Are pain and suffering positive values, to be regarded as opportunities to display virtue and in accordance to the nature of humanity, and is the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure a vice?

I think – in my two months’ study of Buddhism – that pain and suffering just are. They don’t have intrinsic value but are part of the human condition that we have to accept. On the other hand, me believes that knowing that and accepting doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong in avoiding some of it if you can.

Maybe his ideas were suppressed because they are not conducive to the sacrifices that elite classes and the state often demand from people…

Apparently “Pain and suffering” are positive values. Look how much juries are willing to pay to some idiot who spills coffee in their lap and hires their lawyer cousin to sue for pain and suffering.

Pain and suffering, while in themselves Bad, provide opportunities for growth.
How are we defining pain and suffering? What is an acceptable price for pleasure?

Some of the most difficult times in my life helped to give me confidence that I was tough and could survive anything. They also gave me empathy and helped me have compassion for others and made me less judgmental.

I am a firm believer in learning by example, not through adversity.

Starting with the second part, I don’t see the pursuit of pleasure as a vice. I see the pursuit of pleasure as human natue. No one wants to be miserable; unless of course they are wearing their misery as a badge and using it to get attention, in which case to them misery would equate with pleasure.

As for enduring pain and suffering constituting a virtue I don’t think so. Pain and suffering are just part of the reality of existing in this world. The value they offer is in what we learn from the experience. I think some people who experience life’s downs like to spin their response to them In a way that makes them feel heroic and special because it is too painful to believe they are part of life that must simply be endured.

I personally try to avoid pain and suffering and I pursue pleasure. But I think that as @SuperMouse said some people enjoy wallowing in their misery. I guess that saves them the work of trying to avoid!

There’s value in learning how to uncouple your peace of mind from the fluctuations of circumstances. If your well-being is pegged to where you happen to be on the pain/pleasure continuum at a given moment, then suffering enters the picture. You introduce unnecessary anxiety on top of the inevitable swings of the pain/pleasure pendulum. You’re thrilled when pleasure is the flavor of the moment, but that doesn’t last. The slipping away of the pleasure is all the more distressing because your well-being is tied to it. You then have no peace until the pendulum swings back to pleasure, and even then you suffer from the knowledge that it’s only a temporary condition.

There is opportunity in both pain and pleasure to learn this skill of equanimity. In pain, there’s a chance to experience it as just pain, not in itself a threat to peace of mind. In pleasure, there’s a chance to see that it’s not a reliable hitching post for peace of mind. Attentiveness to how this works eventually cuts the link between peace of mind and circumstances. Then pain is just pain and pleasure is just pleasure. Neither is a big deal.

@thorninmud And how long does it take to get to that place of equanimity? I haven’t much time left!

@janbb It doesn’t really take any time at all. Equanimity is a moment-by-moment proposition.

If you think of equanimity as a place you’ve got to get to from wherever you are now, then you’ve effectively made equanimity unattainable. Your current situation is now unacceptable, and a cause for dissatisfaction, and equanimity is some desirable condition that you’ll get to someday. That can’t work.

Equanimity is as simple as stopping struggling against this moment’s pain. See what happens if you just relax into it. Give it permission to play itself out. Let it be ‘just pain’ instead of your mortal enemy. It’ll still hurt, because that’s what pain does, but you’ll discover that this hurting doesn’t keep you from being OK. Treat pleasure the same way by not chasing after it or wishing it were permanent.

Don’t worry about making equanimity your abiding state. Just take it as it comes, moment by moment. That’s how this works.

@josie

In terms of pain/pleasure, I’m with Arthur Schopenhauer here…in that pleasure is a negative sensation because it negates the natural state of need. What is need? The sensation of existing. What is existence? Flux. Why do we constantly need and why are we only ephemerally distracted, satiated, before another need occupies us and the old one begins to build up again? Because we’re resisting entropy. We are an ordering in the disordering because we are trying to maintain ourselves in the Flux.

In terms of suffering, I’m with Friedrich Nietzche on this. In short, the pursuit of pleasure (hedonists), utilitarians, and morality in the pejorative sense (MPS) prevents the development of human excellence. The pursuit of pleasure (hedonists) and utilitarians is an end, not a goal. As Nietzsche puts it, it reduces man to ridiculous and contemptible, to nothing but comfort and fashion. You can read a more detailed explanation here Link Skip to “1.3 Critique of the Normative Component of MPS” for the explanation, but I recommend reading all of it.

I think you mentioned you like working out? Or was it another member? In any case, when you lift weights, you can only grow your muscles if you increase your weight intake. Therefore, you have to stress your body out for a while until you get use to the new weight increase, but now that you’re use to it, your muscles won’t grow anymore, so you have to increase the weights again. However, by increasing the weight, you’re increasing risk of annihilation – the weights may crush you like a watermelon this time around. This is how tou build strenght though, not through comfort, pleasure. See Habituation

Contentment is nothing more than a habituation with a higher level of need, making anything below it unnoticed.

Think of need as a group of vases, under a slow stream. When you relieve it, satiate one, empty one, the gratification is momentary because another catches your eye. As you are emptying it, the one you just emptied is filling up again. There is no satiation, there is only a momentary, sometimes orgasmic, distraction from it.

When you feel full after eating, it doesn’t mean you are with no need. It means you’ve evolved a sack to store nutrients in it, allowing your need to be continuously fed as you sleep, and go about your business. You are never free of need., you are unconscious of it.
Your body is continuously fighting off viruses, and repairing damages and feeding. If the energies available to you suffice, it falls under your consciousness radar. Drugs and alcohol are devices to make you numb to your own condition. Prolonged gratification leads to atrophy, leading to a more pronounced need/suffering.

To Know Thyself is to know what you truly need, and what you can do without.