Suffering is like temperature. You'll understand why I'm making this statement. Ask yourself what suffering is. You won't be able to define it without some concept of happiness or bliss. Suffering is like a spectrum; suffering is like temperature. Don't get me wrong. I'm not meaning this as Batman-Joker kind of way where they create each other. I mean it more like a scale or a seesaw. Less suffering means more bliss and more suffering meas less bliss.

People spend a great deal of their time and life trying to find happiness. Some start chasing things that are supposed to give them happiness and end up being slaves of the object they pursue. Some find money but not happiness. Some find fame but not happiness. Some gain power but not happiness. Lots of people make posts about these kind of things. But I'm going to say screw them. Let's not waste our time talking about the deadly thorns that cover up the elixir. That's just going too low and mainstream for me. Let's say someone gained ll the fame, fortune, power etc and also become really really happy. Let's say this individual got everything that is to be gained.

Let's get abstract and objective

Take a look at history. Take a look at life. There is always the need for more. People are always looking for better and cooler things. The coolest high-tech smartphone of 5 years ago is a total mediocrity today. The average person today lives in far greater luxuries that kings and nobles used to have. For an example did the Kings have A/C or gigantic music libraries or libraries with a million books they carry in a pocket? How about lights? Lamps and candles just look preemptive these days. Even the internet got better and better. We went from taking few seconds to load a picture to be able to stream 4K video and we still haven't had enough.

Why am I taking about these tings? Well think about how individuals would figure out new "Sufferings" for them. When you solve one problem you figure out that there are more things that can be solved like a climber who climb to a top that realize that there are higher tops or a diver who dive into a trench and figure out that there are deeper bottoms. But then again you have things like The Mariana Trench or The Mount Everest.

Taking things even further and The Proof of Absolute Suffering

Let's go for the exception of exceptions. The edge case of edge cases. After all everything that is remembered throughout ages and everything that transform the ages are exceptions. Let's get abstract and mathematical. Let's say there is actually a thing called the highest bliss. Let's say a certain individual reach this hypothetical highest bliss. Now a question:

How is this person going to realize that he/she reached this highest bliss?

See why I mentioned temperature at the beginning of the post. For this person to realize that he/she has conclusively reached the highest bliss, that individual has to face/experience something less than the highest bliss. In relative terms that person has to suffer to realize his/her bliss even though that individuals "Suffering" could be a blissful state beyond imagination for the masses.

This is my proof of absolute suffering. The only other way out is transcendence. Now what's this transcendence I'm talking about? You might have already had the thought "What if that person never face that relative suffering?" If there are no differences, the spectrum disappears. It's going to be a single state with no fluctuations. Without these differences, the seesaw breaks apart and the only proper word I can find o describe this is Equanimity (Upekkhā) and here is a description by Bhikkhu Bodhi:

"As a spiritual virtue, upekkha means stability in the face of the fluctuations of worldly fortune. It is evenness of mind, unshakeable freedom of mind, a state of inner equipoise that cannot be upset by gain and loss, honor and dishonor, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. Upekkha is freedom from all points of self-reference"
"True equanimity is the pinnacle of the four social attitudes that the Buddhist texts call the 'divine abodes': boundless loving-kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and equanimity. The last does not override and negate the preceding three, but perfects and consummates them."

The Buddha described a mind filled with equanimity as "abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill-will." I have only a theoretical understanding at the moment and what I see as Equanimity or this state beyond absolute suffering is not really a state of nothingness. What I see is a transcendence of everything. Freedom is a lack of restrains. Absolute freedom is the absence of restrains. At that point there would be no struggle between control and freedom. Control would have simply ceased to exist.

We have absolute suffering in varying degrees. We can struggle with the degree of suffering or we could attempt to transcend the spectrum. The best part is that we don't have to have reached any extremes of the spectrum to start transcending it. We can start out right from where we are in our daily lives.

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