Is suffering important for you to get some sort of enlightenment?

everyone who goes seriously on the spiritual path must have had an insight about life, as he sees it at this moment is not all there is, there must be something else, there must be something more to life. what is life's purpose, why is birth and death happening and what for does it happen in the way it happens?

people who experienced enlightenment somehow went all, or almost everyone of them, through some suffering. some call it the dark night of the soul, where the yearning to realize god, the eternal principle, to realize the self becomes so strong that life almost becomes unbearable.

there is the realization that "i will die too one day" and then a fear arises, the fear of death, the fear of being no more one day and then what?

the realization that you are unable to control your life, the realization that you are unable to manipulate life, the realization that life is a constant thread of peak and valley experiences, suffering and happiness, pain and pleasure, and it is neither possible to hold on to pleasure, nor is it possible to avoid suffering or push unhappiness away.

and then the realization that you are separate, that the person you take yourself to be is lonely and separate and noone seems to see you as you are, everyone thinks certain things about you but noone sees and loves you as you are, then a deep discontenment, a deep sadness, a dee psychological pain happens, almost unbearable.

some give up in this state and take their lives, and some pray to god, long for god and yearn for union with god, to end this suffering.

the one who can surrender this suffering to the divine, to the eternal principle, the one who truly wants to wake up from the dream of misery, experiences enlightenment, self realization, the mystical marriage.

buddha, a king, gave up his kingdom, gave up his wife, gave up his new born son, because he realized that all this could not give him the freedom, the liberation, the answers to his deepest questions about life. and he went on a journey, starved himself, meditated for hours and months, did all the spiritual practises available only to find that none of this would give him the freedom he was yearning for. and then at a moment where he simply gave up all the search, all the practise, all the effort to liberate himself, he simply sat down under the bodhi tree and truth was revealed, "nirvana", as he calls it. jesus calls it "the kingdom of heaven".

they went through the pain of separation, they went through the suffering of giving up all the worldly pleasures only to realize that that what they were searching for was already here, was what they were searching from, was within themselves, here, now.

then buddha came back to his wife after 12 years and asked her for forgiveness. and she asked him: "was it really necessary to give everything up and walk away, wouldn't it bee possible to find that what you have found now here as well?"

and buddha said: "yes, i could have found it right here, but at that time i did not know that. only after looking for it everywhere without finding it, i found it right here, within myself."

suffering is not necessary. it is only the awareness of being here right now in the present moment and inquiry "who am i?" to come to enlightenment. enlightenment is what you are, there is no need to go anywhere, yo are always here, no matter where you are, so it must be here, right now.

and somehow the suffering, the intense pain is necessary to develop the urge for liberation. only when the need for liberation is there, it happens.

people who are quite content with the ups and downs of life, who manage well, do not have the deep need to realize truth, the eternal principle within every living being, enlightenment.

thank you for this beautiful question and thank you for the wonderful link to the video.

We are too old to know the meaning of life. When we are children, we don't question the meaning behind anything, until we are about 4 and then begin to ask the most human of all questions: why?

It is when we first begin to ask "Why?" that we inherit the human legacy, or the ability to question everything. (Which includes ourselves and the universe we live in.) We as older people do not acheive any true sort of enlightenment, for we always ask the question "Why?" Children are not

I am not touting ignorance, but innocence. We notice that young children are brutally honest and very perceptive of many things, proving they are not ignorant. But they are neither completely aware of the meaning behind what they say, nor have they mastered their own languages yet.

Notice that small children of about 3 are essentially much happier than older children of about 9 or 10. But one might say, the 3-year-old's brain is still developing, whereas the 9 or 10-year-old's is much more intelligent.

And then this brings up the question "Why?" again. Why are they "smarter"? How do we know for sure? Are there obvious differences in their "knowledge levels"?

Human enlightenment is impossible, as enlightenment is not based on knowing things~

It's possible that a clear understanding of 'enlightenment/happiness' can only come about when you also understand the flip side, which is suffering.

It may be that that suffering is not your own, but that you at least understand it through being exposed to it. In this case, the suffering is still important for your understanding of happiness.

In the case of Jesus, it's not known what happened in much of his life. There may have been a lot of suffering there.

In the case of Buddha, he didn't begin his path to enlightenment until he had witnessed suffering.

I think suffering is a part of life. Desires are human nature, even the desire to transmit happiness to others. A byproduct of desire is the potential to suffer from unfulfillment or loss. So you could say that suffering is as much a part of our innate nature as the desires that make us want to improve ourselves.

Suffering is never a justification for any kind of reward. The rewards come from what you do when you encounter suffering, and what you do to try to overcome it, avoid it, and continue to improve yourself?

I agree with the person who said the definition of enlightenment sort of depends on knowing firsthand what suffering is. I don't think you need to have suffered anything extraordinary, though. You just need to at least be normal and suffer the everyday anguish of desire.

