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Re: Why does 1st Noble Truth only list Dukkha?
I think the inclusion/relevance of impermanence and non-self are in how we interpret/follow the 8 Fold Path.
Although all eight spokes of the wheel depend on each other, Rght View/Right Understanding is where these topics rise to the surface as far as I can tell. One problem there is when people disagree because clinging to our idea of Right View/Understanding is to then miss it.
@Shoshin1 said:
Dukkha, suffering or dissatisfaction, is among the most misunderstood ideas in Buddhism. Life is dukkha, the Buddha said, but he didn’t mean that it is all unhappiness and disappointment. Rather, he meant that ultimately it cannot satisfy. Even when things do satisfy―a pleasant time with friends, a wonderful meal, a new car―the satisfaction doesn’t last because all things are impermanent.
Isn't it funny though? We can find the most comfy, cozy and satisfying position possible and after a while, no matter how comfortable we were, we will find ourselves in discomfort.
Just imagine how uncomfortable it would be if we didn't change while everything else did.
Re: Why does 1st Noble Truth only list Dukkha?
Why does 1st Noble Truth only list Dukkha?
@FleaMarket said:
I only see 4 Noble Truths list Dukkha, it's origin, cessation, and path toward cessation.
Where is the inclusion of anicca(non-permanence)/anatta(non-self)?
In a nutshell ....Perhaps it is because of the unsatisfactory nature of existence
Everything changes, the Buddha taught. This may seem obvious, but much of the time we relate to things as if their existence were permanent. So when we lose things we think we can’t live without or receive bad news we think will ruin our lives, we experience a great deal of stress. Nothing is permanent, including our lives.
Dukkha, suffering or dissatisfaction, is among the most misunderstood ideas in Buddhism. Life is dukkha, the Buddha said, but he didn’t mean that it is all unhappiness and disappointment. Rather, he meant that ultimately it cannot satisfy. Even when things do satisfy―a pleasant time with friends, a wonderful meal, a new car―the satisfaction doesn’t last because all things are impermanent.
Anatta—not-self, non-essentiality, or egolessness—is even more difficult to grasp. The Buddha taught that there is no unchanging, permanently existing self that inhabits our bodies. In other words, we do not have a fixed, absolute identity. The experience of “I” continuing through life as a separate, singular being is an illusion, he said. What we call the “self” is a construct of physical, mental, and sensory processes that are interdependent and constantly in flux.
Shoshin1
Re: Is being empathic a good thing?
The four sublime abodes mentioned by the Buddha are
Metta-friendliness
Karuna-compassion
Mudita-sympathetic joy
Upekkha-equanimity
Take the time to walk a mile in his moccasins
Empathy as in putting oneself in another's shoes is strangely not included.
Compassion for another's pain is not the same thing as empathy.
A surgeon cannot afford to only put themselves in the patient's shoes. Compassion is needed. How else can they do what is needed?
Empathy precedes compassion. Empathy without compassion leaves the individual drained of energy as a result of feeling what the other feels. Empathy occurs immediately and leaves no emotional room between the individual and the one who is suffering. Compassion is more cognitive in nature. There is a sense of self awareness that provides some necessary space between the two people. The empathizer experiences the same suffering with the other, leaving the empathizer overwhelmed. As a result, compassion allows the individual the be more helpful than the individual who experiences empathy alone.
In other words, don't just feel.
Do something about it.
Why is it called the “Heart Sutra”? It has that name because it teaches the heart of the Mahayana, primarily in terms of the view. However, the basic motivation of the Mahayana is also implicitly contained in this sutra in the form of Avalokiteshvara, the great bodhisattva who is the embodiment of the loving-kindness and compassion of all buddhas. It is actually the only Prajnaparamita Sutra in which Avalokiteshvara appears at all, and in it he is even the main speaker. Thus, the Heart Sutra teaches emptiness through the epitome of compassion. It is often said that, in a sense, emptiness is the heart of the Mahayana, but the heart of emptiness is compassion. The scriptures even use the phrase “emptiness with a heart of compassion.” It is crucial to never forget that. The main reason for Avalokitesvara’s presence here is to symbolize the aspect of compassion and to emphasize that we should not miss out on it.
https://www.lionsroar.com/the-heart-sutra-will-change-you-forever/
Re: Living the holy life
@Jeroen
To live the holy life is indeed a life style
To live simply but not isolated
To live with gratitude, compassion and empathy
Something quite simple yet often quite hard.
