Re: Suffering

"Buddhism, lacking a central creator/father character, is less vulnerable to sexual guilt narratives, imho." But what of shame? What are we to think of Buddhist cultures like Japan in which the specter of losing face, bringing shame to one's family (and presumably to one's father as well) and of being a burden looms large? Perhaps not specifically in the sexual sense (so far as BL is concerned), but then that's just owing to the particularities of which actions happen to bring shame in a given society. On suffering more broadly, I'd say pain is a functional mechanism of adaptation while suffering is its dysfunction.