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All suffering is caused by craving?
The second noble truth says that suffering is caused by craving. Did the Buddha teach that all suffering is due to craving, or just much of it? I can think of much suffering that is not caused by craving, such as the pain of cancer, anguish of mental diseases such as schizophrenia, etc.
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Buddhism is not about 'physical suffering!
Therefore, the 2nd truth is correct, all mental suffering comes from 'craving', (wanting what we cannot have etc etc)
Someone could have schizophrenia but still be 'happy' .. In fact, one of my clients are and he takes his med and hes 'accepted' his life and fate and hes happy..
As for depression; people are only depressed because they are not letting go of something 'somewhere', if they could find the source of their depression, then ACCEPT whats happened etc.. Then they wouldnt suffer..
So agin, what you are talking about comes back to the ones who have these illness and are suffering physically.. but if they knew the secrets of the noble truths, acceptance and the tao, then they wouldnt mentally suffer!
I repeat, we cannot do anything about what hurts us physically, only what hurts us mentally!
The real path is.... acceptance
Plain and simple.
Acceptance is the key to serenity.
Yes, all suffering is caused by craving and the path is to eliminate all suffering. It also includes bodily suffering: But sometimes the link is more directly visible than at other times. The suffering of losing what we love is quite obvious, but the link from craving to bodily pains as you mentioned, for example, is much harder to understand. To explain this, the Buddha formulated dependent origination. It's a deep teaching, but for this thread I'll just give a very short version: It describes how from not understanding reality (delusion), we start to crave. And due to this craving, we are reborn and so we get this body that is susceptible to pains. So, if we stop craving, we end this process of being born again and again, and suffering will be ended.
With metta!
Now he would probably remain calm, and wouldnt be scared of dying... (Because thats mental)
But his body would be in pain, no doubt about it for me.. !
First let's address mental illness. Buddha and the arahants who expanded the dharma had no idea physical problems with the chemistry of the brain could cause mental illness beyond the person's ability to handle. Even if they did have an idea about this there was nothing they could do about it. So today we put mental illness in the physical pain category while they would have said the behavior was caused by karma and waved their hands around like it proved something.
But that leaves physical pain. So how can following the 8-fold path lead to elimination of physical pain in our lives? Aren't we going to eventually catch some disease, or accidentally kick the bedpost and break our toe? Don't enlightened people feel pain? Of course they do. But supposedly through meditation enlightened people can rise above the pain.
However, this is only a surface understanding of the Noble Truths. Dukkha is a strange word and a strange concept that opens as you contemplate the totality of our existence. Because, in the end, all suffering is mental. The pain we suffer from is necessary. People who have damaged brains and don't feel pain suffer even more from lives spent in fear of not knowing something is wrong with their body. Some people even want pain, and we call them masochists and giggle at the thought of being handed a paddle and told they've been a bad boy. So pain is not the issue.
So the Noble Truths contain a deeper truth than a simple "Life sucks and dukkha means pain so if you attain an elevated mental state called enlightenment you don't catch cancer and die in agony." If all suffering is mental, then the remedy is mental.
The point is however, that the bodily suffering will also end after the death of the buddha. His last karmic result (the body) is then also ended. And because he eliminated all desires, he isn't reborn into a new one.
You say; the full realization of anatta means no pain because you no longer have body...
Then you say; but that does not mean there would not be pain if the body got cancer etc..
So which is it???
But to the man on the path, its becomes clearer..
This thread confused me a bit. So is the mental/physical suffering I experience due to a hormone imbalance and messed up brain chemistry only suffering because of my aversion to it/craving for it to be otherwise? So if I stopped craving and accepted it for what it was (however someone can embrace and accept debilitating mental illness) I would stop suffering? I know I personalized it a lot, but I guess mental illness in relation to suffering/craving is hard for me to understand, outside of the "previous karma" thing...
I now realize that i can do nothing about physical pain... But what i can do is something about mental pain!!!
But I am talking about life threatening suffering from a physical standpoint. And, while we're at it, I am not sure at all that all mental conditions can be alleviated through Buddhism.
and suffering ( which is our inability to accept those messages)
is a common connection but one that meditation reveals as
optional.
Its just one of a few paths that teach you about mental suffering...
An example;
If a surfer broke his leg and no longer could take part in the best surfing competition, he might still feel physical pain in his leg, but if he ACCEPTS this and doesnt 'dwell' on what 'could be' then he wont suffer mentally!
*Some* depression is caused and/or intensified by one's own mind - by dwelling in dissatisfaction, unhappiness, jealousy, craving, envy, and other suffering-inducing mindsets.
This kind of depression and it's suffering can very often be overcome with a positive thinking/mindset overhaul - and Buddhism is one pretty darn good method of overhaul.
But some depression (clinical /physiologically-based) depression is about hormones, chemical imbalances and actual brain dysfunction. Buddhism doesn't "cure" the root cause of this kind of depression.
However, Buddhism might help with the acceptance of one's physical/mental issues - like this kind of depression - and enable one to embrace whatever mode of therapy, or medical intervention is needed to help alleviate the suffering this illness can cause.
