#1

EXPERIENCE YOU HAVE HAD THAT YOU FIND INTELLECTUALLY ENGAGING.

My response:

What is pain? Modern medicine defames pain as a neural and emotional experience associated with tissue damage –actual or potential. What I find particularly "engaging" is how a person loses his ability to think when confronted with such an inexplicable sensation.

In a verse by Jelal ad Din Rumi--a Sufi poet and mystic from the 13th century--this concept has been stated in a form of a story. There is a person Zayd in the poem, who is about to retaliate when hit very hard from behind. His assailant then asks him a very unusual question? "I struck the nape of your neck, and there was the sound of a slap. Now I ask you in a friendly way- "Was the sound caused by my hand or by your neck, O pride of the noble?" Zayd replies, "The pain I am suffering leaves me no time to reflect on this problem"

This phenomenal relation between feeling and thinking makes me wonder how we expect a certain person in pain to behave rationally and in an intelligible manner without regard to the agony they may be enduring. It also explains the difficult question the world faces today: "What makes a suicide bomber?" Perhaps, besides the religious context, it might be the 'pain' due to poverty and the difficult life circumstances, which lead individuals to perform such an incomprehensible act. Certain things have more than one dimension that we usually fail to look at, that is what I find engaging about this feeling-thinking concept.