How to deal with endless misery and suffering?

It’s a hard path, but one option is to follow Gautama Buddha’s lead and confront the truth head on: life is suffering. Through mindful meditation on the present moment, he accessed what he called “the deathless,” the insight that everyone suffers, and the soul lives on, and the way to understanding is through compassion for everyone’s suffering. The Christian path is not necessarily easier or all that different: know that your soul lives on through love.

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.