I like suffering

[Angel Ramirez]

I enjoy suffering.

Am I insane?

[David Quinn]

It sounds quite normal to me. Most people enjoy suffering. We wouldn't have the kind of world we have today if they didn't.

What kind of suffering do you enjoy?

-

[MKFaizi]

You may wish to study Marquis de Sade. He discusses suffering and the infliction of suffering in the sexual extreme. He was -- ha ha -- a Sadist. But he also enjoyed pain.

Sade was very romantic.

Yet, in his best writing, he was sober and reasonable.

The love of suffering is on a middle school level of emotion and reasoning. Most people never get beyond the seventh grade level of suffering.

Imagine living the rest of your life in emotional seventh grade.

As long as you enjoy that sort of prepubescent suffering, cool.

You may enjoy more writing to an Edgar Allen Poe forum or Charlotte Bronte forum where you can wallow more freely.

Faizi

[Angel Ramirez]

Now that I think about it maybe I haven't suffered all that much. Only the occasional heartbreak and regret over bad things I've done to people.

I was in love with a woman and she rejected me. It felt awful but after a few months I turned the pain into something "good" that I can't explain very well. I guess I would say that it felt like being alive and I prefered this feeling to what I felt dealing with the boring tasks of my everyday life.

Then there are times when I would lie awake in bed at night and weep over memories of being cruel to other people. Last year I went on a search for individuals from my past and apologized to them for what I did. The funny thing was that few of them really remembered what I had done and were glad to hear from me. This cooled me off to the task.

I'm probably a very primitive person.

How much have you suffered in your life David Quinn?

MK: I will try the other forums but I like this one very much.

Thanks

[MKFaizi]

If you truly want to suffer, then, you have come to the right place.

Out of all the people here, I have probably suffered the most. I am more than fifty years old and I still suffer -- well, that's not really true. I stopped suffering approximately three years ago. Gave it up for Lent or Eid, I reckon. Could have been some Jewish thing -- Passover or whatnot.

Whatever -- I gave it up. Stopped suffering. Out of guilt.

I mean, Jesus suffered enough for all of us. We don't have to suffer because Jesus beat us to it. Can't top that. I'm not about to try it, despite all the sacrifices I have made personally to humanity.

Suffering over a girlfriend -- well, that's called acne or wet dreams. Strictly commercial.

Why do you come to a philosophy site? Do you have an interest in philosophy or enlightenment?

Faizi

[MKFaizi]

To my knowledge, David Quinn never suffered more than golf a day in his life.

Faizi

[avidaloca]

Suffering over a girlfriend is a luxury my friend. You can always shake a girlfriend, but there are plenty of other things you can't quite so simply.

I've probably felt occasional "pain" over a girl for a few days or weeks but that's about all. Its a real high when you get over them, especially if you were with one for a year or something and went through a few hellish periods for a while.

David appears to be quite adept at dealing with suffering, but then he doesn't have many wants. Very basic clothing, computer, means of travel (bus/train), interests (prog rock CDs and downloads, Opeth concerts) and a bit of golf. Hasn't had any interest in women for well over a decade, and that's the big one when it comes to attachments.

He's happy being on the forum daily for weeks or months at a time, then taking a customary hiatus from it, and then returning to do it all again, like a touring band or something. Except the songs don't change a lot - we always get the same set list. I can't remember the last time he released a new single or album.

[avidaloca]

On a slightly different topic, I read somewhere recently that we never hear the phrase the "Battle of the Sexes" anymore. That's true. Several years ago it used to be used all the time on game shows, in newspapers, everywhere.

The guy who mentioned this said it's because it's no longer just a battle, it's all-out war, and people realise that at some (possibly subliminal) level. So the phrase doesn't have the same lightness it used to.

[Beingof1]

MKFaizi:

If you truly want to suffer, then, you have come to the right place.

Out of all the people here, I have probably suffered the most. I am more than fifty years old and I still suffer -- well, that's not really true. I stopped suffering approximately three years ago. Gave it up for Lent or Eid, I reckon. Could have been some Jewish thing -- Passover or whatnot.

Whatever -- I gave it up. Stopped suffering. Out of guilt.

I mean, Jesus suffered enough for all of us. We don't have to suffer because Jesus beat us to it. Can't top that. I'm not about to try it, despite all the sacrifices I have made personally to humanity.

Suffering over a girlfriend -- well, that's called acne or wet dreams. Strictly commercial.

I could not stop laughing after reading this, I am not kidding, a solid ten minutes. I don`t dare read it while posting as I would be unable to type.

[Beingof1]

After thinking about my former post I realized it could be misunderstood. I did not mean to say that suffering of the individual is something to laugh about. It is catastrophic to the one experiencing such.

Faizi`s post contained some very hearty wisdom in seeing that most suffering is a choice. Most humor is the truth told in irony.

What is to be gained or lost by the experience of suffering would be the question?

[David Quinn]

Rear Naked Choke wrote:

How much have you suffered in your life David Quinn?

