pain

LIFE IS SUFFERING; LIFE IS CRUEL; MEANING AND PHILOSOPHY OF PAIN AND EVIL IN LIFE.

Right: Hindu Painting
Goddess Mahakali, connected to the cruelty and suffering of life

Oriental philosophy emphasizes the cruel element of life. To Taoists, Buddhists and for Hindu Jainism, life is suffering. In much the same way, the Bible and some Christian traditions also point out the pain present in life.

Life is suffering.
Pali Tripitaka, Buddhist collection of sacred texts, Vinaya

The Noble Truth of Suffering is this: Birth is suffering, ageing is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering; sorrows and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; association with the unpleasant is suffering, dissociation from the pleasant is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering – in short, the five aggregates of attachment are suffering.
Pali Tripitaka, Buddhist collection of sacred texts, Sutta-Nipata

And I too, when born, inhaled the common air, and fell upon the kindred earth; wiling, I uttered that first sound common to all.
Bible, Wisdom Book

Mother that obliges the family of animal beings to tremble and to cry from birth; nature, ignoble monster, always breeding and feeding to kill, tell me: if the premature death of a mortal is an evil, why do you inflict it on innocents?
G. Leopardi, 1798-1837, Italian writer, Poésis, Le Coucher de la Lune

Things will get thrown at you and things will hit you. Life’s no soft affair. It’s a long road you’ve started on: you can’t but expect to have slips and knocks and falls, and get tired, and openly wish – a lie – for death.
Seneca, Roman philosopher and politician, Letters to Lucilius

At one place you will part from a companion, at another bury one, and be afraid of one another. These are the kind of things you will come up against all along this rugged journey.
Seneca, Roman philosopher and politician, Letters to Lucilius

NATURE IS CRUEL
We can’t escape from evil and the world’s cruelty. So proclaim many reflexions about life. Cruelty is in nature and also in man, who embodies the cruelty of life and the natural law of kill or be killed.

Reality is cruel to the human being, strewn on the Earth, ignoring his destiny, submitting to death, unable to escape from fatal mourning, from the vicissitudes of luck, from suffering, from servitude and malice.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

The cruelty between men, individuals, groups, religions and races is terrifying. The human being has in him a sound of monsters which he releases on all favourable occasions.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, My Demons

Life fights cruelly against the cruelty of the world and resists with cruelty to the cruelty of life. All living beings kill and eat living beings.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

How to fight the cruelty of life?

Faith, art, love, friendship and mental attitudes are among the ways of minimizing and overcoming the cruelty of the world.

The human being is given over to the cruelty of the world. Hence, the necessity of a compromise, obtained through the mobilization of the myth to find supernatural comforts, through the mobilization of the imaginary to shelter the soul and through the mobilization of aesthetics and poetry to live reality plainly.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

Religious faith, as the faith in an idea, is a profound strength that helps to support and fight the cruelty of the world.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

Those who live in accord with the course of Nature and are contented and at ease when the occasion comes, cannot be affected by sorrow or joy. This is what the ancients called release from bondage.
Tchuang-Tsu, Taoist Chinese philosopher, II or III Century b.C., Book of Tchuang-Tzu

Perturbations are a consequence of opinions and unwise judgements.
Cicero, 106-43 a. C., Roman philosopher and statesman, De Finibus bonorum et malorum

He who does not consume himself with the injuries, futilities and enthusiasms, who does not enervate with fear, and does not boil with desires and envy, is a sage; with serenity and firmly he is serene and in harmony with himself.
Cicero, 106-43 a. C., Roman philosopher and statesman, Tusculan disputation

LIFE IS TOO SHORT
 PHILOSOPHICAL QUOTES, EXTRACTS OF POEMS AND A COMMENT ON THE BREVITY OF LIFE.

Right: Marcus Aurelius, a roman emperor and philosopher of the 2nd Century, gave us some of the most beautiful reflexions on life's short span.


The brevity of life is one of the more common themes of human existential thought. There is authentic poetry in many ancient reflexions on this brevity, and the inevitability of death and nothingness.

