Religious and shamanic practices across cultures aim to dissolve the suffering subject

Evidence

As best I could understand it, the Buddha’s main thesis was that in a world where everything is constantly changing, we suffer because we cling to things that won’t last. — Dan Harris, 10 percent Happier, 447 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

It was in the context of an emerging discipline of comparative religion that anthropology developed a transcendent notion of the sacred. An interesting version of this is to be found in the work of R. R. Marett, who proposed that ritual should be regarded as having the function of regulating emotions, especially in critical situations of life, an idea that enabled him to offer a well-known anthropological definition of the sacraments: “For anthropological purposes,” he wrote, “let us define a sacrament as any rite of which the specific object is to consecrate or make sacred. More explicitly, this means any rite which by way of sanction or positive blessing invests a natural function with a supernatural authority of its own.” — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 150 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Ritual suffering lets participants extend themselves as subjects; Ritual emerged in comparative religion as a technology for regulating emotions in life crises — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 150; Suffering arises from clinging to impermanent things. — Dan Harris, 10 percent Happier, 447 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Suffering arises from clinging to impermanent things. #corroborates (0.82) — Dan Harris, 10 percent Happier, 447
• Ritual suffering lets participants extend themselves as subjects #contradicts (0.78)
• Ritual emerged in comparative religion as a technology for regulating emotions in life crises #expands (0.72) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 150
• Christianity uniquely revalued suffering as valuable where antiquity did not #qualifies (0.71)