Do We Not Have Suffering To Thank For Life Being So Beautiful?

[The White Belt]

Hey guys.

I had a thought, and I thought it would be good to write it here whilst opening up a discussion.

Shakespeare wrote his most famous sonnet, 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?', a very short time after his son died. Picasso's renowned 'blue' period came after his friend was shot in the head in front of him. Vincent van Gogh cut his ear off. Almost every decent musician has a painful personal life. The film 'Apocalypse now' was so difficult to make, everything seemed to go wrong, that they made a documentary just about all the bad stuff. Both Health Ledger and Phillip Seymore Hoffman died from drug overdoses. 

So what's my point? From all of this suffering came immense beauty! Art that has raised our consciousness, made us aware of the issues around us. Art is beautiful and it all came from a place of suffering. If we all became enlightened and transcended suffering none of this would exist. You could say it would be better if these people were enlightened, but I don't buy that at all, they sacrificed themselves for us. You could also say we wouldn't need art, I don't buy that either, art makes a life worth living. 

 

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?" - John Keating (Dead Poet's Society, 1989)

 

So my question is,

do we need some suffering in the world?

 

 

[Frogfucius]

I would say that at least at this point in human evolution, you are correct. It seems like for any extreme in life, there needs to be a polar opposite in order to balance itself out. Without sorrow, we wouldn’t know joy. Without chaos, we wouldn’t know peace. Without perception of these things, we would have more simpler lives like animals.

Is a plane of higher consciousness possible, in which chaos becomes eliminated, and all that is left is peace? It’s possible in a few million years, we evolve to that point. But it’s also possible that the phase we are currently in will wind up eradicating ourselves from this planet completely before that even becomes possible. At the rate we are going with overpopulation, we are not going to be able to sustain ourselves on this planet.  And then with global warming continuing the way it is, of which we are a major contributor to, most of the world’s species are going to die off, including humanity.
 

[The White Belt]

@Frogfucius Agree with everything you said. With recycling, car sharing schemes and green emissions I'd say we are a lot more conscious, without all needing to be enlightened. 

[Prabhaker]

11 hours ago, BeginnerActualizer said:

do we need some suffering in the world?

If there was no suffering, you would never search for the truth. It is suffering that goes on impelling you to go beyond it. It is anguish and agony that finally compels you to seek and search for the path that goes beyond suffering and agony, to find a way that reaches to blissfulness and to eternal joy.
Pain, suffering, old age, death, all these are creating the situation for you to search for truth. Otherwise you would fall asleep; otherwise you would be so comfortable, you would become a vegetable. There would be no need, suffering creates the need for a search.

You would like to live a life where there is no suffering, but that life is not possible if you continuously carry the ego with you. 

Edited October 12, 2016 by Prabhaker

[Rakesh]

Thanking the world is pointless, and suffering is born out of ideas just like beauty.