What actually is suffering?

What actually is suffering?
What does it taste like, feel like?
Please respond if possible, without referring to one’s own knowledge, or ideas from any other source, or from the framework of time bound causes and effects, or from a point of view that suffering has a continuity.
Just a first hand report on what suffering is while it is happening. I am wondering if you might be able to tell me what it feels like without the label.

Suffering might include a load of different sensations (fear, anger etc) - it arises though I think in the face of an inability to resolve a pressing need?

I would consider fear and anger not themselves to be sensations but rather concepts under which pointier words lay hidden. I’m interested in those simpler pointers that can only be true if observed in a real live moment.
No matter how compelling the logical assumptions of cause and effect are, the sharing of what we perceive suffering to be is what I would like to hear about.

It’s anywhere from a whisper’s whisper to a scream of unpleasantness, discomfort, imbalance.

A primal sense of wrong-ness. Dread and despair.

Seems to originate in the mind, then affect the body: tightness, shrinking inward, blockedness.

Sufferings is Intolerance of ‘what-is’. (what-is I mean, whatever happens both physically and psychologically), and true inquiry begins when asked within oneself “Why there is this Intolerance of ‘what-is’ and more desire for ‘what-should-be’? Why all this Physcial and psychological experience happens first hand?”. Some might say, “It doesn’t matter. We are here, and asking ‘Why all experience’ is just worthless”. Yes, it might be worthless for people who wants to live and achieve something in 100 years, but there are few who really interested in Death. Death, a very curious question. Just because one can never know the answer for death and beyond, doesn’t mean one must stop questioning it and be here and go along with sheep-herd and make a better farm for the sheep-herds to live and try to seek the ‘must-peace’ living within the farm all over, and expecting/encouraging all sheep to act Humane (what-should-be of humans) and never be inhumane - to achieve a peaceful world without fighting and seek whatever art/culture/song/dance/technology/petrol/etc. peacefully, is all a Intolerance of Inhumanity and couldn’t bear the activities of people. Why I couldn’t bear people’s act? What I want by making a peaceful world? A smile from other people? Is that what I need?. Is that one couldn’t tolerate a non-smile/disagreeing/destructing situations and seek “Urgency”? Still sufferings of ‘what-is’. Isn’t it? Death and fear of Death, might be a question/situation, without any answer to live with, but not a worthless question to throw away and try to stick with sheep-herd and make ‘better’ world for achieving more and more desires (what-should-be) or making an ideology of “Change or Urgency or Creativity or Love” and stay away from questioning/meeting Death/Destruction of ‘what-is’. Isn’t it?

@James
“Intolerance of ‘what-is’”, it’s a very very very deep thing to look upon every situation (Including Inhumanity,War,etc.,). Even encouraging people to listen, as an agent, is suffering - an “Intolerance of ‘what-is’” (‘what-is’ is people don’t listen and act selfish and destruction of humanity/world, I couldn’t tolerate, I suffer, so I encourage people to listen - to act humane, this is not compassion (b) but only compassion (a), a conditional compassion). Why not let people do whatever they want (to listen or not listen, to fight or to be peaceful, to be inhumane or humane), let them be whatever and let any situation be whatever, what is wrong in it? Death? I don’t like artificial death? I don’t like Inhumane world? I couldn’t live peacefully in a fighting world? I couldn’t do anything I want in Inhumane situations? I don’t want world to end? I want Humans to prosper?. There will be another world and evolution and human beings, if/not all here dies. Will listening happen by encouraging?. If one be in a situation what K had in 1920s, one will come to see this, and at that time one will understand everything like K understood without there been anyone for K to encourage/point/etc… Without being in a situation what K was experiencing in his 30s, can one listen by encouraging/pointing/anything done by K/others?. I don’t know what is compassion (b) (because “I must be Enlightened to say it”. Isn’t it? :wink: ), but I truly see that it is only compassion (a). Urgency of Change (a Humane peaceful ‘should-be’ world) and encouraging people to ‘listen’/etc., is only compassion (a), an Intolerance of ‘what-is’. You may accuse me that my view is not compassion (a). If you see so, let it be. I just want to share the intensity behind it, and feel that you might understand it one day by being in my situation, and don’t take this as ‘encouragement’ :wink:. This might be foolish/intelligence or ignorance or Inhumane, but I just felt to share it, not only for you but everyone who may read it. You may also say that, it is my “Intolerance to K”, but not so. He is a very deep inquirer. He might have left something, that’s what I try to show. Not to make K or forums or foundations to end, but the people who fix “K’s views as ‘truth’ and must be attained” - to go beyond it to look ‘everything as whole’. You may also say, it’s just a reaction that Viswa couldn’t tolerate of what happens with people/in forums. Not so, I just thought I might not fail to say it (because I can share this only people like you who are open to hear anything and look at it - not like Putin/Biden/Zelensky), here I said it, but I am somehow changed and ready to meet and share with people, wherever their point/whomever they are in (including Putin), and ready to tolerate whatever way people choose/desires to live for. :slightly_smiling_face:

