In the wake of the quake, I’m forced to ask: What is the purpose of suffering? If we’re human, we will suffer, although the extent of our individual suffering varies wildly. Here in the prosperous United States, those of us with financial means and good health suffer primarily at our own hands. Our suffering is emotional and mental and quite often self-inflicted, the result of poor judgment, bad behavior or emotional reactions to people and events.
The people in Haiti are suffering, and have suffered, on every possible level, in every possible way. For people in poverty and ill health, suffering is an all-day, every day state of being, broken only by sleep. And I imagine that cold and hungry, they don’t sleep well; in that state, sleep is just another form of misery, not an escape from misery.
In any case, we’re left to face the fact that to be alive and to be human, we will experience suffering. Does it have a purpose or is it simply a fact of life, like the weather, or gravity, or death? Something so basic to our existence and so beyond our control, we must merely accept it if we cannot change it.
If we believe in God, we can explain that God sends suffering our way, for various reasons: To punish us for our sins, to remind us of God’s awesome power, or to fulfill some grand scheme that only God understands. I’m not sure any of these answers can provide solace, although some religous people no doubt do find comfort in this explanation. At least they can believe that “someone” is in control, and that belief itself is comforting if you don’t like the idea that there is no one in charge and all this suffering is just random and without purpose or cause.
I personally find the explanation that God is the cause of the suffering, or in charge of administering the suffering, deeply disturbing.
Buddhists believe that human suffering is caused by our attachments. If we can free ourselves of our attachments, we can free ourself from suffering. In this view, suffering doesn’t really have a purpose other than as a catalyst to change in order to avoid suffering. It’s a human growth stimulus, if you will. We grow spiritually in order to reduce our pain and suffering. The more enlightenment, the less suffering. Our level of suffering is a measure of our enlightened state.
I myself don’t understand how this approach explains or reduces physical suffering, the pain and agony of disease, illness, or torture. It seems like a luxury to be able to give up your attachments, because at least you have the luxury of having attachments. Things and people and ideas and money to be attached to. How can you give up your attachments if you don’t have anything?
But I digress. The only purpose of suffering that I can offer is very simple: The purpose of suffering in human existence is to provide darkness so we can experience light, to provide pain so we can recognize pleasure. It’s the background against which we can see the main subject illuminated, the sweetness of life that we can glimpse from time to time. If we didn’t suffer, we couldn’t feel joy.
And yet I’m not sure anyone in Haiti feels joy right now.