India: It’s Not Relief from Suffering, Just Better Reasons for It. -

In March of 2025, I traveled to India, and wandered, absorbing the spirit of the country. I shared chai with Muslims on the streets of New Delhi. I listened to a man’s life story on a rooftop in Bikaner. I shared a meal with my Tuk-Tuk driver’s family in Rajasthan. I soaked in the spirit of crowd on the river Ganges in Rishikesh. I met Hindus, and Buddhists, and Muslims. All the while wondering, what makes the Indian world-view unique, what makes the country tick?

India doesn’t promise relief from suffering. It promises context. It promises an explanation for it all.

After 28 days, I see a society engineered not to solve problems, but to spiritually outweigh them. In the West, we build apps to avoid discomfort. In India, they build temples to bear it beautifully. In the West, we install modern sewage systems. In India, they install Gods. Why improve infrastructure when you have a moral frameworks that removes the need for better infrastructure? Why question authority when you can earn karmic points and try again next life—maybe with better plumbing? In India, suffering isn’t primarily battled tooth and nail with medicine, engineering or convenience. It’s transcended—through caste, duty, and a healthy dose of cosmic guilt. Your role (or at least your caste) is chosen at birth. Marriage is assigned by your family. Jobs are often inherited. It’s not chaos—it’s choreography. Not oppression—it’s a feature, a divine to-do list designed by your past incarnations.

In the west, we often say, Meaningless Suffering. In India, it’s Purposeful Suffering.

USA: What’s with all the Meaningless Suffering?

INDIA: Remember that thing you did in 1831?

In India, you are not suffering because the world is broken. You are suffering because everything is as it should be. You are paying for that fire you accidentally started in 1284 A.D. The suffering which, in the West, we see as meaningless, is in India, a characteristic of the Universe itself. We all fit perfectly in our own God-shaped hole. It’s elegant. It’s maddening. A masterpiece of adaptation which suggests that all hardship has a reason—even if that reason is your failure to properly respect your mother-in-law in a past life.

C.P. Phillips