On the Pedagogy of Suffering: Hermeneutic and Buddhist Meditations (Counterpoints)

This text articulates how and why suffering can be pedagogical in character and how it is often key to authentic and meaningful acts of teaching and learning. This is an ancient idea from the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus (c. 525 BCE) – __pathei mathos__ or «learning through suffering». In our understandable rush to ameliorate suffering at every turn and to consider every instance of it as an error to be avoided at all costs, we explore how the pedagogy that can come from suffering becomes obscured and something vital to a rich and vibrant pedagogy can be lost. This collection threads through education, nursing, psychiatry, ecology, and medicine, through scholarship and intimate breaths, and blends together affinities between hermeneutic conceptions of the cultivation of character and Buddhist meditations on suffering and its locale in our lives. This book will be useful for graduate courses on hermeneutic research in education, educational psychology, counseling, and nursing/medicine. Cover Table of Contents “Just This Once”: An Introduction to the Pedagogy of Suffering (David W. Jardine, Graham McCaffrey, and Christopher Gilham ) Chapter One: “You’re Very Clever Young Man” (David W. Jardine) Prelude I: An Invocation from St. Jerome Prelude II: Two Invocations from Tsong-Kha-Pa What Truth Lies in the Phenomenological Ancestry of Contemporary Hermeneutics? A Brief Pseudo-Psychological/Biographical Speculation “Coming to Grief” End Part Chapter Two: Idiot Compassion (graham McCaffrey) Compassion’s Contemporary Face: Compassion without Horizons Interlude An Easy Mistake Afterword: Compassion Walking Chapter Three: From the “Science of Disease” to the “Understanding of Those Who Suffer”: The Cultivation of an Interpretive Understanding of “Behaviour Problems” in Children (Christopher Gilham) A Central and Illustrative Anecdote: Sam Overflows the Frame Around Him Interwoven, Historical Logics Aristotle’s Logic of A=A Descartes’ Isolated Knowing Auguste Comte’s Science, Logical Positivism, and Behaviourism At Play in Emotional-Behavioural Disabilities Today Simplified and Contradicting, Sometimes Paralyzing, Binaries Moving, Accelerating, and Fragmenting Targets “Just Plain Sick” Shrinking “This,” Expanding “That” Rights as Choice and Defense Coding’s In-Efficiency Movement The Norm: Misleading Logic and Exclusion Counterproductivity and Emancipation Shared Esteem or “Ourselves as Others” Chapter Four: A Pocket of Darkness (Judson Innes) Chapter Five: First Fragment: Breaking the Gaze (David W. Jardine, Graham McCaffrey, & Christopher Gilham) i ii Chapter Six: Suffering Loves and Needs Company: Buddhist and Daoist Perspectives on the Counselor as Companion (Avraham Cohen & Heesoon Bai) Meeting the Person: The I, The Thou, and The I-Thou Sitting in the Midst of Fire with Another: A Buddhist Perspective Daoist Perspective and Resources Journey’s End Chapter Seven: Codes (S. John Williamson) codes Chapter Eight: Second Fragment: Thoughts on “Breaking the Gaze” (Christopher Gilham, David Jardine, & Graham McCaffrey) Chapter Nine: My Treasured Relation (Jodi Latremouille) Chapter Ten: Some Introductory Words for Two Little Earth-Cousins (david w. jardine) Chapter Eleven: This Is Why We Read This Is Why We Write (David W. Jardine) Chapter Twelve: The Elision of Suffering in Mental Health Nursing (Graham McCaffrey) Suffering as Epiphenomenon Suffering: Occasions and Elisions Suffering: A Buddhist Thought Experiment Note Chapter Thirteen: Fragment Three: Bringing Suffering into the Path (David W. Jardine, Graham McCaffrey & Christopher Gilham) Chapter Fourteen: A Black Blessing (Alexandra Fidyk) Chapter Fifteen: Time (Judson Innes) Chapter Sixteen: Quickening, Patience, Suffering (David W. Jardine) A Fortuitous E-mail Exchange To Begin, Singing An Elongated Political and Ecological Chorus A Side-Note on an Iatrogenic Loop “Just Start Doing It” Second Last Mull A Song at the End of Things With Too Many Things to Say all at Once Chapter Seventeen: Smart Ass Cripple (W. John Williamson) The Problem with “Suffers From” Suffering from Finitude Suffering from and Fighting Ableism Outrage, Tragic Laughter, and Suffering from Disability Suffering and the Aesthetic(s) of Disability The Passion(s) of Mike Ervin Aka Smart Ass Cripple Smart Ass Cripple Retelling “Suffers From” Chapter Eighteen: The Comfort of Suffering (Gilbert Drapeau) Chapter Nineteen: Fragment Four: “And Yet, and Yet” (Christopher Gilham, David W. Jardine & Graham McCaffrey) Chapter Twenty: “Neither They Nor Their Reward” (Alan A. Block) Chapter Twenty-One: “Nobody Understood Why I Should Be Grieving” (David W. Jardine) i ii iii Chapter Twenty-Two: “God’s Sufferings Teach God Nothing”: Some Emails (Alan A. Block & David W. Jardine) Chapter Twenty-Three: Compassion Loves Suffering: Notes on a Paper Never Written (Christopher Gilham, David Jardine, & Graham McCaffrey) Chapter Twenty-Four: “Isn’t All Oncology Hermeneutic?” (Nancy J. Moules, David W. Jardine, Graham McCaffrey, & Christopher Brown) Concluding Reflections Chapter Twenty-Five: “They Are All with Me”: Troubled Youth in Troubled Schools (Allan Donsky ) The Space In-Between Hidden Treasure in the Trouble Itself Suffering’s Complexity “The Measure of All Tthings” Mindfulness in Education “I Just Knew I Had to Do It” “I Cannot Do So” Letting Go, Listening for the In-Between Chapter Twenty-Six: Happiness in Bricks (Alexander C. Book) The Mind Mindfulness The Body Mindfulness in Extreme Pain Living with Pain Chapter Twenty-Seven: Suffering “Like This”: Interpretation and the Pedagogical Disruption of the Dual System of Education (Christopher Gilham) Suffering and School Failure Counter-Productivity A Pedagogy of Suffering “Like this” Normalization Interpretation as Non-Attachment Chapter Twenty-Eight: Morning Thoughts on Application (David W. Jardine) Chapter Twenty-Nine: In Praise of Radiant Beings (David W. Jardine) A Preambling Couplet “Even There” Ah! Wabi Sabi “Protodoxa (Urdoxa)” “Break Open the Being of the Object” “Every Word Breaks Forth” “It draws you into its path” “Present in the Thing” Post-Ambulatory Couplet Contributor Bios References Index