“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”- Friedrich Nietzsche.
While living is the way of life, surviving is getting through alive and prevailing. Imagine a situation where you wake up in the morning, look outside the window, and see the birds flying, the windswept under a clear sky, and there’s sunshine. That’s it; you would smile and welcome the new morning. For another person, there’s again — the bird flying, the windblown, and a bright sun welcoming; the only difference is experiencing some physical pain or living in a place that has struggled.
What is still the same is the natural process of the rise and shine of morning and its surrounding activities. Now you see why that difference occurred because the physical world affects your thoughts, the thoughts affect your mind, and your mind affects your emotions; you would sense an emotional breakdown.
Suffering is a fact of life, from the birth of a child and its first crying. You have noticed that crying but never contemplated it. It’s an elemental experience of suffering coming to this physical world. Neither that child nor its parent wanted to argue about that underlying feeling of sorrow. You only have a focus on happiness, which is true. Why would anyone seek suffering? You try to pursue happiness. But you need to understand the ambit of this separation, never was. While experiencing happiness, one often complements suffering. You minimise the effect of your happiness while distinguishing it from suffering. The mind was always looking for either this or that, something or nothing, and measuring or comparing a situation with another by the intensity of it.
In reality, because we don’t know the setting of happiness and suffering, comparison itself is possible. However, joy and sorrow are parallel to one another, like parallel lines, which are never-ending straight lines and do not cross at any point. Consciously, the mind would dispute — why would anyone suffer? There are many kinds of suffering, such as physical, mental, consequential, empathetic, and emotional. The list has no end.
Society taught you that seeking happiness is the way to eliminate all our sufferings, pursue wealth, and chase after a big house, a fancy car, and a luxurious lifestyle. But in reality, those have nothing to do with our happiness. Being wealthy has no connection to being happy and not suffering. People possess different tendencies, be they good or bad. Some are strong or weak; few are fortunate; few are unfortunate. You called it inequality, that is, an appearance of suffering. These comparisons, the blinding differences, cannot result in the changes happening in the lives at every moment. It raises the moral dilemma around yourself with those morally correct and sufficient things for living a happy life or those tied up with suffering. You have possessed an identity to secure your survival with happiness.
If you wouldn’t separate happiness and suffering, that means saying that you are in sorrow if you aren’t happy. Also, if you’re not suffering, that means you’re joyful. The moment you separate happiness from suffering, you realise that, although it seems to concur, it has unique paths. The path of happiness never leaves a cinch of argument for suffering, and suffering never indulges in joy. They both have their depth or willingness to flow. It is only in the state of our mind we build the foundation of suffering.
The more you strive for the desire of material things and bring attachment to things, the more it will take you to the path of material improvement. The more you improve on the material plane, the less you secure happiness, contrary to your mission of acquiring happiness through material possessions — an abundance of wealth, social status, and life experiences. The experience of this worldly life by yourself is a trap that only leads you to suffer.
Suffering arises the moment you ask for happiness. If you don’t ask for joy, then no one can give you suffering. Experiences that you strive for are the actual cause of suffering. It connects only you with the physical world. You are never content with yourself. The fundamental way to realise this is through discrimination. When your consciousness leaves those babbling mind’s thoughts away and discerns between self and the world.
Very thought provoking!