Pain and Suffering

"Suffering I teach, and the way out of suffering," proclaimed the Buddha.  Here 'suffering' does not mean pain but the profound discomfiture which we experience when all our attempts to remedy or evade pain prove futile."

"Run away!  Run away!"  the Monty Python Knights of the Round Table taking decisive action when a battle isn't going their way.

Boy, do I hate pain.  Boy, do I hate emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual pain.

"Oh, it's not the physical part I'm worried about - I could handle the physical part.  It's the mental part that would kill me.  They'd take me off there in a body bag."  Little Westside Jonny, in a spirited argument with me over the likelihood that either of us would be able to survive an entire night on a little jungle island in the middle of a swampy, crocodile-infested, piranha-protected, mosquito-controlled lake in the wilds of Ecuador.  He maintained that he would not attempt it for any amount of money.  I think I got down as low as $50,000 before stating that I would refuse the assignment.  I couldn't believe he wouldn't do it for half a million.  He was adamant.  In hindsight, he was also quite correct.

It's not the pain.  It's the suffering when I try to evade the pain.

Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional.