Tanha can be mitigated, though. So why wouldn't you try to lower the amount of discomfort one feels?

If you ask what the cause of suffering is, on the one hand you could just list particular things that make people suffer.

But if you want to know why there is suffering to begin with, the question is in a way wrongheaded. Suffering is by nature superfluous, and the notion of causation itself seems to be born out of it, as a response to having to deal with it, in order to attempt some sort of control or power over the way that one suffers.

But if you want to know why there is suffering to begin with — The Great Whatever

I would answer by referring to

If you ask what the cause of suffering is, on the one hand you could just list particular things that make people suffer. — The Great Whatever

What causes suffering is sufficient to explain why it is here. Like you said, much of suffering is unnecessary. Much of it could be avoided.

↪Bitter Crank Tanha can be mitigated, though. So why wouldn't you try to lower the amount of discomfort one feels? — darthbarracuda

"Tanha" isn't familiar enough for me to use confidently. But... pain, suffering, dissatisfaction, thirst, hunger--all those conditions where "things" are out of balance or intensely unpleasant, whether they be transitory or permanent, merely painful or suffering-which-deprives-ones-life-of-meaning, have a physical basis (like physical trauma) or are psychological (like psychosis), SHOULD ALL BE RELIEVED, MITIGATED, REDUCED, STOPPED, CURED, or whatever word seems to fit. I wouldn't think of getting my teeth drilled, or undergo any sort of ghastly dental procedure without local anesthesia being injected first. And I wouldn't want a ghastly, disfiguring, life-and-meaning-depriving cancer to go untended either.

There is a significant worldwide shortage of narcotic pain killers and there is no good reason for this. Poppy growing areas produce enough opium for the various opium-derivitives to be manufactured to meet world wide requirements--at an affordable price. Further, synthetic analgesics like lydocaine (and various other similarly named compounds) are inexpensive.

In 2015 no one anywhere should be required to suffer unendurable pain with no prospect of relief. There are newer pain killers which are effective against difficult pain (which might not be inexpensive yet). Lyrica, Neurontin, and Tegretol (anti seizure drugs), antidepressants, nerve blocks, and biofeedback are all of some benefit to various people.

For suffering caused by existential crises, severe mental illnesses (like bi-polar or schizophrenia) have equivalent but less effective "pain killers" but the main treatment for this kind of suffering is interpersonal -- social support, kindness, psychotherapy (not for a cure, but for better coping), and the like.

However Buddhism like ofher religions is concerned with the ending of suffering altogether, in toto, for keeps. That is the meaning, or one meaning, of Nirvāṇa. Of course it is true that the amelioration of suffering brought about by medical science is enormous. But I think the aim of the spiritual traditions is somewhat higher than that - imperishable bliss, would be one of the traditional designations.

But it's also true that Nirvāṇa has been mythologised, insofar as, for example, in some of the SE Asian monastic orders it is believed that nobody has attained Nirvāṇa for centuries and that the best that can be aspired to is a 'favourable rebirth' in auspicious circumstances. Other schools interpret the idea more subtly - Mahayana Buddhism teaches that Nirvāṇa and samsara are not ultimately separable, although that is something that needs to be interpreted carefully. But in any case, the essential point is that Buddhism presents its basic truth as 'the cause and the end of suffering', in the broadest possible terms.

But... pain, suffering, dissatisfaction, thirst, hunger--all those conditions where "things" are out of balance or intensely unpleasant, whether they be transitory or permanent — Bitter Crank

This is very Buddhist.

I agree that the physical pain can and should be relieved.

From what I got from your response is that existential pains are contingent upon the mentality of the individual. How much of that mentality requires willful ignorance, if any?

Our first experience in life is being whacked in the fanny. I think pain becomes suffering. We quickly learn to avoid pain, and recognize others experiencing pain, eventually we learn the word 'pain'. I think this hurting physical becomes our major connotation for the word 'suffer'. Pain embodies suffering, both physically and mentally. Without the experience of pain, I doubt the word 'suffer' would mean anything.

I also think that physical pain is something that we try to escape from, we seek to get beyond whatever it is that is causing the pain. This need to escape pain, to transcend pain, becomes our need to go beyond and transcend one set of ideas over another.

We suffer because we're animals with nervous systems.

