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[Bookclub-Ch. 4] Ignorance, Craving & Sankhara

BuckyGBuckyG
edited July 2011 in General Banter
Per Dakini's request:
Is Ajahn Sucitto implying that avijja (unkowing, ignorance) + tanha (craving) = sankhara (pp. 54-56)? Is this his "middle way" compromise between those who claim dukkha is solely or primarily caused by craving and those who say it's primarily or solely caused by ignorance? (See my Ch. 5 question also). :buck:

Comments

  • JeffreyJeffrey Veteran
    I guess so. I think that dukkha is the sense of wrongness and frustration when you are trying to grasp to sankhara. Grasp mental formations and fabrications. As you feel more suffering in response sankhara projects and you grasp the sankhara as real. So you end up trying to do things based on grasping and there is ultimately a delusion.

    So its simultaneous. The delusion of sankhara as substantial causes you to thirst for its security as a refuge. As a means for release.

    But to answer your question I think he is saying that tanha arises and we think. We think which is sankhara. We think of something to fix the tanha. We try to get something.

    Tanha arises because we don't know what is happening. Aviija,, if we knew what was going on it would be tanha for something good, kushula. Then as we still don't know what is happening the tanha itself produces a karmic result as we find our hand come up empty. It is like we are trying to do something with the wrong effort. We want to trust our experience and work with it, but we fabricate rather than simple direct experience.

    At first when we pay attention we just fabricate even more and more. This is why when you first start meditating the amount of thinking seems to increase in my opinion.

    We don't believe that it could be so simple as letting go and opening to stop 'getting in your head too much'.



  • DakiniDakini Veteran
    edited July 2011
    Ch. 4 is another collection of text like the intro, or Ch. 1, where I couldn't recognize myself amid all the ignorance and suffering (couldn't relate to the description of the samsaric life)! But I'll re read it w/this question in mind. I liked his definition of "ignorance".
  • BuckyGBuckyG
    ...I couldn't recognize myself amid all the ignorance and suffering (couldn't relate to the description of the samsaric life)!
    LOL! :buck:

  • BuckyGBuckyG
    edited July 2011
    I couldn't recognize myself amid all the ignorance and suffering (couldn't relate to the description of the samsaric life)
    Wait. The "heavenly" messengers (aging, illness, dying, & the rest) visit us all eventually. Or, if you want to see now, just look around. You don't have to seek far to find undeniable dukkha (suffering/stress).
    Peace & Metta
    BG
  • DakiniDakini Veteran
    It's his description of everyday life I don't agree with. That sense gratification is what drives our day (I thought it was the need to go to work and earn a living that drives our day). "The more you get used to sense-gratification, the more you depend on it, the more you want it--it's addictive." I can't relate to that.
    'Lets refer to the launchpad that thrown us into frustration despair, rage, cynicism... Isn't that dependent on our expectation for things to be another way? That unconscious craving brings up frustration, demands and even violence."
    "A natural sense of joy and contentment is considered impossible."

    Who is he talking about? This sounds like a program that was developed for for a prison population.
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