I suffered quite a lot in my twenties and early thirties when I was struggling to come to grips with the realities of the spiritual path - similar, in some ways, to what Kelly Jones is currently going through. Since then, I have hardly suffered at all.

My lack of suffering these days is partly due to reaching a certain level of wisdom, and partly due to my cowardly aversion towards cranking it right up and challenging society openly in the manner of an apostle.


--

avidaloca wrote:

David appears to be quite adept at dealing with suffering, but then he doesn't have many wants. Very basic clothing, computer, means of travel (bus/train), interests (prog rock CDs and downloads, Opeth concerts) and a bit of golf. Hasn't had any interest in women for well over a decade, and that's the big one when it comes to attachments.

He's happy being on the forum daily for weeks or months at a time, then taking a customary hiatus from it, and then returning to do it all again, like a touring band or something. Except the songs don't change a lot - we always get the same set list. I can't remember the last time he released a new single or album.

As far as I know, the album of truth was first released two-and-a-half thousand years ago, with only minor variations released since.

What a pity for the spiritual teacher that there is only one Truth, and only one trunk. He is forced to convey the same message over and over again. How boring he must seem to the leaf-dwellers who can hop around at random and sing a different tune each day.

-

[Jason]

My lack of suffering these days is partly due to reaching a certain level of wisdom, and partly due to my cowardly aversion towards cranking it right up and challenging society openly in the manner of an apostle.

What would challenging society openly actually consist of?

[Greg Shantz]

David Quinn wrote:

My lack of suffering these days is partly due to reaching a certain level of wisdom, and partly due to my cowardly aversion towards cranking it right up and challenging society openly in the manner of an apostle.

What if you are called to do so in the future, David? What will you do then?

[David Quinn]

I'm trying not to think about it.

-

[Kelly Jones]

I'm not sure whether David is trying some reverse psychology, or not. I'd like to think he is. There's something to be said for seeing Goliath a thousand miles away, so he looks like a gnat, or seeing trillions of Goliaths, which is the same thing. Put all the academics, philosophy forums, smart-alecs, bloody-fanged-animals, wailing banshees, and screaming cowards in one gnatlike basket, and then there is only philosophy.

I'm just a simple robot, my name is 0/|.


-

[MKFaizi]

DQ wrote:

My lack of suffering these days is partly due to reaching a certain level of wisdom, and partly due to my cowardly aversion towards cranking it right up and challenging society openly in the manner of an apostle.

I am rather short-sighted and lacking in female intuition but I do not think he is using reverse psychology.

He has reached a level of wisdom and does not suffer.

What he ironically calls cowardly aversion is not cowardly. It is common sense. Up against the wall, I will challenge society but openly challenging simply for the purpose of challenging is fruitless. Such endeavor is egotistical and accomplishes nothing.

One is an example by example.

No challenge necessary.

But I could be wrong.

Faizi

[Jamesh]

I enjoy suffering.

Am I insane?

You don't enjoy suffering itself, but you enjoy the flux of emotions. Without the cyclical change from suffering to happiness you'd be bored shitless, and in the modern commercial world of entertainment provided by others, boredom is becoming the worst suffering of all because of its consistancy. Sure boredom is not a worse immediate feeling than the loss of something valued, but sum it up and you will see that it is has a greater effect on your actions.

Memory is a bitch because it has inbuilt mechanisms for forgetting past suffering, for only remembering the good times. This increases one's desire to strive for more good times, which in the end results in more suffering once the initial excitment of a new experience wears off through repetition.

[avidaloca]

Memory is a bitch because it has inbuilt mechanisms for forgetting past suffering, for only remembering the good times. This increases one's desire to strive for more good times, which in the end results in more suffering once the initial excitment of a new experience wears off through repetition.

In my mind, experiences of suffering are very firmly entrenched in memory and dealt with when the possiblity of them recurring arises. That's because I don't "hang on" to those experiences, which is too painful. It's all how the human mind deals with them - this is a cultural thing.

On the flipside, I am occasionally caught out and suffer when I didn't anticipate what someone would do, like for example when a dentist hacked my teeth up a few years ago. It's not that easy to see things coming when you maybe are an optimistic person in certain frameworks. It's very important for me to approach health care with a neutral-to-negative outlook because if I think positively about it, I know I'll get burned. That's how they burn you by coaxing you to put your totally undeserved trust in those butchers. Best thing is to look at it at a very practical level and ascertain beforehand exactly what will happen in a procedure of any kind.

A good way of dealing with addiction is to focus the mind on the negative experiences that resulted from that, rather than the quick highs. That should get you thinking outside the box of pleasure and into thoughts about the suffering caused by it. It's when you can't or won't see the suffering caused by an addiction that you are doomed to go that way again.

[Angel Ramirez]

You don't enjoy suffering itself, but you enjoy the flux of emotions. Without the cyclical change from suffering to happiness you'd be bored shitless

This makes sense. Thanks for spelling it out for me.

Memory is a bitch because it has inbuilt mechanisms for forgetting past suffering, for only remembering the good times.

To be honest, I don't remember ever being happy. I remember times of depression and embarrass myself.