Skip to main content

Coping with Suffering

Presenting my new book

 The corona-virus disease made me think about human suffering. This book is the result.
The following extract from the introductory chapter will give you an idea what the book is like.

Extract:

Life is a constant struggle. It is a struggle against many odds such as the vagaries of nature, threats to health, manmade evils, and an endless list of other things that appear from nowhere. There is no escape from suffering. To be human is to suffer, to endure. This is the first thing we need to accept if we wish to understand life and be as happy as we possibly could.
Even religions teach us the necessity of suffering while believing in omnipotent deities who should theoretically be able to remove suffering from life. The quintessential symbol of Christianity, the cross, is a symbol of suffering. In Christianity, salvation is possible only when the believer is ready to carry out within himself Christ’s destiny of suffering, death, and resurrection. Life is defined as suffering in Buddhism. Since we are not angels and we do not live in Heaven, suffering is inevitable, teaches Islam. We will take a detailed look at this in chapter 4.
Hinduism also gives due importance to suffering. Suffering, both mental and physical, is part of the unfolding of one’s karma. You suffer the consequences of your action. The action might have been committed in a previous birth. Suffering is part of life until you liberate yourself from the physical body and merge into the eternal spirit. Chapter 2 takes a closer look at karma.
In spite of its quintessential optimism and cheerfulness, Islam too accepts the inevitable role of suffering in life. Chapter 3 takes a look at that.
While discussing the views of religion on suffering, Buddhism should take the first place because the Buddha defined life as suffering. He also offered practical suggestions on how we can handle suffering. Chapter 5 is dedicated to the Buddha and his teachings. 
Great thinkers and writers have also taught us about the inevitability of suffering in life. As ancient Persian poet Rumi put it elegantly, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” Suffering can lead us to wisdom, in other words. But we have to make ourselves amenable to the lessons that suffering offers.  Chapters 6 and 7 take a philosophical view of suffering, while chapter 9 brings literature into the survey.
Psychology offers us very practical suggestions and chapter 8 will look at some of the most practical among them.
In spite of all the suffering that is there in our world and in spite of the rising influence of religion and spirituality cults, have we become less sensitive, if not blatantly insensitive, to our fellow beings and the planet we inhabit? The concluding chapter deals with that.
This book looks at suffering from different perspectives, in short. We cannot ignore suffering. The question is how to deal with it effectively. We have much to learn from it too.

One of the greatest lessons that suffering offers is personal strength. Tragedy exposes our vulnerability in an unpredictable world, as Kasley Killam says in his book How to Find Meaning in Suffering. We don’t know what awaits us at the next turn in the journey of life. That makes us highly vulnerable. That vulnerability can make us feel weak or helpless as we move on. On the other hand, dealing successfully with whatever comes at each turn can also make us more confident and tough. We become more ready and willing to meet the unforeseen destiny awaiting us beyond the bend on the uncharted road. We grow stronger as we surmount each obstacle. Every victory enables us to take charge of our lives with greater determination and willpower. Every challenge that is overcome in the past is a treasure which we can bank on while dealing with future challenges. Every victory is another layer of strength added to your personal fortress.
The book is available only at Amazon as ebook. You may order your copy here.  

Comments

  1. DashyJune 8, 2020 at 9:33 PM

    An inevitable part of life. Congratulations on publishing yet another book. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 8, 2020 at 10:24 PM

      Thanks, Darshana.
      Inevitable, undoubtedly. The Buddha was right.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...
11 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 3

Street leading to St Francis Church, Fort Kochi There were Christians in Kerala long before the Brahmins, who came to be known as Namboothiris, landed in the state from North India some time after 6 th century CE. Tradition has it that Thomas, disciple of Jesus, brought Christianity to Kerala in the first century. That is quite possible, given the trade relationships that Kerala had with the Roman Empire in those days. Pliny the Elder, Roman author, chastised in his encyclopaedic work, Natural History (published around 77 CE), the Romans’ greed for pepper from India. He was displeased with his country spending “no less than fifty million sesterces” on a commodity which had no value other than its “certain pungency.” Did Thomas sail on one of the many ships that came to Kerala to purchase “pungency”? Possible.   Even if Thomas did not come, the advent of Christianity in Kerala precedes the arrival of the Namboothiris. The Persians established trade links with Kerala in 4 ...
10 comments
Read more

Five Microtales

1.        Development             Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and many others stood at a distance, along with their families, and watched their huts being pulled down by a bulldozer. They were asked to leave the place where they had been living for decades. “The government has taken over this land for development works,” an officer said. Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and the others spread their bedsheets under a flyover over which flew opulent vehicles of development.   2.        Impersonation             The old woman went to the Women’s Welfare office. She wanted to register herself for the Prime Minister’s monthly welfare scheme for the old and unemployable women. She placed her thumb on the scanner for Aadhar authentication. “Not matching,” the officer said. She was arrested for trying to impersonate. Sitti...
8 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
7 comments
Read more