Suffering
SUFFERING. Suffering may be defined as the experience of organisms in situations that involve physical and mental pain, usually attended by a sense of loss, frustration, and vulnerability to adverse effects. As a fact of sentient life, pain is a phenomenon concomitant to existence itself and yet, on the human level at least, it is one that is inextricably linked with the sense of one's individuality. As such, pain can only be defined subjectively, and because of its implications for the survival of the individual, the experience of pain often provokes questions about the meaning of life itself.
The effort to understand the meaning of pain is natural, as is the human attempt to mediate painful experiences through recourse to secular or religious symbol systems. A major reason for the enormous influence of science and technology and the esteem in which they are currently held lies in their success in giving human beings power, or the illusion of power, over forces that adversely affect them. However, while science, technology, and social institutions have done much to alleviate suffering, these means, even at their most beneficent, can eliminate only some aspects of pain, but not all.
Thus suffering, more than any other fact of human life, raises the philosophical questions that religion is customarily called upon to answer.
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