January 2010
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22 Reads
WE shall, I believe, be using the words to mark an important distinction within human experience if we differentiate between pain on the one hand and suffering, misery, or anguish (three terms that I shall use synonymously) on the other. Pain is, as we have seen in the previous chapter, a specific physical sensation.1 Suffering, however, is a mental state which may be as complex as human life itself. The endurance of pain is sometimes, but not always or even usually, an ingredient of suffering.