Thank you for your kind words, and what a great question! Here's an answer (maybe longer than what you asked for, but we have no doctor here today, so . . .)
When Gauthama Siddhartha, the man who we call "the Buddha", gave his first teaching, he focused on suffering. He called these the "Four Noble Truths." He put them briefly:
1) Suffering exists in life.
2) Suffering has its causes: ignorance, hatred and attachment, of which the most significant is ignorance.
3) There is a way out of suffering (or you could say, "Joy exists in life.")
4) The way out of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path: Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. He then explained what each of those means.
As one of my teachers put it, there is nothing noble about suffering if it is not capable of being transformed. In other words, you don't really live out the First Noble Truth unless you actually work to transform your suffering and the suffering of those around you. The purpose of Buddhist practice is to remove the root causes of suffering and transform it into something else -- joy, compassion, kindness, altruistic love, and so on.
While this answers the question about suffering in our consciousness and emotions -- we might even call that "anguish" instead -- it doesn't directly address the issue of suffering in the outside world. That is addressed through the Eightfold Path, especially Right Intention, Right Action, Right Livelihood and Right Effort. If we truly practice these things, we will awaken compassion, kindness and altruistic love; and then, as my teacher likes to say, "we cannot help but act." What he's saying is, See the need staring you in the face and take appropriate action.
I hope this answers your question, and I apologize for being longwinded.
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