@Dev Sorry Admin. Leep asked something and I couldn’t stop me from replying him, also I could see something James might not ready to see (it may be useful or not, depends upon Leep and James). Though Leep’s question and James’s view doesn’t point me (Viswa) to respond, I felt it as it was posed to me and something I must share to them, though it might go useless. If you couldn’t tolerate my presence here even now (though my behavior changed from speaking religious things here) and want to block again, please go ahead, I’m ready to tolerate that. You may also deactivate my original account (Viswa). Sorry for causing extra burden. I might cover my identity by VPN and by attaining English Language proficiency, but I don’t want to, only some deep questions move me now-a-days and I don’t know why I couldn’t stop me in that situations and so I expose my identity all time when I come. Not to cause you trouble I created this. I Apologize.

Thank you.

Maybe you can give us an example of what you’re asking for?

Intolerence to what is” sounds like an excellent definition - but you are asking for a narrative/description of the sensations?

I think you have mistaken Leep’s moniker/icon for Viswa’s (they are the same brownish colour involving a single letter in each case - ‘L’ for Leep, ‘O’ for Viswa).

It was Viswa who gave the definition for suffering as “intolerance to what is”.

Apologies if I momentarily move away from the specifics of your question in order to answer Viswa.

By this phrase I think you mean that suffering arises from, or is synonymous with, the resistance we have to ‘what is’. - Correct?

I think Leep’s OP question was, ‘What is going on when we say we are suffering?’, without reducing this to a definition.

But I will attempt to respond to the rest of what you say (your comment is not very clear, though I think I have understood the gist).

You seem to be suggesting that ordinary compassion arises out of an unintelligent and purely subjective reaction to the inevitable violence and destruction that surrounds us in the world. And so an intelligent person (or mind) does not feel or respond with compassion. - Is that right? Have I understood what you are saying?

So, because an intelligent person (according to you) does not reject or react to the violence and chaos going on in the world around them, why did K implore people to care, to feel responsible, to be compassionate, etc?

But in answer to this I would say:

  1. people are doing whatever they want to be doing - right? Most people will naturally ignore any appeal to take responsibility for the violence and chaos in the world. And some people will see the violence and chaos in the world and naturally feel responsible.

Secondly:

  1. does the intelligent person see themselves as truly different from the rest of humanity? If he/she does not see themselves as different, then the suffering of others is their own suffering.

And thirdly:

  1. any actual suffering demands a response. Indifference, rationalisation or deliberate non-resistance to suffering is not an intelligent response. To stoically “tolerate” suffering is merely to cultivate insensitivity to ‘what is’. So meeting suffering intelligently - whether in oneself or in the world (which is also oneself) - may involve, or be synonymous with, a compassionate response. As K said: compassion is the highest form of intelligence. So what you are calling intelligence may not be intelligent (imo).

Intolerence to our vision of what is - is probably more exact

The ‘intolerat-er and the “vision”, or image or ‘thought stream’ are the same. It is the ‘thinker / thought ‘ false duality. The ‘stream’ is human thought…K’s good advice was that there has to be a “stepping out of it”.

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Suffering is the psychological stress of not being able to escape from our own shadow.

(it feels not nice and of paramount importance)

And based on the strange mythical notion that ‘what is’ could somehow be different than ‘what is’.

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Good point ! - I nearly :heart:ed that - except that it might give the impression that what is, is static (difficult to say that it changes though either)

‘The moving finger having writ moves on’

Is there a tacit assumption, that if we logically explain and describe the human condition, precisely, thoroughly, and long enough,(with or without the concurrence of past or present authorities), that we will have lighted the way to freedom from suffering?

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Yes I think there is - It does seem apparent though that some intellectual understanding, some mental model of the process of self and suffering, is not, by itself, sufficient. Even if the mental model is, by some extraordinary stroke of luck, somehow somewhat accurate.

A kind of shocking psychological realisation must also occur that suffering is the movement of self, and there must also be some kind of pressing need for the resolution of suffering (in its totality, not just this present experience - not just this itch but the whole process of self-centered experience)

The result being what is sometimes termed psychological death. I often use the word surrender - that some find triggering (because who is surrendering? though it is not a choice to surrender, it is just the action of insight).

“Stepping out of the stream of thought “ is arduous, I would say extremely so, probably because the brain is so habituated to moving effortlessly along with the current, the ‘ stream’, (aka ‘talking to one’s self’.)

“Thought is fear”, K says. I’d say psychological thought is also ‘suffering’. Without awareness of thought’s/memory’s movement, conflict, fear, suffering is inevitable. There has to be an awakening each moment to the existence of this bounded world of ‘me’ within a boundless world. When it’s seen that ‘change’ does not exist, there is freedom.

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The questioner asks what is suffering . How serious and concerned is the questioner ?