What Value, Suffering?
Pico Iyer had a fascinating piece in The Sunday Times yesterday about suffering , and how beneficial it is. Now, I've suffered through a lot of things --childhood abuse, infertility, breast cancer, the loss of a close friend from cancer -- and I can't say I've enjoyed any of it. But that's not the point, apparently. It seems, as Iyer writes, "Suffering is the first rule of life, and insofar as some of it arises from our own wrongheadedness — our cherishing of self — we have the cure for it within. Thus in certain cases, suffering may be an effect, as well as a cause, of taking ourselves too seriously." Who wouldn't take the death of a child, or a divorce, or even separation from a job, seriously? Iyer quotes a Zen-trained painter who believed "You should pay for suffering, it proves such a hidden blessing." Say what? Iyer admits that no one likes suffering. But, "To live, as Nietzsche (and Roberta Flack) had it, is to suffer; to sur...