[Flint]

I don't know if this was known by the contemporaries of Jesus or Buddha, or the men who amassed the writing attributed to these figures, but I think it would have been quite an apt parable for their teachings that the grapes on the vine must suffer (in poor soil) in order to produce complex flavors.

As I thought of this, I thought of those whose great suffering produces great products of beauty. Here is a video of a man who slowly killed himself, with drugs. Along the way, he was able to do things such as this performance. This vocal performance gives me chills every time I listen to it. It may not be your cup of tea, but I believe that this is real emotion. He makes me feel it. To me, that qualifies this as artistic achievement on a high level.



The following may not be the kind of lesson we would be comfortable teaching our children, but I propose that those who have plumbed the depths of suffering are able to communicate a deep level of human feeling that even those among us who may only be (currently) experiencing minor emotional discomfort are able to identify with. I believe that some artists of American "Blues" music found this to be a necessary condition. It strikes me that Jesus and Buddha may have agreed with them, and this is an attractive idea to me.

Maybe I've suffered too much in my life, and developoed some strange coping mechanisms. Must the grapes on the vine suffer, in order to produce complex flavors? Is this the opposite of sour grapes, i.e. since you expect the grapes to be sour, you tell yourself you like them that way? Or, is this what the great teachers were talking about?