From what I got from your response is that existential pains are contingent upon the mentality of the individual. How much of that mentality requires willful ignorance, if any? — darthbarracuda

I wouldn't want to rashly impute "willful ignorance" to people who are suffering existentially. The extremely alienated, discouraged, and miserable person probably didn't get there willfully, whether from ignorance or something else. The society of humans can alienate, discourage and immiserate people, and quite often does.

When a beloved person is suffering from terminal and painful disease, their nearest and dearest lovers, relatives, and friends suffer -- not in pain, but from the witness of inexorable pain. Buddha on his death bed is supposed to have said to his disciples, "Decay is inherent to all compounded beings. Therefore, press on with diligence."

I have found that to be both comforting and good advice. But those who mourn at the passing of one they love are not suffering from willful ignorance; they are suffering from grief--an existential condition. That all compounded beings decay (often painfully) and die in pain puts death in perspective but it doesn't reduce grief.

For the person who is dying in pain and knows he is dying, there is suffering not softened by morphine. He also grieves for those he loves, has regrets that can not be acted upon, has wishes unfulfillable, and so on. Perhaps there is the fear (or the hope) of an afterlife, and whatever that might entail.

We suffer because we're animals with nervous systems. — Marchesk

This efficiently summarizes the situation.

And we can transcend suffering because we're not only that.

This is the peculiar inversion of thinking that has happened because of biological materialism. Whereas for the Greeks our distinction was our rational nature - which enables discovery of such things as scientific law - whereas in the Biblical religious man is imageo dei, now we're simply a species, part of nature, doomed like everything else to death and decay, and driven only by the urge to pro-create.

And hey, if that's your 'thing', then welcome to it. Just don't call it 'philosophy'.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/anything-but-human/?_r=0

I think "our distinction" is the opposable thumb and language use. That may make it seem that we are "imageo dei", made in the image of gods. The thumb allows us to be technical beings, achieving a somewhat 'godlike' control of nature and language enables us to conceive of gods. The step to imagining ourselves as such is not so great.

But, really, there is no reason to think we are anything more than "simply a species"; the hubris involved in thinking of ourselves as more than simply (another) species is probably the greatest danger to our (likely) tenuous chances of survival.

Unacceptable as this seems to be to some, we have no reason to suppose that we are not part of nature and "doomed like everything else to death and decay", but to suggest that we are driven solely by "the urge to procreate" exemplifies a terribly pessimistic and narrow view of human life and nature; a view that is closed to vast riches of meaning.

I posted this on the other philosophy forum and reproduce it here because I think it is apposite to the question of the kind of de-meaning influence of certain forms of religious thinking:

For me the absurdity lies in asking for a transcendent meaning to be in the necessarily immanent context of experience. In other words the absurdity consists solely in a deluded human propensity to ask questions of existence which cannot be answered. Contra Camus I don't hold that knowing this should produce an attitude of rebelliously embracing this absurd situation as though it is tragically intrinsic to the human condition but rather of moving beyond it by virtue of realizing that it is absurd, and de-meaningly so.
The meanings of our lives are given by our emotions, not by our thoughts, and the devaluation of these rich meanings derived from our thoughtful passions results from chasing the ridiculous chimera of transcendent meaning.

As Bitter Crank so well expressed it in his earlier post (the one that tells about Marie) suffering comes predominately from having the love, the care and the interest, that is the meaning, sapped out of, or in some other way taken from, our lives; and the futile search for transcendent meaning may be one of the most effective ways of doing just that.

Since Kant it should be obvious that it is thinking that concerns itself with transcendence (of the vertical not the horizontal kind) that is precisely the "thing" that should not be called 'philosophy'.

The thumb allows us to be technical beings, achieving a somewhat 'godlike' control of nature and language enables us to conceive of gods. The step to imagining ourselves as such is not so great.

It is interesting, and instructive, I think, that the publishing house that specialises in publishing a large number of very well-written and argued books against any kind of generally 'spiritual or religious' ideas, is called Prometheus Press. Prometheus was, of course, the figure in Greek mythology who 'stole fire from the Gods', and whose ultimate punishment was very grisly. But here, seeing ourselves as a 'superior species' always reminds me of the Promethean impulse. I think the reason why scientific atheism, and positivism such as that of the Vienna Circle, is so hostile to religion, is because essentially they're putting man, and science, into the place formerly occupied by God.

So, it's basically professional jealousy. Man, the measure of all things, declaring that the Universe is 'devoid of intention' - and why? Because science says so.

there is no reason to think we are anything more than "simply a species"; the hubris involved in thinking of ourselves as more than simply (another) species is probably the greatest danger to our (likely) tenuous chances of survival.

