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The cause of this suffering is attachment to, or craving for worldly pleasures of all kinds and clinging to this very existence, our "self" and the things or people we—due to our delusions—deem the cause of our respective happiness or unhappiness. The suffering ends when the craving and desire ends, or one is freed from all desires by ...
[web 20] [note 17] Melvin E. Spiro further explains that "desire is the cause of suffering because desire is the cause of rebirth." [85] When desire ceases, rebirth and its accompanying suffering ceases. [85] [note 18] Peter Harvey explains: Once birth has arisen, "ageing and death", and various other dukkha states follow.
Thinkers in this tradition emphasize that suffering outweighs pleasure, happiness is fleeting or unattainable, and existence itself does not hold inherent value or an intrinsic purpose. Philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer suggest responses to life's suffering, ranging from artistic contemplation and ascetic withdrawal, while Buddhism ...
Likewise, when we focus on decreasing our level of suffering and pain, once again our orientation will be outward, looking for scientific and technological breakthroughs to relieve our suffering. Human desire for ever-greater happiness seems to be insatiable, and a materialistic worldview strongly supports materialistic values and a way of life ...
Happiness is often imprecisely equated with pleasure. If, for whatever reason, one does equate happiness with pleasure, then the paradox of hedonism arises. When one aims solely towards pleasure itself, one's aim is frustrated. Henry Sidgwick comments on such frustration after a discussion of self-love in the above-mentioned work:
Suffering is the basic element that makes up the negative valence of affective phenomena. The opposite of suffering is pleasure or happiness. Suffering is often categorized as physical [3] or mental. [4] It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and frequency of occurrence usually compound that of ...
Boethius encouraged readers not to pursue worldly goods such as money and power, but to seek internalized virtues. Evil had a purpose, to provide a lesson to help change for good; while suffering from evil was seen as virtuous. Because God ruled the universe through Love, prayer to God and the application of Love would lead to true happiness. [9]
Lewis says that the problem of pain is insoluble if we attach a "trivial meaning to the word ‘love’." God loves His goodness into us and our highest activity is response and not initiation; the love may cause us pain but only because the object needs alteration to become fully lovable.