Where there is perfection and unity, there can be no suffering.
The capacity to suffer arises where there is imperfection, disunity and separation from an embracing totality. . . . For the individual who achieves unity within his own organism and union with the divine Ground, there is an end of suffering. The goal of creation is the return of all sentient beings out of separateness and that infatuating urge-to-separateness which results in suffering, through unitive knowledge into the wholeness of eternal Reality.
(Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy. New York: Harper and Row, 1944. p. 227)
Joseph Campbell said, “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of life,” recognizing that life contains hardship and an individual should embrace the experience of being alive by living affirmatively in the face of inevitable sorrow and suffering. Buddhist teaching calls for "joyful participation in the sorrows of the world."