But it's not hubris. It is scientific materialism that is hubristic, and which has brought us to the edge of the abyss. We have devised technology that can destroy the entire planet, without a philosophy that accords any particular value to human life (save what it inherited from Christian humanism.)

Again, the reason for the hostility to 'religion' on the part of materialism, is that 'God' is imagined as some kind of uber-designer. I recall well Eagleton's eviscerating review of The God Delusion:

Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.

This, not some super-manufacturing, is what is traditionally meant by the claim that God is Creator.

The fact of our difference from other animals, is in one sense simply that no other animal thinks 'what am I? Why do I suffer? What is the meaning of my existence?' (although, perhaps some of the higher animals have some inkling.) So the advent of self-consciousness, the ability to make moral judgements, and to ask such questions, is surely one of the distinguishing feature of humans. And that doesn't even require any particularly religious sentiment - it is a matter of empirical fact, that humans have rational and imaginative abilities that are entirely beyond that of animals. I mean, look around you. Look at what you're doing when you reply. It is something no animal could ever do (and bugger the 'millions monkeys!')

I think the motivation to deny this, is part of what Fromm calls 'the fear of freedom'. Part of us realises that our potential as humans might be beyond what we can imagine.

The meanings of our lives are given by our emotions, not by our thoughts, and the devaluation of these rich meanings derived from our thoughtful passions results from chasing the ridiculous chimera of transcendent meaning.

Well emotion is a very flimsly basis for a philosophy. And I'm not in saying that suggesting one should be apathetic, in the ordinary sense - 'apathea' as a classical virtue, was the 'transformation of the passions to wisdom', by realising a state of detachment from the purely personal. Even the stoics, who were no friends of theism, understood that.

WAYFARER: You and Marchesk should definitely NOT get married because you already have irreconcilable differences. You can be friends, but don't move in together because you'll end up killing each other over an unfortunate disagreement about transcendence and materialism.

Either view can lead to absurdities. We end up being machines, in the case of some versions of materialism, and Man created by God to have dominion over all the earth has had difficulty figuring out the downsides of his decision making. He's getting the picture now and it's not good.

Actually I'm Buddhist, and Buddhism doesn't believe in a creator God at all. But the cultural situation of the West is that it is animated by a kind of 'anti-faith' - i.e. a philosophical attitude that is characterised by the rejection of any idea of God. And you see that in many of the things that people simply take for granted - humans are animals, the Universe arose by chance, there is no intrinsic meaning in anything.

But I haven't denied that linguistic capability enables humans to ask questions that animals cannot.

The paradigm that artificially separates reason and emotion is the arch engine of the very notions of 'higher' and 'lower' which lead to the absurd ideas of transcendent meaning and human divinity.

The passions should certainly be rationally understood; some are life-affirming and others life-denying , but no rationality at all is possible without emotion, so the very idea of detached rationality is nonsensical.

I think your 'professional jealousy' idea is way off the mark. It is no accident that science arose in a Judaeo-Christian culture, and the biblical idea of ' in the image of God' is a hangover that we are yet to recover from.

We are not a "superior" species, and a good dose of ecological understanding should cure us of such hubris. Clinging to god(s) will only perpetuate the fantasy even if the god is science, inappropriately understood.

"The West" is going through a long transition, true enough, away from the certainties of 18th century (and earlier) faith and towards a faith with fewer certainties and a better appreciation of the natural world. This isn't entirely new, of course.

"Your West" doesn't include everyone, by a long shot. There is a range of views. Among the disbelievers (who are a minority) materialism is de regueur (and why wouldn't it be?) and among believers there are some who deny evolution and materialism and live in some sort of early 19th century la la land. Most believers, however, in the west find ways of fitting science into the divine scheme of creation.

The West is animated by a kind of anti-faith... Well, there are people who have lost faith in Christianity and haven't picked up another faith; there are a lot of people who did not lose their faith in the first place. There are some who never had any faith to begin with.

I'm not quite sure whether we would put the same people on your list of those who are animated by anti-faith. Not precisely sure of what anti-faith is either -- please detail it a bit more.

This particular sub-dlalogue started around the idea that humans are an animal species. That is what I was responding to. It is true, from the viewpoint of biological sciences, but to then affirm it as a philosophical maxim is another thing altogether.

