September 08, 2018 Saturday
Bedtime Story
On Suffering or 'Dukkha'
I request you not to mistake this Passion
for the common understanding of the word for this specific one with a capital
‘P’ is derived from Latin word passionem which means “suffering”.
Suffering as you know plays a critical role
in many religions and in my opinion vital to their existence and promulgation.
In truth, the entire episode of Passion is
about suffering of one specific person (which then can be generalized to others
since the rational is that if the son of God can be made to suffer and be
abused to such extreme then there remains little to spare us from the same
fate).
Other religions are more generalized with
Hinduism blaming the suffering directly on one’s actions (karma) thereby
perhaps giving an incentive to lead a better life (which often doesn’t work).
The entire religion of Buddhism originated
out of a suffering of one person from a Royal family with its Four Noble Truths
based on ‘dukkha’ which is nothing but suffering.
To put it in a wider perspective ‘dukkha’
can even be referred to the fundamental unsatisfactoriness and painfulness of
mundane life.
This word ‘dukkha’ is also found in certain
scriptures of Hinduism such as Upanishads.
An English-American poet Wystan Hugh Auden
on seeing the painting ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ (1560s) by Pieter
Bruegel the Elder (or perhaps his unknown predecessor) the great Renaissance
painter, wrote in his poem titled ‘Musée des Beaus Arts’ the following lines:
‘About suffering they were never wrong
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window
or just walking dully along;”
Islam’s idea of suffering is the simplest;
that it is Allah’s will and serves as a test of faith (Allah never asks more
than that can be endured).
Strangely enough, though not mentioned in
other religions, this Islam’s idea of suffering is fairly widely accepted by
most religious people of all hue and color (sans Allah of course).
And yet, it is the biology and neuroscience
that gives the most satisfactory answer and perhaps even a way of reconciling
with the mental and physical sufferings that accompanies birth and life, that
their role evolutionarily through natural selection is primordial.
The origins of suffering in the nervous
system lies in its ability as a warning mechanism against threats, as a coping
mechanism to devise a plan of fight, flight or escapism and as an adaptive
mechanism by reinforcing certain behaviors negatively via punishment or
developing aversion.
Contrary to the intuition, it is the
experience of suffering rather than pleasurable moments that is responsible for
generating the ‘meaning’ in an ape’s psyche and his world.
Fascinating isn’t it?
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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