The High Threshold for Pain and Suffering in Traditional Humanity

In Chinese and traditional Chinese medicine, it is said that you should live with any pain for three days and nights and only then consult a physician. — We have apparently seen this in our own hadiths as well — and this was due to attitudes that raised the threshold of human pain and suffering very, very high. That is, people were afflicted with far greater amounts of external, objective pain and suffering, whereas we are afflicted with very small amounts of these objective sources of pain and suffering. For us, it is utterly meaningless to be told to endure pain for three days and then go to a doctor. This is because traditional humanity attributed a meaning to life in which pain and suffering also had their place. Why do you not suffer from the blinking of your eye? Because you say your worldview tells you that the blinking of the eye is a necessity of life. If it is necessary for life and, on the whole, blinking is better than not blinking, then no pain or suffering befalls me. Now suppose someone held the same position regarding a toothache, saying it is good for a person to endure a toothache for two days and nights once every few years and considered this natural and necessary for life; if they considered this necessary for life, then they could tolerate the pain very well. Or, for example, why do you not suffer from sneezing? Because, whether you are aware of it or not, you ultimately think that sneezing is, on the whole, better than not sneezing.

Shankara used to say: "Sometimes when illness does not come to me, I am astonished at myself, wondering what has happened that illness does not seek me out?" For illness is what admonishes us human beings, and I still need admonishment — admonishment not in the sense of chastisement and punishment, but in the sense of a warning — I need a warning. Let me give a simpler example. Have you ever noticed how, when we see a single white hair in the mirror, it sets us on fire? What tricks do we try to either pluck that hair or dye it? Because we have a worldview in which the whiteness of a hair tells us that our death is near, and death, in this worldview, is an obstacle. But Ramanuja, in the Hindu tradition, used to say: When the first hair of mine turned white, I rejoiced, for I saw that, little by little, they are granting me my leave. That worldview is very different from this one. This hair, in external, objective terms, is no different from that hair. What generates pain and suffering in one place and does not in another — indeed, even creates joy — is the worldview of the person who encounters that hair.

One worldview says: We had to endure hardships in this world, and fortunately, it is coming to an end; we are about to go on leave, to the Pure Land, and if four more hairs appear, it means we have drawn ten steps closer, and would that all the hairs of our head would turn white. And the other worldview (the worldview) of modern humanity says: A person comes here for 40 years, and just as they are about to spread out their wares, they are told to pack up. It was only yesterday our beard was just growing in, and now it has turned white; curse upon this, and then dyeing and makeup and this and that and concealment. In reality, what constitutes the source of pain and suffering are subjective or internal factors. Because we do not know the why of our life, and therefore the how of our life is also unbearable. But when we know the why of life, the hows of life also become entirely bearable. Another point is that I must live in such a way as to lessen the pain and suffering of my fellow human beings, yet at the same time I must also know that one of the most important ways of lessening the pain and suffering of fellow human beings is to instill in them a worldview in which the awesomeness and weight of pains and sufferings are diminished. Or, to put it another way, that the sources of pain and suffering do not possess such might, awe, and majesty.

So, the sentimentalism of modernist ethics is a defensible ethics, and it is in principle correct that ethics is based on the idea that we should not inflict pain and suffering on ourselves or others, and that we should try to reduce the pain and suffering that has been inflicted. However, it has this problem: while it contains a correct intention—the intention to reduce pain and suffering—it seems to also contain an incorrect etiology. And because it lacks a correct etiology of pain and suffering, despite wanting to reduce pain and suffering, it proceeds in a way that not only does not reduce human pain and suffering, but actually increases them. Now, is this truly a dead end? That is, can we not reduce our pain and suffering within modernist thought? It appears to be a dead end, unless you preserve some components of modernism and revise others, creating a doctrine that is eclectic; not in its negative sense, of course.

Eclecticism has a negative meaning, which is the combination of incompatible elements, that is, making things compatible that cannot be compatible with each other; such a thing is impossible. But what is wrong with combining components of modernism that are defensible with other components from outside modernism that are also defensible and, at the same time, can be compatible with these components? This is, in fact, what I refer to as the project of integrating rationality and spirituality. Rationality—as the defining component of modernism—must be integrated with spirituality so that even modernism itself can achieve its goals. To put it more logically, modernism is internally afflicted by a paradoxicality and a kind of internal incompatibility. That is, one part of its components does not harmonize with some of its other parts. Naturally, the result has been that modernism is the first worldview that has stated, with the utmost explicitness, that we must reduce pain and suffering, but it is also the first worldview that has, with the utmost clarity, increased human pain and suffering. No worldview before the modernist worldview had ever increased pain and suffering to this extent. At the same time, no worldview had ever so explicitly declared that it has come to reduce this pain and suffering.

I do not want to say that we should reject modernism wholesale, in a blanket, boxed-up, and indiscriminate manner, as is customary in our country today, or accept it wholesale, no. I want to say that, in my opinion, there are many positive aspects to modernism, but we must also be clear-sighted about its negative aspects. When we say modernism has negative points, it does not mean that the path of return is necessarily a return to pre-modernism. Sometimes the path of return might be a return to pre-modernism, and sometimes it might not be; it might be that we move forward and correct the flaws of modernism in a forward-looking, future-oriented direction.

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The High Threshold for Pain and Suffering in Traditional Humanity

Mostafa Malekian, Traditionalism, Modernism, Postmodernism, Session 9

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