Wallace Stevens

So that the poet paralyzed with fear lying in a hammock on a beautiful day—unhappy man in a happy world—does not suffer any less when he looks around him; he does not cease to suffer, he only ceases to try to understand.

It was the last nostalgia: that he Should understand. That he might suffer or that He might die was the innocence of living, if life Itself was innocent. 

—From Esthétique du Mal, by Wallace Stevens

Anything close to accurate perception confirms I do not understand: not with any fullness, wholeness or finality.

Children in their innocence are natural empiricists, keen observers, but not for understanding. They sense to survive, to be in relationship, to become something more.

Suffering is attachment -- to people, to places, to things, to ideas, to the desire for understanding.

Is this understanding?

"The body dies; the body's beauty lives. / So evenings die, in their green going, / A wave, interminably flowing."

Is this understanding?

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.

Is this understanding?