The paradigm that artificially separates reason and emotion is the arch engine of the very notions of 'higher' and 'lower' which lead to the absurd ideas of transcendent meaning and human divinity. — John

It's a curious thing that I had the exact same debate on the Buddhist forum I post to last week. A poster there also denied that there were 'higher and lower truths'. Actually it caused me to stop posting there for the time being.

I am adamant that there are higher truths. Take as an example, the Platonic epistemology and the various divisions of knowledge (doxa, pistis, dainoia, noesis and so on). I'm not highly skilled in classical or Greek philosophy, but I do believe those distinctions are real and have been generally lost or forgotten in the intervening centuries.

And in any case, we are not continuous with nature, no more so than your pet parrot being actually a raptor on account of it having descended from dinosaurs. As soon as h. sapiens got to the threshold of being able to recognize abstract reason, art, beauty, and so on, he stepped through a threshhold that was at once evolutionary and also existential - and not simply biological, nor something that can be explained biologically.

Because to 'explain' it biologically is always - always - to reduce it to 'what the genome does to survive'. And why does the genome survive? Why, to replicate. To parody Descartes, 'I f***, therefore I am'.

I am not aware of any convincing reasons to think that our current biological accounts would not be philophically adequate. What else could we be thought to be from a philosophical perspective than one type among a whole range of other types of sentient biological organisms.

Apart from the fact that I can't think of any convincing and coherent alternative, a fact which makes any pretense to think otherwise a non-starter, thinking otherwise would be hubristic even if it could be coherent, since the apparently, but I think exaggeratedly, vast differences between us and our closer animal relatives can be explained by linguistic capability and opposable thumbs alone.

I am not aware of any convincing reasons to think that our current biological accounts would not be philophically adequate — John

Of course. I understand many people think that way. I've been debating on Philosophy Forum since 2009, how could I not understand that? And I disagree. Basically I see it as 'biological reductionism' - but it is so widespread and embedded in our culture, that most people just assume it as a kind of 'gospel' (irony alert!)

Have a look at that opinion piece I mentioned a few pages back. The writer is a specialist in Heidegger, he has no particular theistic ax to grind - here it is again:

Anything but Human, Richard Polt
Another good essay along similar lines:
It Ain't Necessarily So: How much do evolutionary stories reveal about the mind? Anthony Gottlieb

Note I said "philophically adequate" not "philosophically adequate"!

Nah, just joking...I meant what I said. But having said it, I should qualify that I of course meant 'philosophically adequate' as an account of our basic nature, and this is not to say that our technical and linguistic natures (which we obviously do not share with other animals) can be reductively and exhaustively understood in biological terms; they must be understood in their own terms, in other words. The human must be understood in terms of the human, and cannot be understood in purely physical terms; but this does not entail that there is anything 'non-physical' or immaterial' going on.

As an analogy this is to say no more than to say something like, for example, that cell anatomy, geology or of course biology itself cannot be reductively and exhaustively understood in terms of quantum physics. But just as the fact that these things cannot be understood in terms of QM does not warrant a conclusion that therefore there must be something more fundamental going at or below the microphysical level than what can be understood in QM terms, so no extra magical or supernatural element need be invoked simply because the perfectly natural technical and linguistic dimensions of our natures produce phenomena which are irreducible to lower level descriptions.

The whole problem, philosophically speaking, with invoking the magical or supernatural is that no coherent philosophical (or any other kind of) account can be given of 'it'. Metaphysics in this mystical sense, as Kant was (probably) the first to point out, remains an exercise in unintelligibility, and so can carry no philosophical weight at all.

Earlier you cited Eagleton who is a Marxist materialist, and Polt, in that essay you cited is not making, or even attempting to make, any supernatural claims. So, it seems to me that you are polemicizing against a faux-position held by a faux opponent, both of which are of your own devising.

The West is animated by a kind of anti-faith... Well, there are people who have lost faith in Christianity and haven't picked up another faith; there are a lot of people who did not lose their faith in the first place. There are some who never had any faith to begin with.

I'm not quite sure whether we would put the same people on your list of those who are animated by anti-faith. Not precisely sure of what anti-faith is either -- please detail it a bit more. — Bitter Crank

When I went to Uni, a mature-age student, late 20's, I was intent on finding out about whatever 'enlightenment' was, pursuant to which I enrolled in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, history and religious studies (i.e. 'comparative religion', not 'divinity'). I formed the view, which I still have, that the phenomenon of spiritual awakening or enlightenment, is a cross-cultural and largely a-historical phenomenon which is depicted in various ways in various cultures. So mine both is and isn't a 'religious view', insofar as I basically regard religions as being means to that end, or different expressions of a philosophia perennis (an attitude which is much more characteristic of India than Europe).