@MaryAnne-- I agree completely, and am trying to understand that in the context of this thread. At least the clinical/physiologically based mental illness part.
As for cancer pain, etc.. Then no it will not do anything, apart from help you come to terms with it..
But, that doesn't mean the body nerve endings stop sending electrical signals when they are damaged because that obviously continues. So when the Buddha says "I have ended pain" he is obviously not referring to nerve endings not transmitting electrical signals. So if it does not mean that, then what could it mean? The only plausible explanation for the statement "I have ended pain" would be the above in the first paragraph it seems to me. What other explanation could there be other than no more rebirth?
Buddhism really is about the suffering that we cause ourselves
Actually dukkha includes both.
Yes, the Arrow sutta comes to mind here.
There is now a great deal that can be done to alleviate physical pain.
If you have physical pain, there isn't anything written anywhere, that states you cannot relieve it, in whichever way you deem appropriate.
Given that there is a massive range of pain relief methods at our disposal, it is surprising that anyone would voluntarily endure the full extent of their own pain.
So it is with mental care; there is a vast range of medication and treatment available for those who are diagnosed with mental conditions; however, mental 'pain and anguish' due to mental conditions, is a whole different ball-game to physical pain, and I personally do not feel one can encompass these two kinds of 'suffering' in the same bracket. Neither can their respective Emotional Suffering, be considered equal.
I read somewhere that the word 'dukkha' is also associated with a wonky wheel. Doesn't give an altogether smooth and bumpless ride....
Studying the sutras and meditating on emptiness didn’t really help.
Until at some point (after walking through the IKEA for two hours) I realized it was the shoes. I had been wearing some new, cheap shoes, with zero cushioning recently.
I switched to the old shoes and the back problem vanished.
So the answer is no; not all suffering is caused by craving. Some suffering is caused by wearing the wrong shoes.
BTW...don't wear those shoes too much. Me doing that led to plantar facitis.
The first noble truth states that, in short, the five clinging-aggregate (panca-upadana-khandha) are dukkha (SN 56.11), i.e., it's the clinging in reference to the aggregates that's dukkha, not the aggregates themselves. And according to the commentaries, dukkha is defined as 'that which is hard to bear.'
So while the Buddha did include both mental and physical pain in his description of dukkha, sickness and physical pain are not necessarily experienced as dukkha, especially by an arahant, i.e., a person whose mind is free of defilement. With the presence of clinging in regard to the five aggregates, bodily phenomena such as sickness and physical pain are experienced as suffering; however, without the presence of clinging, the experience of bodily phenomena such as sickness and physical pain aren't experienced as suffering, i.e., they're no longer 'difficult to bear.'
In other words, although nibbana — the summum bonum of Buddhism — is said to be the cessation of suffering, that doesn't mean that a person won't feel physical pain or discomfort, but it does mean that such feelings will no longer cause mental suffering, emotional distress, etc. I think this is made clear in the simile of the dart found in SN 36.6: So, to be more precise, I'd say that the second noble truth says that our experience of suffering, dissatisfaction, unsatisfactoriness, etc. is caused by craving, what makes the five clinging-aggregates difficult to bear at times due to painful feelings or the absence of pleasant ones. Craving isn't simply our desire to or for X; it's the beginning of a mental chain of events that turns our desires for things into the potential for suffering.
The way I see it, craving (tahna, literally 'thirst') is a very subtle but powerful aspect of our psychology that's directly tied to suffering. It's there, latent in the mind, waiting to exert its influence through mental fabrications by directing or at the very least encouraging the mind to feed upon sensory experiences via the five clinging-aggregates in an unhealthy way (e.g., see SN 12.52). To observe this process, all one has to do is set about forty-five minutes to an hour aside as they'd normally do for their sitting practice and observe.
When sitting in meditation and our legs begin to hurt, the initial unpleasant feeling of pain gives rise to the craving for the pain to cease—i.e., we desire not be associated with this painful feeling, to make it stop. This physical pain is likened to the first dart in the simile of the arrow given in SN 36.6.
If one is mindful enough and watches this process further, one might then notice that if they remain in the same position without automatically moving, the mind will have the tendency to continually come back to that pain and focus on it more and more until the point that one feels as if they can no longer bear it anymore. This link between our awareness and the physical pain is the clinging (upadana), which won't let an object go if left to its own devices. This, in turn, produces mental anguish or discomfort, which is likened to the second dart.
This simple experiment works even better when the meditator can stay with the breath long enough to separate their awareness from the painful feeling so that they can see the space between the two, or in other words, that the physical pain isn't the same as the mental anguish or discomfort that usually follows.
Thus ignorance rather than craving is the cause of dukkha. Aversion and craving can be remedied by opening to whatever 'other' is there and drop storylines, attain shamata as a stability. The latter eventually allows insight into the craving or aversion and they drop away. This is why the Buddha nature is essential. The Buddha nature is the opening and dropping of storylines. It is the clarity to understand all this and see what is harmful and what is helping, which is known as mindfulness. And then when you see the teachings and reality clearly then there is sensitivity which is responsibility, well being, and something else, I forgot. Sensitivity is embodying the teaching, and prajna or intelligence. That intelligence is another way to smash ignorance.