Meaning Of Suffering Analysis

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In order to understand happiness, people must first know the meaning of suffering. The meaning of suffering has ranged from pain, to a lesson that must be learned, to an essential part of understanding happiness. The meaning of suffering may vary amongst individuals, but if it weren’t for it’s reliance on happiness the meaning of suffering would be difficult to comprehend. So the question is, can happiness exist without suffering? Suffering and happiness must coexist in order for us to understand their purpose and the effect each one has on the other.
Suffering and happiness are mutually inclusive and cannot be truly understood without the other because “nothing can exist autonomously” (Richard, 38) Happiness and suffering must go hand in
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Take for example, freedom versus captivity, if you’ve never been deprived of your freedom there’s no real reason to cherish it because you haven’t experienced life without it. Happiness is our freedom and suffering is our captivity. Suffering allows us to see what happiness is not and it is a lot easier to define suffering. Since we know that happiness is a state of euphoria, smiles, laughter, and no hurt at all we understand that suffering is pain, anguish, agony, and frowns. Is this your definition of happiness?There is no real way to define happiness or suffering because everyone has their own definitions, but our individual definitions gave way for understanding. For someone, happiness might mean spending time with family and so they understand that time apart from family or the loss of a family …show more content…
As Matthieu Ricard put it, “wherever life exists in the universe, so does suffering: old age, separation from loved ones” etc (38) As much as we would like to control every aspect of our lives, we are only human and there are things we cannot stop even if we wanted to. Death is always going to be around because it is a part of life and suffering is going to tag along with it. Just because someone is happy does not mean that they are automatically exempt from suffering because even the happiest of people suffer as well. Generally speaking, there are people who have their dream job, who have their family, who are financially fit, and who seem to have their life together but nonetheless they are still prone to suffer. These same people can still suffer from the death of a loved one, or the stress of work, or divorce from a lover. Suffering is everywhere and can take shape in many forms so as hard as we may try to avoid it, we just can’t. Most would disagree and say that suffering is avoidable and is not needed to be happy however without suffering one loses out on the opportunity to better themselves or reflect on life. It’s true that suffering won’t guarantee happiness, but it will guarantee a handful of lessons to be learned. If one is happy all the time there is no risk in life