As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. But the wind passes over, and soon all disappears; and his place will no more exist.
PSamls, Bible

Insignificant mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow warm with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but soon fade away and are dead.
Homer, Century IX b.C., Greek poet, Iliad

Having glimpsed a small part of life, men rise up and disappear as smoke, knowing only what each one has learned.
Empedocles, 483-430 b. C., Greek Philosopher, in On Nature, of Sextus Empiricus.

Time is a violent torrent; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by, and another takes its place, before this too will be swept away.
Marcus Aurelius, 121-180, roman emperor and philosopher, Thoughts

Every instant of time is a pinprick of eternity. All things are insignificant, easily changed, vanishing away.
Marcus Aurelius, 121-180, roman emperor and philosopher, Thoughts

Our existence is a short circuit of light between two eternities of darkness.
Vladimir Nabokov, 1889-1977, Russian writer, Na outra margem da memória

Life’s short span forbids us to enter on far reaching hopes.
Horace, 65-8 b. C., roman poet, Odes

Necessary, since every moment in our lives is marked by death, like a shadow from another realm, it appear to us like a vanishing point for everything.
Andre Comte-Sponville, French philosopher, The Little Book of Philosophy


How can one meditate on live without meditating too on its brevity, its precariousness, its fragility?
Andre Comte-Sponville, French philosopher, The Little Book of Philosophy

IS LIFE MEANINGFUL?
QUOTES AND COMMENTS





Left: Dalai Lama.
The Tibetan leader
points out the importance
of happiness
for a meaningful life.





AN HAPPY LIFE IS A MEANINGFUL LIFE

The meaning of life resides in joy and the feelings of harmony connected to happiness; without happiness, life loses meaning. Happiness is at the heart of our lives and our demand for a meaning. The quotes below underlines it.

One great question underlies our experience, whether we think about it consciously or not: What is the purpose of life? I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want to suffer. From the very core of our being we simply desire contentment.
Dalai Lama, Tibetan spiritual and political leader, Voices from the Heart

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence becomes a mad lamentable experiment
George Santayana, 1863-1952, American philosopher, The Life of Reason

I don't know whether the universe, with its countless galaxies, stars, and planets, has a deeper meaning, but at the very least it is clear that we humans who live on this Earth face the task of making a happy life for ourselves.
Dalai Lama, Tibetan spiritual and political leader, Voices from the Heart

Isn’t precisely happiness what we all want, without exception?
Saint Augustine, 354-430, theologian and philosopher, Confessions

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP AS SOURCE OF MEANING

A life without love and friendship is a meaningless life. The meaning of life is, largely, given by love and friendship.


Life is sown with those miracles that only people who love can expect.
Marcel Proust, 1871-1922, French writer, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

There is only one way of happiness, in life: to love and be loved.
George Sand, 1804-1876, French writer, Lettre to Lina Calamatta

Only the soul that loves is happy.
Johann Goethe, 1749-1831, German writer, Egmont

Friendship dances around the world inviting us all to awaken to the recognition of happiness.
Epicurus, 341-270 a. C., Greek philosopher, Vatican Sayings

Of all the means which wisdom turns to in order to ensure happiness during all our life, by far the most important is friendship.
Epicurus, 341-270 a. C., Greek Philosopher, Principal Doctrines

HOLINESS, MAGIC, DREAMS AND MEANINGFUL

Holiness and magic give to man a superior and fantastic world, which can be a source of happiness and meaning; similarly, dreams and even myth and illusion are a source of consolation, of oblivion, of surpassing grief and so, to some degree, a way of giving meaning to our lives.

To the primitive man, the physical universe of rocks, trees, rivers and mountains glittered with meaning. The material world was considered alive and charming, and afforded a sacred stage to human beings and their activity.
Anne Bancroft, English author, Origens do sagrado

The primitive man’s life (…) was rich and full of meanings. At many levels it allowed the chance of a direct experience with the divine, sparkling with meaningful impressions that today are meaningless and trivial.
Anne Bancroft, English author, Origens do sagrado

Religion, mythology and magic bring great Guarantees and great Consolations, which minimize the very strong existential anguish of human beings, and temper their tragedies.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

Myth fortifies man, concealing the incomprehensibility of his destiny and filling up the nothingness of death.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

The human being is given over to the cruelty of the world. Hence the necessity of a compromise, which is obtained by mobilizing the myth to find supernatural comforts, by mobilizing the imaginary to shelter the soul in, and by mobilizing aesthetics and poetry to fully live reality.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

GOD AS A SOURCE OF A MEANINGFUL LIFE

To religious thought the meaning of life is deeply associated with God, with magic and with holiness.

