Satya Vrat Shastri
Suffering: How Indian Thinkers Look at It

Suffering begins with the very birth of man. The Mother undergoes it in bringing life out in the open. Indian thinkers, therefore, have been at pains to think of the way/s to eliminate birth itself.
Suffering can be divided into three, physical, mental and intellectual. There are a number of words in Sanskrit for suffering: duhkha, adhi, arti, pida, vyatha, visada, avasada, kastal, klesa and so on which express one or the other type or both.
The impact of suffering is felt differently by different individuals. What is suffering to one may not be suffering to another. There are two types of suffering, one, over which one has no control, like the suffering caused by floods, typhoons, earthquake and famine, the other, which one invites on oneself either for the purpose of the fulfilment of a wish or for purposes of self-purification and spiritual upliftment. To Indian thinkers the impact of suffering can be eliminated or mitigated through certain means like visit to holy places, engaging in acts of charity, wearing stones to offset the evil effect of certain planets or by wearing amulets or by reciting certain Mantras. Suffering to Indian thinkers is limited to the senses only, the tiny Sanskrit word for suffering duhkha, a combination of two components, dus meaning bad and kha meaning senses, epitomizing it. The soul remains, according to them totally immune to it. It is only when we through our mistaken notion identify the body with the soul that suffering arises. Almost all the thinkers therefore have advised detachment, the elimination of the desire or the longing as the means for the removal of suffering. This can be achieved by different ways: by either Bhakti, devotion and surrender to God or by a hard regimen of control of the body and the mind which would cause elimination of attachment, raga and hostility, dvesa the root cause along with asmita, the sense of belonging of the body to the soul, a product of avidya, wrong knowledge which leads to the transitory being taken as permanent and the impure as pure by the eightfold path of Yoga, the Astangayoga or by realizing the existence of only One Supreme Entity, the Brahman, which has no suffering as per the Advaita Vedanta or by getting over the agreeability or disagreeability of objects as per the Buddhist and Jain doctrines. That is the view of the Indian thinkers which the Address seeks to present in elaborate details.