Accordingly I have the most affinity with people like Huston Smith and Bede Griffith and Thomas Merton, to mention a few names - but they're very, very different kinds of people to William Lane Craig or American evangelicals. I am not a church-goer, although through this journey I have come to re-appreciate the 'inner meaning' of Christianity (which I hasten to add, is often startlingly different from its outer manifestations.)

During that period of study I noticed, especially in studying the history of philosophy, what I think Jean-Paul Sarte was referring to by the expression the 'god-shaped hole in the heart' of Western thinking (although at the time I was entirely unable to understand Sartre.) I formed the idea that at the centre of much of the history of Western thinking, is a centuries-long movement away from their religious creeds (notwithstanding the fact that liberalism in the broad sense continues to recognize religious freedom). But I don't think you can deny that a major plank of the European Enlightenment was to essentially try and replace religious and metaphysical ideas with the scientific. And in some respects that is quite a sane thing to do, but in other ways, it isn't. I believe that there are ideas of crucial importance that are part of the Judeo-Christian code, and that aren't amenable to scientific 'explanation'. It should be recalled that Renaissance Humanism (Pico de Mirandola, Erasmus and Ficino) were all deeply religious men, but in very non-conformist ways. And they lost out to (in my view) fanatics like Luther and Calvin. This has happened time and time again in Western thinking; actually many of the most inspiring Catholics were on the fringes of, or actually convicted of, heresy.

Anyway I've gone of on a tangent here, tilting at windmills again, as I am prone to do. But the point is, that out of all of this, 'secularism' has emerged as a kind of faux-religion, the religion of scientism. Now I do know there are many scientists who don't adhere to any such thing at all; but I think it is also fair to say that the default view of the secular intelligentsia, is much nearer to scientific naturalism, to use its genteel name, than any form the philosophia perennis. And that's what I mean by a kind of 'anti-faith'. (I noted in the UK there is an argument that the new nationally-approved curriculum units in study of religion ought to be forced to include units in 'secular values' as an alternative religion.)

The human must be understood in terms of the human, and cannot be understood in purely physical terms; but this does not entail that there is anything 'non-physical' or immaterial' going on. — John

What! Spooks under the bed!

What I think more likely is that we have simply lost the cultural metaphors and tropes within which any idea of 'the spiritual' can be meaningfully discussed. it is true that the attempt to enclose the 'spiritual', however conceived, in the garb of discursive language, is notoriously fraught. Yet, it is a return to that sense of wholeness, a 're-enchantment of the world', that is precisely what is needed as an antidote to the kind of dessicated materialism that insists 'you're just an animal'. The dynamics underlying that attitude have metaphysical roots, and until we learn to discern them they will continue to hold us in thrall. Because, it is an obvious falsehood, as far as I am concerned, and the fact that a great many people cling to it with something approaching religious dogmatism, is, in my view, indicative of a cultural malaise.

Incidentally, I do appreciate and generally admire Kant, and in fact consider myself a neo-Kantian, but bear in mind my introduction to Kant was via a (nowadays often deprecated) book called The Central Philosophy of Buddhism by T R V Murti, an Indian scholar who had a sound grounding in Western philosophy. Buddhism, like Kant, also eschews what is often described as metaphysics - but does so, from a point beyond the merely physical!

"Metaphors and tropes" are one thing (well two things really), which, like poetry may evoke 'numinous' feelings in those that have not 'lost the feel', but assertions (in the propositional sense) of the existence of god(s) are, in my view inherently incoherent, because we literally do not know what we are talking about or thinking when we make, or 'believe', such assertions.

Any "re-enchantment of the world" comes about through poetic feeling not through propositional belief. so I am not sure what you are trying to argue for here. Materialists do not commonly say "you are just an animal" unless they are incredibly stupid. We obviously have attributes which are not shared (to any obvious degree) by the other animals. I actually don't know anyone who thinks that we are 'merely animals', so I struggle to understand how you have persisted for so long in bashing this absurd straw man version of materialism.

