strings: What is suffering? A disturbance, isn't it? , at different levels—at the physical and at the different levels of the subconscious. It is an acute form of disturbance which I don't like. My son dead. I have built round him all my hopés— or round my daughter, my husband, what you will. I have enshrined him with all the things I wanted him to be and I have kept him as my companion—you know, all that sort of thing. Suddenly he is gone. So there is a disturbance, isn't there? That disturbance I call suffering.