(This is Part 8 of a series. Go back to Part 7.)
I realized that it's the unhappiness that actually makes these comedies and others funny. Everybody can be disgruntled or just one person can be, but if everybody's happy there is no comedy.
Similarly, without conflict there is no drama. Without "hot" and "cold" there is no variation of temperature and thus no life. Without "left" and "right" and "up" and "down" there is no movement and thus no change. Without "light" and "dark" there could be no stars burning in the emptiness of space. Without "defeat" there could be no "victory" either.
Dualities make everything in existence possible.
"Light" and "darkness," "joy" and "suffering," "gladness" and "anger," "up" and "down," "beautiful" and "ugly," "left" and "right," "out-breath" and "in-breath" and on and on—existence cannot exist without its dualities.
It should be mentioned that these dualities do not actually exist in reality, but rather, in the human mind (or the mind of other sentient beings). Reality is simply what it is; It's the mind that comes along and begins to label things—"hot" and "cold," "east" and "west," etc.
What we call dualities are absolutely essential to reality, but they exist as dualities in our mind only. Reality itself is always One—the One energy, the One existence, the One essence, the One.
The human mind sometimes thinks that reality would be so much better if we could just lop off the bottom half of it, the "negativity," and just retain the top part, the "positivity"—but it's not possible. In order to eliminate what we call "negativity" from existence we'd have to eliminate existence itself.
Because dualities exist as pairs, we could go further and say that each half makes the other half possible. "Down" makes "up" possible, "defeat" makes "victory" possible, "darkness" makes "light" possible, "ugly" makes "beautiful" possible, "hatred" makes "love" possible.
So the answer I finally got to my question about suffering could be put approximately this way:
"Suffering" exists because without it "joy" could not exist, and neither could reality itself.
The choice is not between "positivity" and "negativity," between "light" and "dark," but rather, between existence and non-existence. For existence to exist at all, all of it is necessary—including all of the things that we reject and call "negative."
Thus, why do "negativity" and "defeat" and "pain" and "darkness" and "suffering" exist? Because they are part-and-parcel of the supreme compassion of reality, that gives itself an existence in which "you" and "I" can exist.
Why do "dragons" and "darkness" exist? Because they're part-and-parcel of Reality's majestic grace—a window into Reality's divine perfection.
(This is the end of Part 8. Go to Part 9.)
—jim sloman, 8.11.03 for 4.2.04
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