Pain and suffering are not the same thing. Understanding the difference between them might be the single most useful distinction on this entire path.

This episode moves through what suffering actually is, where it lives, and how the great traditions propose meeting it - starting with Patanjali's precise five-part map of affliction (the kleshas), through the Buddha's First and Second Noble Truths and the concept of secondary suffering, into Tantra's radical alternative of meeting difficulty directly rather than transcending it, and finally into Advaita Vedanta, where suffering is shown to require a sufferer - and where the sufferer, examined closely, turns out to be less solid than it appeared.

Along the way: a genuine, careful treatment of grief as something to be honoured rather than fixed, the classical rope-and-snake analogy, the n ...