The Beauty of Suffering
By
Rosasophia, IV°/PI
So what does suffering have to do with Thelema
you may ask, “for he that sorroweth is not of us. After all, Thelema
is about light, life, love and liberty, not suffering. Suffering is part of the black schools. Suffering is for those who do not know the
law of liberty. Yet do we not all know
the ordeals that must be suffered through initiation? Do we not have an inkling of what every great
magician and mystic suffered to attain his wisdom and/or power? Has not every initiate been warned of what
awaits him should he decide to set foot upon the Path? So why then does anyone choose to set foot
upon that Path? It is because we know
that through those ordeals, through that suffering, we will emerge better than
before. Each ordeal leaves us a little more changed than before; change is the
nature of life. It is the process of transmutation. We know that in the end, if
we succeed, our suffering will bring great joy.
And so we receive the ordeals and rejoice in life along the way pausing
at each post to receive with equal joy the rewards inherent to our
achievements. In Magick Without Tears
There is another way of
defining the Great Work that explains to us the whole manifestation of
departing from perfection of “Nothing” towards the perfection of “everything”
and one might consider this an advantage that is quite impossible to go
wrong. Every experience, whatever be its
nature, is just another necessary bump.
Naturally one cannot realize this until one
becomes a Master of the
Throughout the centuries man has sought to find reason and place for
suffering. Suffering has been dubbed the
work of evil, of the devil, the consequence of ignorance, an illusion, the
nature of life, the result of sin, and so on.
No matter what answer or rationale man has place on it, the need for a
rationale is of central importance to all philosophies and religions. At the heart of the quest for the meaning of
life is really the question of the purpose of suffering. If we never suffered, even a little, would we
question so deeply the reason for living?
Would men dedicate lifetimes to the quest of finding meaning in the
suffering of others or in their own suffering?
Taoism teaches us to find beauty in all
things. It teaches us to look at a pile
of dung and see it as beautiful. Until
one can truly do this enlightenment cannot be attained. Most people in western society shudder at
such notions. In His first sermon to the
five ascetics in the
The Truth of
Suffering.
The Truth of
the Cause of Suffering.
The Truth of
the End of Suffering.
The Truth of
the Path leading to the End of Suffering.
Why should there be any less beauty in
a photograph of a child dying than one of a child laughing in its mother's
arms? Suffering is perhaps one of the few cross-cultural universals. Despite
the differences in customs, traditions, language, literature, art, philosophy
and ethics every society is subjected to the harsh reality that suffering
exists. Sakyamuni Buddha (563-483 B.C.E.) realized
this and declared the first Noble Truth of Buddhism to be that all life is Dukkha (suffering.) What is the Noble Truth about
suffering? The Buddha would answer:
"Birth, ageing, sickness, pain, sorrow, lamentation, grief, despair
and death are suffering. Not getting what one desires and coming into contact
with the undesired is suffering." (Rahula, 1990,
3)
The other notion I found I held came
from the Ancient Greeks. Similar to the
concept of suffering as ennobling, we find the concept of suffering as tests of
fate. “What doesn’t kill us makes us
stronger”. Suffering makes us grow and
become stronger. The classic tragedies tragedies
adhere to a reality of suffering similar to the maxim upheld by the Buddhist
monks of
In Euripides' Medea we find the tale of the Colchian
witch Medea who "in the madness of jealousy . .
. slew her three young sons with her own hand." (Moncrieff,
1994, 168) The imposement of suffering by the gods
made it an inescapable reality. No doubt
the Ancient Greek would agree with the Buddha and say, "Indeed, to live is
to suffer."
“Few among the Ancient
Greeks understood the reality of suffering better than the maenads of the Dionysiac cult. The sacramental communion engaged in by the
priestesses of the Dionysia involved the ritual
tearing asunder of a bull or a kid with their bare hands. This was done in an
ecstatic frenzy and the flesh was eaten raw and they lapped the blood up
directly from the veins of the kill. This tribute to Dionysus represented an
indulgence into the suffering of life.” (Jellyfish, 2003) Friedrich Nietzsche agreed with this
viewpoint of the Ancient Greeks identifying the godhead of Dionysus with
suffering. Moreover, Nietzsche even claimed that suffering is the only thing
that is truly real. Hence, “Dionysus, the god of Dukkha,
becomes inseparable from Brahman - the Hindu notion of the underlying reality
out of which the universe is composed.” (Dead Jellyfish, 2003) The Hindus seek Mukti (liberation) from the physical world through
absorption into Brahman where all individuality is lost. The artist is "no
longer the artist, he has himself become a work of art; the productive power of
the whole universe is now manifest is his transport, to the glorious
satisfaction of the primordial One." (Nietzsche, 1956, 24)
“Nietzsche has invited us not only to
acknowledge that suffering exists, but to identify with suffering and become
one with it. However to believe that
only suffering exists would be crippling and we could accomplish nothing. It is
as unbalanced a view as believing that everything is all light and joy, that
life is a bed of roses and that suffering does not exist. Action is futile if
it only to be met with disaster or suffering. No action of Oedipus could have
saved him from his terrible fate.” (Dead Jellyfish, 2003) “The followers of Bromius have "looked deeply into the true nature of
things, they have understood and are now
loath to act. They realize that no action of theirs can work any change in the
eternal condition of things, and they regard the imputation as ludicrous or
debasing that they should set right the time which is out of joint." (51)
Yet indulgence in pure optimism is delusional.
