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The problem of suffering is: why is there the suffering we know?

It's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away somewhere so we don't have to see it.

So many people in the world would rather stay in a situation that's painful but familiar because they're comfortable with it. Not a lot of people have the strength or heart to realize when something's not good for them and to turn around and be alone.

When suffering happens, it forces us to confront life in a different way than we normally do.

Suffering without understanding in this life is a heap worse than suffering when you have at least the grain of an idea what it's all for.

It's difficult to admit to ourselves that we suffer. We feel humiliated, like we should have been able to control our pain. If someone else is suffering, we like to tuck them away, out of sight. It's a cruel, cruel conditioning. There is no controlling the unfolding of life.

For myself, suffering doesnt make me a good person; it makes me selfish. Why do we think that people who have less should find it edifying?

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don't suffer anymore.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

A lot of suffering is just getting rid of dross in yourself, and lingering and hanging in the darkness is often - I say this against myself - a failure of imagination, to imagine the door into the light.