When I seek you, my God, I am seeking happiness. I will seek you in order for my soul to live, because my body lives from my soul, and my soul lives from You.
Saint Augustine, 354-430, theologian and philosopher, Confessions

Ecclesiastes shows that man without God is a total ignorant and in inevitable misery. For it is miserable to have the wish, but not the power. Sometimes he would be happy and assured of some truth, and yet he can neither know, nor even desire not to know.
Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, French philosopher, physic and mathematician, Thoughts

No man is good without God: is anyone capable of rising above chance unless with God’s help? It’s him that prompts us to noble and exalted endeavors. In each and every good man, as Virgil says, a god (what god we are uncertain) dwells.
Seneca, Roman philosopher and politician, Letters to Lucilius

You are the Truth, oh my God, my light, health of my face. All people want this path, the only happy path, the joy that lives in truth.
Saint Augustine, 354-430, theologian and philosopher, Confessions

There is no salvation outside the Church.
Saint Augustine, 354-430, theologian and philosopher, De Baptismo contra Donatistas

MEANING AS A HUMAN MIND CREATION
To the laity, man makes the meaning of life through his options and values. Life’s meaning (or lack of meaning) is purely a human creation.

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count just with himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth, in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aims than those he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
Jean Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French writer and philosopher, Being and Nothingness

Life is nothing until it is lived, but it is yours to make sense of; the value of life is nothing other than the sense you choose.
Jean Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French writer and philosopher, Existentialism is a Humanism

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
Henry Thoreau, 1817-1862, American essayist, Journal

Life has the meaning we give it. It has our richness, our enthusiasm, our pride. Or our cowardice.
Miguel Torga, 1907-1995, Portuguese writer, Diário

These then are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
William James, 1842-1910, American philosopher, The Will to Believe


Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980, American philosopher and psychologist, Man for Himself


Ignorant men do not know the excellence of what’s in their hands, until they've flung it away.
Sophocles, 496-406 b. C, Greek Poet, Ajax

THE INSTINCTIVE ELEMENT OF MEANING

Some authors underline the instinctive element of the meaning we attribute to life. This meaning is in our core: is instinctive and rooted in the chemistry of our minds, overcoming social and cultural elements.

Without affections and subjectivity, the meaning of life would be lost, and it will only remain laws, equations, models and forms.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

The desire to live exists entire and undivided in each being, even in the most insignificant.
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher, Parerga e Paralipomena

To live is like to love – all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler, 1835-1902, English writer, Notebooks

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.
Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, German philosopher, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics

If we weren’t interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that we would not bare it.
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher, O mundo como vontade e como representaçã

