Our thoughts surely affect our physical experience (and I think vice versa). I think being in the present and not caught in our past experience is not simplistic at all – being able to do this can be a great liberation in my experience.

I hope we are all shining a light on suffering. Many thanks for your comment.

I’m glad we’re helping you. Unfortunately the web and especially blogs focus on words. It’s the nature of the beast I’m afraid.

Please let us know if there is anything you would like to see a post on. Thanks for your comment.

You and everyone in these comments and discussions are really deep people, which is a good thing. I read all of the stuff you post on here and everyone’s comments and I be wanting to comment to say something back, but I can’t put my words together like you all can. I just want to let everybody that wrote a comment in this particular page, and you Evan, that a 21 year old guy from Odessa, Tx who’s had is share of problems is readin and learnin, and I am becoming a better person because of you all.

And I believe there’s a real good spot in heaven for all of those people that are like Norah too, Teresa. Any spot in heaven is good to me though.

The difference between accepting and enjoying suffering is vital – as you suggest. I (and others who have suffered much more than me) have found that it is possible to move to a place of serenity.

In my experience addiction is often about avoiding suffering.

Thanks especially for your thoughts for Norah.

In reality, to live is to endure suffering; how would we know how to fully appreciate pleasure if we never experienced pain. Suffering does provide the opportunity for self exploration and personal growth. Working in the field of chemical dependency there is a great deal of exploration into human suffering and resulting addicitons. In reality it is the attempts to avoid suffering that can create the greatest amount of distress.

That is not to say that I enjoy suffering, but I have learned that if I am willing to accept and bear my burden, I will have a much better chance of finding serenity. Much of my life was spent in a very distressing and seemingly hopeless situation. When I accepted the challege of suffering, but suffering with a purpose, I was able to move forward and use my experience to help others. Many self-help programs spring from that very philosophy.

I do pray for your friend Norah, that kind of physical suffering is difficult to understand. I do believe that there is a very special place in heaven for people such as her.

I guess ‘liberation’ is a difficult term, so I try to talk about joy – elated calmness, and so on. Not sure what ‘bliss’, ‘liberation’ etc specifically refer to in the Buddhist tradition. “Liberation” has the virtue of including the social dimension more easily I think. Maybe my focus is too individualist – partly this is a limitation of this medium I think: individuals reading stuff on their own computer. It may be that I just haven’t thought enough about it. Thanks for your comment.