The Lazy Yogi

It is not that suffering has a purpose; it is that suffering is an indication of something. 

Firstly, let me be clear on the difference between pain and suffering. Pain is being pricked by a needle. Suffering is thinking about the person who pricked you with the needle the following day and feeling rage and confusion about how you should react and punish them. 

Pain only occurs in the present and for the most part it is momentary. Suffering is caused by your thoughts and perceptions about situations past, present, and future. 

When we lose someone we love, feel the sting of failure, or the pang of loneliness, all of these are forms of suffering. We don’t necessarily have to feel that way but we do. Why?

That is the ‘purpose’ of suffering, if you want to use the term. The agony of suffering causes us to sort out our confusion.

Most suffering comes from either resisting inevitable change or from mistaking your identity to be something it isn’t. Therefore the suffering that results is a process we must work through. 

Once you are on the path of emerging from this kind of confusion then suffering becomes less necessary. As a result, you simply suffer less. That is the spiritual path. 

Namaste, pilgrim.