Initially published online last Thanksgiving (November 17, 2025), this essay has been edited slightly for clarity and typos. The original still exists somewhere on my Reddit profile. If you are a new reader of this website, I’d suggest starting with some of my earlier entries or approach this piece with some foundational knowledge of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths… but I do my best to cover a lot of ground with this one. Not as succinct as my earlier work, but I think it’s good enough to keep posted.
The difference between pain and suffering is, at its simplest, that pain is inevitable, and suffering is optional. Pain is a common-ground experience we share with all other humans and countless other living creatures. Our mental reactions to pain — defense mechanisms of the ego — are the source of suffering. This suffering is the trap of endless cycles of rebirth, an existence in which we always live at the mercy of fear, consumed by our attempts to avoid immediate pain and chase temporary pleasure.
While suffering is an entirely mental phenomenon, as it is reactive and inventive, pain is a product of the nervous system, an intricate series of electrical and chemical reactions that serve as a survival mechanism: a natural, autonomic, unavoidable reminder of our mortality. What often prevents us from attaining greater spiritual understanding is the destructive power of grief, a state of suffering so severe it affects the physical composition of the brain and body, thus blurring the line between pain and suffering for even the most practiced among us.
Although it is still an affliction of the mind, and therefore a state that arises from one’s ego like other emotions, grief is the most difficult to be reasoned with, and cannot be easily diminished by the probing psychological questions that we use to “reason” ourselves out of other negative feelings. Whether we are grieving a real death or the loss of something intangible, to let go of our grief often means to choose to simply endure it, just as we must wait for physical pain to wane, even if we undergo treatment for these afflictions. This is the passive dissolution of suffering.
Like all other types of suffering, grief is still rooted in the ego, the ephemeral and false “sense of self” that tries to convince us that we are anything but the emptiness of living potential, a collection of energy, of continuously transitory states, which can seem destabilizing in contrast with all the things that exist in reality that we feel that we need to collect in order to survive.
Therefore, grief should be treated with the same amount of seriousness as we treat bodily wounds: to choose the healing power of self-love, compassion, patience, and the support of others. All of our anger — the most inflammatory form of suffering, as it often leads to hatred — stems from suppressed grief, paired with our unexamined fear of death, which often robs us of agency in the heat of the moment. Because grief transforms us as it passes through us, it feels like an incredibly vulnerable state, and that is what often triggers feelings of fear and anger. But grief must be allowed to exist, to be expressed, and to be healed, and it is our opportunity to face our fear of death as it creeps into our consciousness once again.
While grief seems like an entirely negative aspect of the human experience, it is just another bridge between states of being, and all bridges can be crossed. From the animal that lives exclusively at the mercy of physical pain, to overcoming the mental machinations of needless suffering, to the final “letting go” that heals grief, we then cross into liberation, in which we neither question nor resist nor mourn the agony of the lived experience, as we have fully internalized love and compassion for the experience itself. This is the active dissolution of suffering.
We can also try to overcome our suffering by internalizing the idea that pain as a concept serves to balance this reality, which otherwise consists of love and a greater, eternal Divine Love, but thinking of pain as just a cosmic trade-off may feel like too convenient or unsatisfying of an answer to some. Pain is a teacher, speaking to us through the nerves of our bodies, telling us what death feels like. And initially, we may hate it, but it lends meaning to our mortal lives. A life without pain has no definition at all: it simply does not exist.
Subconsciously, it’s easy to at first understand pain as a punishment, especially when it is inflicted upon us by other humans. This is the way our primate brains are wired: to learn as quickly as possible from negative stimuli, and to internalize the false idea that even the smallest of mistakes are “unforgivable.” However, our survival generally no longer hinges on fixating upon pain or slight missteps in our behavior. Globalization has resulted in tremendous increases to the average human’s lifespan, but the evolutionary structure of our brains has not yet caught up, and afflictions such as anxiety and anger arise even when we’re not in mortal danger.
When we’re in pain, we often make all sorts of judgments — of those who hurt us, but also of ourselves. We create narratives to control or protect our ego, often obsessively, even if it results in self-destruction: of worthiness, of value, and arbitrary social constructs which we learned from others. And so the mind confuses suffering for pain, and attempts to overcome it by dissecting it, thus creating even more suffering. You cannot learn from pain if you wrap yourself in delusions in an attempt to protect your ego. Until we are uncompromisingly honest with ourselves and with others, we run the risk of living lives that are propped up on values we may not even truly hold, but seem convenient and acceptable based on the external social structures we’re familiar with. This, of course, is a subconscious fear that, if unchecked, controls us.
This is how systemic, weaponized suffering remains the driving force behind all horrors of humanity.Most people cannot defend themselves from the influence of “the powers that be” because they’re either just trying to survive or are content with the distraction of endlessly feeding their egos. Everywhere we turn, capitalism and fascism are together preying upon our fear of pain and incapacity to out-think our suffering. When services and products are designed to “save” or thrill you, they depend on your emotional helplessness and malleability.
So pain and suffering remain profitable as invisible villains of the consumerist narrative. Our interpretations of these feelings are hugely influential on our culture and the flow of money and power when death remains the ultimate ruling fear of the living. Almost everything we choose to do, including who we hand power to, can be boiled down to a reaction to that which pains or scares us.
Our aversion to pain and suffering, our fear of death, is what kept us alive as early humans, but cultivating awareness of this trap is what leads us out of the mental prison. Negative emotions will never feed positive ones. So we must look at the feelings we reject and see them as teachers. Accepting pain as a defining characteristic of what it means to be human is what will liberate us: by observing pain without judgment, it cannot manipulate us. In accepting pain, you are free from suffering.
This is how you endure torture. This is how you survive pain that is designed to break your spirit, and in doing so we become strong enough to save ourselves and others. This is the strength that the ruling class does not have, and fears you will achieve.