What is the "point beyond the physical" that Buddhism eschews metaphysics from? Our feelings and thoughts cannot be meaningfully reduced to descriptions in physical terms, as though they were objects; to attempt that would be to commit a category error. But this fact does not entail that there is any "point beyond the physical"; I think that to think so is to commit another kind of category error; both being instances of a "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" to echo Whitehead. One of those kinds of instances is an inversion of the other; both are errors of dualistic thinking.

this fact does not entail that there is any "point beyond the physical": — John

So, do you yourself think there is anything that is not physical?

I don't know what it could mean to say that there is something that is not physical; for me such a statement could have literally no sense.

That doesn't mean I think we are nothing but chemical robots or whatever; to say that would be to betray a hangover of Newtonian style mechanistic thinking.

It's hard to disentangle the various influences within a culture. Some aspects of the current "culture wars" are a result of people trying to "dis-entangulate" the mess. Quite a few cultures around the world have been severely hammered by scientific developments, industrialism, capitalism, fascism, communism, wars, and so on. The 20th Century was carpet bombed by all this stuff, but the whole process of working out the relationship between classical faith and the enlightenment has been pretty rough (from a long term perspective).

A convenient metric for our time is the hemorrhage of Christians from the formal church in the 1960s--and ever since--50 years of departures which have not returned. But one has to ask what exactly happened. Was it rejection, boredom, or searching that lead to the departures? Take the most serious of believers -- the professed religious nuns and monks of the Roman Catholic Church: They left the orders in droves -- presumably not for casual or trivial reasons. Were they seeking more authenticity, or were they just fed up with rigidity? Both? More besides? What?

My guess is that many of the people who left their catholic and protestant churches did so because what they were hearing from the pulpit, what they were doing during the service, the kind of social life the church provided, and the way church teachings meshed with contemporary social problems no longer matched the realities of their lives.

The growing denominations -- the evangelicals and fundamentalists -- are sometimes a sensitive response and frequently a crude reaction to modernity. The fundamentalists, especially, have taken up positions which are at odds with modernity of course, but also at odds with much of mainstream traditional Christianity.

My personal view is this: Most people today--having sustained a lifetime of hammering from advertising, mass media, low grade education, less-than-subtle approaches to human psychology, shit hole experiences of employment, steady declines of purchasing power and income, growing wealth disparities (and the good things that wealth can buy)--are just plain bewildered by what all is happening to and around them.

that was the point I was making when I said that culturally we don't know how to think about it any more. Notice this very point is made in your response - first you admit that you don't know how to conceive of anything beyond the physical, but then straight away acknowledge the shortcomings of physicalism. That dilemma is not peculiar to you, it is characteristic of our cultural milieu. All I can say is, there are ways to see beyond the physical but it requires a cognitive shift, an engagement with a different way of being, which is what I have been exploring through Buddhist meditation. But I think this general point was understood in Platonism and indeed many of the classical traditions but is an understanding that has been lost in the modern period.

Very eloquent post BC. That is exactly the kind of confusion that the New Age - what used to be called the 'counterculture' - was determined to break out of. When I set out on that path, the last thing I thought it would be was any kind of religion - religion was part of the problem, I thought. But there is that line from Elliott, that after a long journey 'we arrive where we started to know the place for the first time'. That is something like what happened to me (although the prospects of returning to any kind of ol'time religion are about zero, I think. But if you have leisure time, I recommend you google an essay called Cults and Cosmic Conciousness by Camille Paglia. It's out there in pdf, a very long essay, but well worth the effort of reading from a social history perspective.)

As you note, fundamentalism is one of the reactions to modernity (and consequently very much part of modernity although longing for some mythical past). It is one of the reactions to the 'shock of the new', the fact that the world is changing more quickly than ever before. 'there's too much confusion; I can't get no relief'. So we have to find a way to cut through.

I acknowledge the limitations of all 'levels' of explanation, whether purely physical (in the sense of 'physics'), chemical, geological, biological, when it comes to levels 'above' (emergent from) them.

All explanations are given in material terms, including subjective explanations of experience, whether they be accounts of emotion, desire, aspiration or whatever.

There is not the kind of confusion or dilemma in this situation that you seem to be tendentiously seeking to impute to it.

