Radix wrote: ↑Tue Oct 11, 2022 8:23 pm
Sam Vara wrote: ↑Mon Oct 10, 2022 8:30 pmI always thought that pain was part of suffering, but perhaps I've been reading it wrongly.
What a strange thing to say for someone who loves to shoot people down with the two arrows teaching.
I'm aware of it, I've referred to it here on DW, but I don't "shoot people down with it". That's a ridiculous thing to say.
One can be without pain and still suffer, and one can be in pain but not suffer. The only way to overcome suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path, but medicine doesn't teach it, so medicine cannot reduce suffering.
I was thinking of SN 45.165:
“Mendicants, there are these three forms of suffering.
“Tisso imā, bhikkhave, dukkhatā.
What three?
Katamā tisso?
The suffering inherent in painful feeling; the suffering inherent in conditions; and the suffering inherent in perishing.
Dukkhadukkhatā, saṅkhāradukkhatā, vipariṇāmadukkhatā—
These are the three forms of suffering.
imā kho, bhikkhave, tisso dukkhatā.
The noble eightfold path should be developed for the direct knowledge, complete understanding, finishing, and giving up of these three forms of suffering.”
Imāsaṁ kho, bhikkhave, tissannaṁ dukkhatānaṁ abhiññāya pariññāya parikkhayāya pahānāya …pe… ayaṁ ariyo aṭṭhaṅgiko maggo bhāvetabbo”ti.
There is probably a scholarly linguistic debate to be had about the compound
dukkhadukkhatā and whether it means the suffering arising from pain, or the suffering inherent in pain. Sujato clearly differs from Bhikkhu Bodhi on this, who thinks it is suffering due to physical pain. But I see this as recognising that pain is one of the ways in which existence is unsatisfactory, the other two being the decline and change of happiness, and its conditioned and therefore uncontrollable nature.
And, of course, there is the definition with the wonderful compound:
Sokaparidevadukkhadomanass’upayasapi dukkha,
sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are dukkha
which, if it is to avoid a pointless repetition, means that pain is
dukkha.
In any case, even if
One can be without pain and still suffer, and one can be in pain but not suffer
the vast majority of people in pain
do suffer, and so medicine, in alleviating pain, thereby alleviates the suffering which would otherwise arise