Worship?

[jafar]

I agree that in the scenario above suffering is optional as the Dalai Lama says. And this can be done in this lifetime by recognizing patterns and triggers.

This is not the kind of suffering I refer to. I am referring to things like starvation and war. And, mostly the suffering humanity inflicts upon other life forms (not because I value humans less but because humans have choice).

One could say that starvation or being maimed or killed from the horrors of war could be traced to some sort of karmic choice. But how do you justify hurting the plant and animal life dropping nuclear bombs, the torture of animal factory farms or the modern horrors of lambs being cruelly slaughtered? How is this choosing suffering from the sufferer's point of view?

Events happened.
Suffering or Not Suffering is how an entity reacted to those event.
In such manner thus Dalai Lama stated his opinion, to suffer is optional because there's always another option that one can choose which is not to suffer.


Now let's take war as a catalytic experience.
Observe how many people love war experience nowadays?
Battlefield, Call Of Duty, Counterstrike just to name a few.
Can you really say that they're suffering from those experiences?

Some might take those experience too seriously and becoming fully immersed in it and they suffered because of it.
There's a term for that, it's called "Gamer Rage".

Now let's take what happened to Mr Lama as an example.
Invaded, Exiled, lost a kingdom, now a refugee in India.

And does he think that he's 'suffering' because of it?
Does he ever hate China or Chinese?
Does he ever rally his people to terrorize China or start an armed struggle and fought for his kingdom?

To suffer or not suffer is always an option that we can choose.
Regardless of the event.

“Altruism is ultimate source of happiness”
-- Dalai Lama