I think you’re right about all the claims of fact. The Buddha won’t suffer when he feels pain. But unenlightened beings, which is all the rest of us, particularly animals, will.
So taking pain as a proxy for suffering is pretty reasonable for thinking about how to reduce suffering. Equating suffering to pain is not, since there are lots of psychological effects that cause suffering in the absence of pain.
A really sophisticated analysis will guess how much suffering this particular pain cuases, but it is pretty fair to guess that on average, the suffering is pretty close to proportional to the pain. You think something with the semantics of roughly “wow I wish this weren’t happening and I could find a way to stop it. This is horrible.”. This is suffering. You probably tend to think this with intensity and frequency driven by the pain provoking this thought.
I’ve thought about this a fair bit, and have studied both buddhism and the brain mechanisms underlying pain and suffering.
I think you’re right about all the claims of fact. The Buddha won’t suffer when he feels pain. But unenlightened beings, which is all the rest of us, particularly animals, will.
But the example of the Buddha goes to show that humans have the capacity to not suffer even in painful circumstances, even if right now they do. It’s not like “unenlightenment” is something you’re forever resigned to.
So taking pain as a proxy for suffering is pretty reasonable for thinking about how to reduce suffering
I agree that in most cases where someone suffers in the presence of extreme pain, they’re likely to suffer noticeably less if that pain is alleviated, but I don’t think this means “the best way to alleviate suffering is to reduce pain as a proxy for it,” since what’s actually causing the suffering is not the pain but the aversion to it.
I think you’re right about all the claims of fact. The Buddha won’t suffer when he feels pain. But unenlightened beings, which is all the rest of us, particularly animals, will.
So taking pain as a proxy for suffering is pretty reasonable for thinking about how to reduce suffering. Equating suffering to pain is not, since there are lots of psychological effects that cause suffering in the absence of pain.
A really sophisticated analysis will guess how much suffering this particular pain cuases, but it is pretty fair to guess that on average, the suffering is pretty close to proportional to the pain. You think something with the semantics of roughly “wow I wish this weren’t happening and I could find a way to stop it. This is horrible.”. This is suffering. You probably tend to think this with intensity and frequency driven by the pain provoking this thought.
I’ve thought about this a fair bit, and have studied both buddhism and the brain mechanisms underlying pain and suffering.
But the example of the Buddha goes to show that humans have the capacity to not suffer even in painful circumstances, even if right now they do. It’s not like “unenlightenment” is something you’re forever resigned to.
I agree that in most cases where someone suffers in the presence of extreme pain, they’re likely to suffer noticeably less if that pain is alleviated, but I don’t think this means “the best way to alleviate suffering is to reduce pain as a proxy for it,” since what’s actually causing the suffering is not the pain but the aversion to it.