To be immersed in society, enveloped in the every day of humanity, living as an ordinary person while still maintaining the aspects of a holy life.
To know that you will feel anger, but to not be consumed by it.
To know you will have desires, some very strong yet not be led by them
Osho was correct. A religious life that is restrictive, one which is negative, is not a holy life. It is worse than a bad life for it misdirects and restricts, shutting out the light which is a life fulfilling, holy.
Peace to you
Lionduck
Re: Is being empathic a good thing?
Trying not to be pedantic here but I thought..
Empathy is being able to experience what another being experiences. While it helps break down the boundaries one creates between self and others, using it only to see the good in others, hobbles it with the psychological limitations of our own belief systems.
Empathy distinguishes the difference between itself and sympathy when empathy allows one to truly slip into the shoes of another, beyond the realms of our own conditioning, unrestrained by what ever we might hope to find or not.
While sympathy and empathy are both valid skill sets within the path toward suffering's cessation, sympathy points out the potential for a shared commonality in others, while empathy offers the manifestation of it.
how
Re: Living the holy life
Isn't a holy life one lived without excess, caring for others, helping others without seeking reward or fame or recognition?
It is not necessary to renounce society or possessions, rap oneself in a robe and carry a begging bowl. To live life with gratitude, without greed, without hate, caring for others, sharing even in little ways, encouraging other through your everyday words or deeds. That is all, in my opinion, needed to live a holy life.
Peaceto all
Lionduck
Re: Engaging with Freedom
@person said:
@taiyaki said:
OP, I've heard recently a teaching on two freedoms and how they are not the freedom offered by Dharma. There is freedom from and freedom to. Freedom from x, y, z. In a way a lot of what we do is try to attain freedom from oppression, from our traumas, from even suffering. Or freedom to x, y, z. Freedom to live a good life. Freedom to do whatever we want to. Dharma offers a freedom that isn't from or to.This teaching that was impressed upon me really shocked me because pretty much everything I do is well for those two modes of freedom. And even my dharma practice is about getting freedom from suffering and freedom to live a fuller life. But freedom in the dharma is something else entirely.
And thus I am presented with two things. My spiritual materialism and something so radical that my conventional mind cannot make sense of it.
This is really interesting, I hadn't heard it framed in that way before. What does it mean? Are you able to expand, or have a link to reference?
it's a private teaching. but I think to put shortly the teachings of dharma in a way don't really align with well normal, conventional drives. It's something else entirely. I mean certainly we want our dharma and our conventional drives to align. And at times they certainly do. But the freedom offered is unconditional. And it arrives when we end the delusion of self. We have a self, hence all our drives deal with freedom to do things (desire) and freedom from things (aversion). But when there is no self, then there is just freedom.
taiyaki
Re: How do you unite a heart and a mind?
In Buddhist psychology, mind and heart are often described by one word- “citta.” This heart-mind has many dimensions. It contains and includes all our thoughts, our feelings and emotions, responses, intuition, temperament, and consciousness itself.
Shoshin1
Re: How do you unite a heart and a mind?
Every day might give you a different answer to your question but the answer for me today is...
The adversarial nature of our ego/ selfish self/or identity, habitually appropriates much of what we feel & think for the regular building materials for its own storyline.
It is in the craving, rejecting or ignoring of these heart/mind inputs for the sake of this storyline, that our hearts and minds routinely experience being apart and separated from the rest of existence.
A Buddhist practice, when it leads one to transcend our habituated manipulations of all that we feel & think, and therefore removes the available building materials of the storyline, allows
the heart & mind to be experienced as being at one.
In truth though, the experience of the heart & mind as being two, was only ever the inertia of a delusion, that when dissipated, allow the underlying reality of their innate oneness to no longer be obscured.
so the 4NT & 8 FP is what it means and how it's done.
how
Re: Living the holy life
In terms of the renunciates, they let go of physical possessions as well as family, work and community — they wandered around owning nothing but their clothes and begging bowl, having left home, family and so on behind.
Whether there is any hope of “living the holy life while attempting to conform to the societal mold”, I think we have to see for ourselves. It’s a question of what we can let go of.
You can choose not to buy a sailing boat, not to have a second home, not to go on holiday even. Those luxuries are the easiest targets for simplifying one’s life. Then there are more difficult ones, such as not having a family, a car, or your own home, but instead living as a caretaker or a hermit. These big things do tend to let you focus more and more on the inner world.
I think every person’s life offers its own possibilities for voluntary simplicity, and its best to start small.
Jeroen