I think that Christianist teachings generally emphasize suffering as part of the path, because the mechanism of enlightenment is salvation. The whole Christian scheme of spiritual life relates to opposing forces of pain and love, sin and purity, and their often sexual-violent clash. At the other extreme you've got traditions in which suffering is dismissed outright, and salvation is the default, and the burden is on the seeker to endure and shine his own light on the truth -- which, although it's more accessible and less manipulative, could be kind of a cold view of the world, I imagine, for anyone who is suffering a great deal of anguish from actual severe circumstances. But I believe they're both supposed to be about the same thing (enlightenment / salvation).

Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born from above, this is an actual happening, you do not need to accept it by faith, the truth is if you cannot testify to when , how and what it is like then you have quite simply not been born from above.

We are not exempt from the many trials that the disciples went through, if we where all meant to slip into our lazy boy recliners and slide on into glory then I believe He would have told us that. No, we have examples of being purged in the fire, suffering tribulations and when you are actually walking the way you should, Jesus tells us that we will be hated and rejected in much the same way as He was. I know that the term devil isnt very popular, but you never will bump into him if you are walking in the same direction.

No.

Jesus did not suffer for enlightenment. He suffered because of it and because he was ahead of his time - his enlightenment was not understood in the ethos. Further, while the passion of Christ, may seem like the agony when we view it from a 'human' viewpoint, this is an extraordinary soul we are talking about. When his awareness was in communion with God, the physical pain may have felt simply like a distracting fly on the nose to him. (Of course, they will have you believe otherwise for political reasons, but you already know that.)

Budhha, on the other hand, did not suffer at all. He saw others suffering, which led his to a stream of consciousness. Budhha's search for enlightenment was a calling for him and he couldn't have been more in flow. He saw his life path and followed it - without letting the burden of a kingdom hold him back. Let us not mistake his inheritance of a kingdom with him "enjoying life". Heavy lies the head that wears the crown and Budhha chose the opposite for his life.

Budhha said that we create the world with our thoughts. So if we choose to believe that suffering is a prerequisite for enlightenment, we will manifest the same. If, on the other hand, we choose to believe that enlightenment is the natural course of a human life, flow and grace will manifest themselves.

Remember,

What you resist, persists,

What appears, disappears.

So just go with the flow... and believe you are a deserving child of God. Don't let anyone, Church, family or otherwise, let you believe otherwise.

Suffering seems to be necessary for me to achieve enlightenment. The reason is simple. Enlightenment implies that I have changed my mind about something. If I were already right, why would I change my mind? Therefore it takes mistakes for me to learn from them and correct my path towards enlightenment. Pain is the most common sign of a mistake. It is the "message" that tells me I am on the wrong path. Without the pain I would assume I am on the right path. I have learned that the amount of pain I must suffer is often up to me. The faster I can acknowledge my mistake and correct it the less pain I must endure. Letting go of the anger, guilt, and fear associated with pain is the hardest thing. Learning to forgive myself and others quickly helps me move towards enlightenment with less pain. However, I am still human and I have not yet found a path free of all mistakes and therefore all pain. Does that make sense to you?

Enlightenment is not for sale at the price of suffering. Hinduism considers being born itself as a suffering. Also enlightenment is all or nothing. There are no degrees of it.

As the psalm says, 'Be still and know I am God'. In Hinduism the 'I' that is still merges with God (the universal I) and just IS.

There is no precondition of an individual ego to suffer. When the ego dies the enlightenment happens.

This is I have come to accept.

Walking a spiritual path faithfully alone will implicate some transitional inconveniences which would be considered as a suffering by witnesses.It is a witnesses convinced themselves and others in what they see, not experienced...there is no confessions from Jesus or Buddha speaking of suffering. Those did not mentioned that suffering is the way.

I think so. Who hates flashy cars, prime condos, fat accounts and healthy Life? These are sort of things that makes us content, too content, that nothing else matters including searches of spiritual life. For most, suffering comes in involuntarily when all the niceties in life somehow slip out of hands. In a way, it forces us to look into different direction - the direction that would possibly provide meaning of our current state. In the beginning there's just too many whys. But hey that's just the beginning. We would not have probably realize it but we are slowly turning into spiritual of some sort.

To me, suffering provides more questions than answers. I do not believe that it is necessary in any viable plan. Suffering definitely makes me ponder more, over my own misery as well as over that of other people and beings of any kind. I ask why. I makes me question myself and others. It also causes me to appreciate the times that are free or relatively void of suffering, as well.

I believe that suffering is the outcome of the bad choices of others rather than an absolute necessity in any paln that works in an absolute sense.

I find that your question is rather timely, because another user suggested that intelligence is given in the form of rain, and that every drop of rain that falls on a person is one additional unit of inelligence. I guess I was supposed to have had an umbrella over my head during the rainfall. LOL