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Originally Posted by inavalan
Here's a possibility ... If there is no death, then maybe all the killing and eating of other life forms has no significance. It is just a way of exiting this round of life on Earth, that allows passing to the next round with its challenges. Maybe all the suffering sprouts from the human ignorance of what we are and what we're doing here. Our conscious is watching a scene from a comedy where the characters pretend they're hurt, and lacking the context, it thinks it's watching a tragedy.
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Yes, all that is true, yet we can arrange all those same facts around in a different way to get a different perspective on them. There is death, and it is a way of exiting this life, or maybe of allowing this life to exit us. One cannot say there is life unless there is death as well, they create and are necessary to each other. The killing and eating of other life forms has significance in the experience of it during life, as does the experience of being killed and eaten, as do all experiences of life. Perhaps all of our life experiences help to sculpt our souls even if just a bit.
Perhaps our ignorance is not really ignorance, but is just our willing suspension of disbelief, which we do so we can experience life instead of just watching it. Our lives are comedies, dramas, tragedies, and horror, they include moments of all the genres. When I become engrossed in a good book or movie, I become transformed by the story. For I time I become one with that protagonist, I fear their threats, agonize over their tragedies, take satisfaction in their triumphs. When the story ends, regardless of the outcome, I feel a sense of loss, of death, and of awakening to a larger reality. For a time, even though I know it was just a story, I remain notably changed by it, but as the larger story of my life resumes, that change fades back into the background. Yet it never really goes away completely, occasionally something reminds me of it and for a moment I am back there, in that story. I seem to take something with me to keep from each story I experience, whether they be in a book, in a movie, or in life.
Many in the spirituality crowd are quick to point out that life is an illusion. They say not to worry about it, it is not real, you can’t really be hurt or die, and this is all true. For a time I was one of them, and that person still surfaces when life gets particularly hard. However, now I tend to view such folks as the person who keeps talking over the movie and critiquing the characters, plot, or flaws in the science fiction. I know it is an illusion, but it is a real illusion all the same, as real as any illusion I am apt to create to experience. If I allow it to, if for a time I willingly suspend my disbelief, it will transport and transform me just the same.