn't it make sense to counsel them about their attitude toward suffering?
None are free from travail.
As to whether it makes sense to counsel "them" -- let me change that to "us" -- about our attitudes toward suffering -- our own and that of others, my answer is Yes, if the counsel is sound, and gives us fortitude and resolve; and and a resounding Yes, if that resolve is to do all in our power to prevent, to the degree our mere mortal selves are able to, the suffering of "God's creatures," and to assuage the suffering we can't prevent, and to counsel and comfort those whose sufferings can not be prevented or assuaged.
And if they could be free of suffering, but only on the condition that they were indifferent to their duties and disengaged from life, would that be better than to develop fortitude?
Such an unwholesome idea is not critiqued in the meditation posted by shalom nor raised in my reaction to the last paragraph of the meditation (a meditation that I truly appreciated, until I came to the summing-up, or 'moral' of the piece); and I don't understand the reason for your introducing it. But as you have, I'll answer. No, I don't think that the "soma" approach to the sufferings we endure or witness is a good one. My heroes are not those who narcotize their minds and sympathies with drugs or food or alcohol or tobacco or by zoning out on meditation or prayer. My heroes try to make the world a better place.
The choices you evoke as the available modes of reacting to suffering are
1) the soma approach (drugs, food, extreme prayer-immersion, etc.)
2) the approach reflected in these lines:
Now, all our peace in this miserable life is found in humbly enduring suffering rather than in being free from it. He who knows best how to suffer will enjoy the greater peace, because he is the conqueror of himself, the master of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of heaven.
Yet I know that the various somas help no one more than transitorily, and even their users claim no help from them for anyone but themselves.
And I am deeply suspicious of the narcotizing proposal that suffering be "humbly endured" rather than struggled against by all for all. I am deeply suspicious of the interlinear suggestion that the misfortunate of the world should be satisfied to humbly endure their suffering, never striving or hoping or begging or asking or demanding or fighting to be "free from it."
I think those lines attempt to hypnotize, or shame, the have-nots into shutting up, and sanctify a placid narcissism among the haves. I think those lines say that suffering is good.
And if suffering is that, then why should we care about this? --
Message 15333405 |