Life Challenges Do you find yourself in a life challenge or trial - not sure which way to turn? Has an event or illness suddenly changed the whole pattern of your life and your plan for the future? Life Challenges can shake you at your very core. It is our desire that through the articles below, you will find comfort for your past, practical help for today, and lasting hope for your future. Emotional Challenges   Dealing With Death Video   Dealing with Difficult People     Decision Making   Discouragement     Feeling Alone   Guilt     Healing A Broken Heart   How to Die*     Late Term Abortion   Life Challenges     Meaning in Tragedy   Obsessive Compulsive Disorder     Self Worth   Anger Management Techniques     Borderline Personality Disorder   Coping With Anxiety     Coping With Depression   Coping With Miscarriage     Dealing With Death   Dealing With Depression     Grief Process   Manic Depression     Miscarriage Statistics   Overcome Fear     Overcoming Jealousy   Panic Attacks     Post Abortion Syndrome   Separation Anxiety     Signs Of Depression   Stress Relief         Marriage and Family   Adult Children of Alcoholics   Caring For The Elderly     Empty Nest   Family Conflicts     Military Wife*   Retirement Planning     Single Parent   Single Woman     Stillbirth   Teenage Pregnancy     Television Addiction   Verbal Abuse     Adopting A Child   Blended Families     Christian Family Counseling   Christian Marriage Counseling     Coping With Divorce   Coping With Separation     Divorce Questions   Forgiving Infidelity     Manage Attention Deficit Disorder   Marital Infidelity     Marriage Conflict   Spouse Abuse     Suicide Of A Child           Physical Challenges   Cancer Treatment   Gastric Bypass Surgery     Hair Loss   Menopause     Obesity Help   Reverse Aging     Traumatic Brain Injury*   Alzheimers Support     Cancer Patients   Chronic Fatigue     Chronic Pain   Chronic Pain Relief     Coping With Loneliness   Hepatitis C     Managing Diabetes   Metastatic Breast Cancer     Pancreatitis   Trying to Conceive         Recovery   Alcohol Addiction   Alcohol Addiction Video     Christian Drug Addiction*   Drug Addiction     Drug Addiction Video   Food Addiction     Hypnosis Therapy   Rape Survivors     Workaholic   Anorexia & Bulimia     Child Abuse Help   Codependency     Codependency Recovery   Coping With Job Loss     How To Commit Suicide   I Hate My Life     Masturbation Addiction   Porn Addiction     Sex Addict Treatment   Sexual Abuse Survivor     Sexual Addiction   Smoking Addiction     Why Me God Decision Making – Taking Risks Ben struggles with decision making. The make of his next car, a potential career change, or a commitment to a long-term relationship, only compound Ben’s anxiety. If only our decisions were risk-free, guaranteeing us the best desired outcome! Decision making forces us to: accept responsibility for the success or failure of our choice experience first-hand how that decision helps or harms others identify the most reliable source of wisdom that equips us for making those decisions. Decision Making – Out of Your Mind! Decision making based only on human nature frequently produces serious consequences. When our selfish impulses influence choices, disaster soon follows. In the Bible, Abram (Abraham) offered his nephew, Lot, the choice of the whole land that rightfully belonged to Abram (Genesis 13:8-11). Lot made his decision without concern for Abram. Lot’s selfish desire for the most fertile, well-water plains caused him to settle near the wicked and sinful Sodom and Gomorrah. Abram, on the other hand, trusted in the promise of God (Genesis 12:1-3, 7) regardless of what Lot decided. Decision making based on God’s promises and commands always provides us with peace. When we exclude God from our decision making, we intentionally ignore God’s instructions. “I will bless those who have humble and contrite hearts, who tremble at my word. But those who choose their own ways, delighting in their sins, are cursed . . . I will send great troubles against them—all the things they feared . . . When I spoke, they did not listen. They deliberately sinned—before my very eyes—and chose to do what they know I despise” (Isaiah 66:2-4, NLT). Our pride and selfishness suggests, “I’ll take this course of action. If God doesn’t stop me, it must be okay.” Instead, God’s direction and wisdom must be sought before we make any decision. Your Mind – Results in impetuous choices (1 Corinthians 3:18-19). Peer Pressure – Produces confusion and failure (Jeremiah 7:24). God’s Mind – Gives supernatural wisdom to you (Proverbs 2:3-8). Decision Making – A Humbling Experience One of the most difficult factors in decision making is humbling oneself, admitting that you don’t know it all or that you’ve failed. King David experienced first hand how his decision resulted in Israel being punished. Following David’s disobedience, God gave him three choices of punishment -- famine, destruction by his enemies, or plague (1 Chronicles 21:7–15). David based his next decision on God’s mercy. David understood that submitting to God’s commands was the right choice, even when it was painful. We all make costly mistakes, decisions that we wish we never made. Moses ignored God’s instructions (Numbers 20:8-12), Samson surrendered his strength (Judges 16:17-21), and Peter repeatedly denied knowing Jesus Christ (John 18:25-27). Each of these mighty men humbled themselves by asking for God’s forgiveness. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The journey in any decision making may be a difficult and lengthy one. By trusting in God’s plans for our lives, we experience peace in the storms of life. Any decision that draws us closer in our relationship with God assures success (Jeremiah 29:11-13). When we surrender our will (pride and selfish motives) to God’s will, He gives us the desires of our heart (Psalm 27:3-5).