As to meditation; I have practiced that for more than forty years, on and off, but consistently for periods of up to ten years. Sure, it is "a different way of being", as is practicing martial arts, painting, carpentry, stone masonry, writing poetry, playing music, doing science or philosophy, or in fact any activity at all. The idea that meditation can put you in touch with a 'wisdom of the ages' is pure romantic fantasy, in my view. What will such wisdom do for you, in the end? You will still die just like all other other organisms do. And even if there were an 'afterlife' there is no reason to think that it would be reliant for its existence on whether or not you had meditated; as in Gurdjieff's ridiculous notion of "growing a soul" or whatever. I like some aspects of Buddhism, but karma and rebirth make absolutely no rational sense to me.

I have no issue with religious faith of whatever kind, provided it is not fundamentalist, in other words provided that it is acknowledged as being simply faith (that it is purely affective and not propositional) and no more. Of course usually, and sadly, that is not enough for people; and we all know what the consequences are.

Anyway, none of this mystical stuff, however moving it might be, has anything to do with philosophy; being ineffable it simply can have no application.

I have no issue with religious faith of whatever kind, provided it is not fundamentalist, in other words provided that it is acknowledged as being simply faith (that it is purely affective and not propositional) and no more. Of course usually, and sadly, that is not enough for people; and we all know what the consequences are.

Anyway, none of this mystical stuff, however moving it might be, has anything to do with philosophy; being ineffable it simply can have no application. — John

And yet (I hope you'll all pardon me for jumping in) if we go back to the point of this thread, the meaning of human suffering, its causes and if any its solutions, it does seem to me - a downright atheist - that many religions and many religious people have a good stab at confronting this sort of question. Indeed it's somewhat in the nature of religion to grapple with the nature and meaning of suffering. So it seems to me that religion, notably religious experience, has 'application' to this sort of question in a way that, say, referring to our place in the evolutionary scheme of things offers no help or insight. We must go on. Fail better. Bleakness. A regime of feel-better pills.

I think there is also an honourable tradition of mysticism from William James onwards which doesn't demand transcendence or belief in divine beings. I don't personally sympathise with telling religion to get back in its box labelled Faith; people with religion have often thought more clearly about their intellectual commitments than the non-religious, and my version of liberalism works with those of all creeds and none. People who believe they have been granted unique insight into the rational by virtue of their atheism and superior intellect have, in my experience, been as intolerant and frustrating to work with as 'fundamentalists'.

Not that I'm thinking of becoming religious any time soon! To me mutuality in kindness, through societies and groups of people, can provide a similar sort of community to the one a religious person might find.

I don't know what it could mean to say that there is something that is not physical; for me such a statement could have literally no sense.

That doesn't mean I think we are nothing but chemical robots or whatever; to say that would be to betray a hangover of Newtonian style mechanistic thinking. — John

Indeed, I think much of what concerns non-material/non-real has to do with two fundamental topics:
1) Philosophy of Mind- how is it that the biology and neuroscience and the building blocks of explanation that are its foundation (chemistry, physics, etc.) explain interiority of the phenomenon it explains. What its like to be a network of neurons is different than the network of neurons. [Note: The same can be said of any naturally occurring process]. This may lead to panpsychism or it may lead to eliminative materialism, functionalism, emergentism or some variation of these four. Eliminative materialists have to account for the "illusion" of the interiority, functionalism and emergentism have to explain how it is that interiority exists when certain things combine a certain way. Additionally, emergentism has to answer how it is that material can have interiority from non-interiority. It would seem a category error to say material emerges into interior subjective states unlike many material things that build into other material things. Panpsychism has no real physical object or phenomena to point to other than the assertion that the other pole of matter/energy is interiority so their empirical toolkit is limited.

2) Metaphysics of the Whole and Aesthetics of Metaphysics- This is my own term, but by this I mean that metaphysically, the world may be monistic at its essence or it may be pluralistic without any connecting principle. An example of this might be Schopenhauer's will- which has a metaphysics whereby existence is ultimately Will and thus everything has a connection via Will. An example where it is pluralistic is any metaphysics without a connecting principle. In this case the world is absurdly nihlistic in the literal sense. Though laws of nature and processes follow patterns, it has no connection on a level other than necessary patterns of nature interacting with each other in contingent ways. The aesthetics of these kind of metaphysics can give a sort of meaning to the observer. For example, a groundless metaphysics composed of necessary patterns interacting in contingent ways brings about the idea of the Absurd as there is no points of "real" connection with everything else. A metaphysics with a ground might have more of an aesthetics of connectedness or completeness. There may even be an inbuilt purpose or meaning in this type of aesthetic.