Innocent People, why do they suffer?

  • School: Central Arizona College, AZ
  • Course: PHI 101
Why do innocent people suffer? It is a question that all human being have asked either once in their life time or at multiple times. Innocent people suffer while the sinners succeed. We mention this question when it seems that innocent people suffer from a death or when they lose all that they have worked for. While people that do not seem to care with what happens, get what they do not deserve.

“Who knows why heaven dislikes what is dislikes? Even the sage considers it a difficult question.” Lau-Tzu (Archetypes of Wisdom, p. 45). As Lau-Tzu clearly states not even the high sage knows why heaven dislikes what it dislikes. This is a question that no one can answer, except for God. We have thought that if we do good it will please Him and I doing so will provide us with good surroundings. Knowing this makes us happy and when something bad happens we are already screaming at the heavens, “Why me!?” We do not and most likely will not know why this happens to us.

Buddha was a great philosopher that his basic teachings were based on The Four Noble Truths: 1. No one can deny that suffering is the condition of all existence. 2. Suffering and general dissatisfaction come to human beings because they are possessive, greedy, and above all, self-centered. 3. Egocentrism, possessiveness, and greed can, however, be understood, overcome, rooted out. 4. This rooting out, this vanquishing, can be brought about by following a simple, reasonable Eightfold Path of behavior in thought, word and deed. Change of the viewpoint will manifest itself in a new outlook and new patterns of behavior. To put it into a nutshell, he taught that we suffer because of ourselves. An example is if I saw my sister getting more attention from our parents and all I could think about was wanting that same attention for myself. In that example I am putting myself through suffering since I was wishing the attention is on me and not her. “By one’s self evil is done, by one’s self one is...
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