Is Life Suffering?

Is Life Suffering?

I was walking the dog yesterday with my wife against a freezing cold easterly wind; my eyelids were freezing shut and I was reflecting up my many friends and family members who were having a tough go of it. Perhaps it was the beautiful view of the frozen ground as I trudged that inspired me but this thought suddenly popped into my head:

Perhaps the presumption of happiness is exactly 
why were are so unhappy?
Perhaps, without great effort, life's natural state is suffering 
and only by great effort can we achieve, with the help of others, happiness for ourselves and all other life around us?

This is what happens when you walk dogs in the freezing cold - your mind becomes frozen too! 
Actually, once I got home and thought about it this idea made a lot of sense. It made sense to me as a Franciscan. Why?  To follow the path of any Religious Order is to emphasize daily disciplines that become touchstones to remind you that Heavenly goals, not Earthly material gain, are what we strive for.  Our Rewards are the seven joys of the Spirit: love, joy,peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control rather than fame, power and wealth. Put another way, we are called to be Disciples of Christ, to be like the original 12 Disciples, to share the Good News, share all we have with those less fortunate, and care for ALL of God's kingdom. At the root of  Christ's mission is assumption that we too are Disciples and this means personal Discipline. It is hard not be become angry. It is hard not to blame others for you own fault. It is hard to learn things which are a threat to what you may think is true. It is hard to turn the other cheek.  It is hard to change.  However, to not allow the Holy Spirit to indwell within you to give you the ability to resist these various forms of violence is to sin.

A Scientific perspective says the same thing in a completely different way. Scientists call it the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that:

There is a natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state. 

This process is called Entropy. In Christian terms this process is any act of sin. In other words Order, another word for Discipline, takes energy - it takes Effort to go against Entropy and Sin. Thus all of life is constant struggle against Entropy and when we run out of external energy we can no longer organize ourselves and we die. This happens at the level of a cell, a plant, a horse, a person, a country, a Religion, a Civilization; all these biological and social structures die when they are unable to find enough energy to combat the natural process of Entropy.

Which brings us back to suffering. Suffering can be viewed as the process we endure as Entropy 'runs us down' and disorganizes us. It takes energy and discipline to counter this process. Other religious teachings such as those of the Buddha stated below, share, with a twist, the views stated above, that without Discipline/Energy we are doomed by Sin/Entropy to suffer:

To live without a path of discipline is to suffer, for the minimization of suffering is the sole ethical goal of life.

Once again we see this coupling of a path of discipline, of effort, as THE way to reduce our suffering, and then, as a fortunate side effect, to bring us happiness and then joy! Thus, we can and should expect all beings, to experience happiness as 'normal', but this is only possible if we, individually and as social groups, work hard to do so. This work must follow a path for random work will bring you nowhere but around in circles. May you find a path, a way, a discipline which will give you the energy to resist temptation, to resist the natural downward path of Entropy and  thus help to reduce suffering in our beautiful, but hurting, world.

"Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, it will elude you, but if u turn your attention to other things it will come sit softly on your shoulders." 

Walter the Canada Goose

Walter the Canada Goose

Last Autumn, while on a fishing trip with some Church friends in northern Ontario, I met a goose. This is the true story of this encounter. I first met Walter while swimming on a beautiful day in September at a Fishing Lodge north of Elliot Lake, Ontario.   I was surprised when a lonely Canada goose honked loudly at me and I asked the fishing lodge owner about it. He proceeded to tell me this colourful story. This children’s book is meant to be given away so if you want to download it and print it off Walter & I would be pleased. Now, make yourself comfortable, click on one of these links to let yourself be transported to the wilds of northern Ontario.

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