Suffering is not alone. It and
exists in a relationship of symbiosis with bliss. Everything needs to be
counterbalanced by its opposite - good needs evil, yin needs yang, and sufffering needs bliss.
A third factor I found that compelled me to find beauty in suffering
is the fact that it inspires feelings of compassion and/or empathy and to feel
compassion or empathy can be beautiful even though it is sad. Tears and sadness felt in empathy in
compassion for another or even for one self feels somehow beautiful to me. It is the vice of kings because it is a
beautiful vice. It is the feeling of this kind of sadness and compassion that
inspires beautiful music such as “The Moonlight Sonata” or the paintings such
as “The Young Martyr” by Paul Delaroche, a favorite
of mine. It is compassion and empathy
that bring people closer together.
Without mutual understanding, without empathy no true bond between human
beings can exist. Granted this empathy
needn’t be based in suffering. Joy can
be shared as well. Balance is the
key. Life holds a wide gamut of emotions
and experiences. But have you ever
noticed how much great joy feels like great sorrow? Why do they both cause tears? I can hardly tell the difference
sometimes. At the extreme of every
emotion one meets its opposite. And in
great suffering there is great joy, and in great joy there is great suffering.
Viktor Frankl
(1984) learned how to accept suffering in life while in the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps:
If there is a meaning in life at all, then
there must be a meaning in suffering.
Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot
be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it
entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample
opportunity--even under the most difficult circumstances--to add a deeper
meaning to his life. . . .Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of
or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult
situation may afford him. And this
decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not. (Frankl,
1984, 76)
Frankl explains in his book Man’s Search For Meaning that
those who retained their dignity in the midst of such a bestial existence did
so by making “a fundamental change” in their “attitude toward life” (85). They had to learn for themselves and had “to
teach the despairing men” this lesson: “it
did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected
from us” (85). They had to stop
asking about “the meaning of life” and, instead, think of themselves as “those
who were being questioned by life--daily and hourly” (85). Their answer came “not in talk and
meditation, but in right action and in right conduct” (85). “Life,” for Frankl,
“ultimately meant taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its
problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual”
(85).
Frankl believed that for each of us, this “right
answer” is not a collective one, but uniquely private. It is what we have heard in speeches all our
lives and have mostly ignored until discovered for ourselves as indeed we come
to travel that road no one else can walk for us, wearing those shoes no one
else can wear. It is what we learn
suiting up, one pants’ leg at a time, what we discover placing one foot in
front of the other. We are all crossing
the valley of the shadow.
Because the journey differs from
person to person, and from moment to moment, Frankl
said it is “impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way”
(85): “No man and no destiny can be
compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each
situation calls for a different response” (85).
Frankl saw “only one right answer to the
problem posed by the situation at hand” (86).
Should the uniqueness of that situation be in its suffering, then
suffering should “become a task” on which we do “not want to turn our backs”
(86). We must realize “its hidden
opportunities for achievement” (86):
“When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to
accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that
even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or
suffer in his place. His unique
opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden” (86).
In closing I leave you with the idea that as
each of us pursues his or her path towards perfection, not to nothingness, but
to everything we are going to be tested in every possible way by the powers of
the universe. “Please observe that the further you get on, higher your
potential, the greater is the tendency to leak, or even to break the containing
vessel. I can help you by warning you
against setting up obstacles, real or imaginary, in your own path; which is
what most people do, It is almost
laughable to think the Great Work consists merely of “letting her rip”; but
Karma bumps you from one side of the toboggan slide to the other, until you
“come into the straight”. (Crowley,
1999, p. 142) Every recess of our mind
will come under scrutiny as we progress up the ladder of enlightenment and with
every rung climbed the light becomes harsher; the suffering greater –more
keenly felt. Yet there comes a point
when when become Masters of the Temple and become
living embodiments of the verse “For pure Will, unasuagged
of purpose, free from the lust of result is in every way perfect”. The Buddhist knows the desire causes
suffering. Sartre knows that
identification of our Self with a wrong image is suffering…ambition is
suffering. Being trapped within
ourselves is suffering. It is our
natural state to expand to share with others.
Our suffering makes us human because it is what pushes us to strive
towards our highest potential. It is the
initiator and the prod of the initiator.
References:
Aeschylus. Promethus. 1961. Bound. London:
Penguin Books Ltd.
Dead Jellyfish, 2003. Pain &
Suffering: The Role of Pain in Greek Tragedies. ChaosMagick
Archives.
Retrieved Feb. 20, 2004, from http://www.chaosmagick.com/archives.
Crowley, Aleister.1999. Magick Without Tears.
New Falcon Press: Tempe, Arizona.
Euripides. 1973. The Bacchae. London: Pengiun
Books Ltd.
Frankl, Viktor. 1984. Man’s Search For
Meaning: An Introduction To Logotherapy.
3rd ed. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Montcliff, A. R. Hope. 1994. Classical Mythology. London: Studio Editions Ltd.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1956. The Birth of Tragedy & the Genealogy of Morals. New York:
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
Noss,
David S. 1994. A History of the World's
Religions. New York: Macmillan College Publishing Company.
Rahula,
Yogavacara. 1990. The
Way to Peace and Happiness. Taiwain: The
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