djs: Greg, sorry for the delay in responding to you. Recent events combined with your remarks led me to take some time off to think.
Greg: I am glad to see that you are discussing Suffering. You stated:
"your suffering is no more important than that of another"
djs: Greg, the concept being discussed Aug. 12, 2006 blog addressed the issue of suffering relative to the whole, relative to collective consciousness. Collective consciousness is the whole ‘within’ which you and I, all discrete entities of consciousness, exist.
The idea of existing within collective consciousness is a simple idea, is straight forward and speaks to a different understanding of reality than the West presently embraces. The idea becomes crystal clear within the Western thinking when one asks the question: Where is the physical universe within which we exist?
Upon adding the symbiotic panentheistic understanding of ‘nothingness’ and the Western concepts of the primal atom exploding into our present physical universe, symmetry, discrete, non-discrete, the idea of collective consciousness begins to cause the Western concept of reality to overlap the Eastern concept of reality.
What does all this have to do with suffering? The net result of suffering, in terms of the West, is understood to apply to individual consciousness.
The net result of suffering, in terms of the East is understood to apply to collective consciousness.
Unfortunately for society, Eastern and Western societies think in terms of either/or as opposed to ‘and’. If society would step back and reevaluate its thinking, society might realize this is an ‘and’ situation.
As such suffering becomes a case of: The net result of suffering applies both to individual consciousness and to collective consciousness.
The result using the ‘and’ conjunction verses the ‘either/or’ conjunctions is an understanding that we reduce suffering both to alleviate our personal suffering as well as to reduce the suffering introduced into the collective consciousness separated from us by the physical universe and the same collective consciousness within in which we will be immersed upon leaving the physical universe.
Regarding the rest of you comments:
Greg: Please give me your ideas on the relative importance of the suffering of:
the rich/powerful vs the poor
men vs women
humans vs animals
all animals with central nervious systems (including humans) vs plant and other forms of life
Greg
djs: I will address each of these issues over the next few consecutive days.