Buddhism, again

I realize Buddhism was suggested elsewhere in this thread, but let me take another stab at it. Why isn't avoiding suffering an objective value? Buddhism can be understood as beginning with the recognition that suffering exists. I like to reconcile this with a Christian perspective, but in a way it's the opposite of what Kit was elaborating. Suffering is the ultimate and unavoidable companion of human existence. And it's objective both in that in can be observed as a fact and in that its inevitability can be concluded rationally from the principle of constant change -- since nothing persists, nothing can be satisfactory. The pleasant necessarily gives rise to the desire for it to last, but it is the fundamental nature of things not to last. Humans cannot but desire, and desire cannot but be frustrated. From this the rest of Buddhism, or at least so it claims, follows logically. If suffering can be avoided, it should be avoided. Complete avoidance of suffering is only possible through the cessation of existence, so that does become an ultimate goal, but at any point suffering can, though action or inaction, be lessened or increased. So there is always a path in the direction of less suffering, and Buddhism is built around finding it and following it. (If one's own suffering could only be lessened by increasing the suffering of others, this would lead to a contradiction, but Buddhism claims to have discovered -- objectively -- that this is not the case, and that the suffering of anyone always entails increasing the suffering of all.) Nothing immaterial seems to be assumed or required by this line of reasoning. Nonexistence as an ultimate goal does seem paradoxical -- surely nothing is more in our nature than to want to exist. But the desire to exist is itself contradictory, because upon analysis we see that it is actually a desire to exist without suffering, and we can determine that this is impossible. And it isn't clear that a paradoxical ultimate goal is a practical problem anyway. If at any given point our choice is to act so as to increase suffering or to decrease it, and we can rationally determine how to do the latter, this is an objective value for us without regard to whether the ultimate goal implied is possible, impossible, or paradoxical. The materialist, it seems, wants to embrace existence. But if he can rationally determine that this entails suffering, and that there is a path to reducing suffering, he can embrace existing on that path. hugzu ;-p