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Is the problem desire, craving, or ignorance?
zenguitar
Bad BuddhistNew England Veteran
Here's a basic (I think) question. I have read varying interpretations of the Second Noble Truth. Some say that the cause of suffering is desire, others say it is craving, still others say ignorance. Which is it?
Personally, I'm partial to the ignorance explanation, because I interpret this as meaning I don't need to renounce too many pleasures to practice Buddhism. But perhaps that is just me being ignorant.
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Why does it have to be one or the other?
If you're ignorant about how reality actually is, you'll have (and follow up on) cravings for things you shouldn't. So it's all really the same thing.
My teacher says it is turning away from our own experience which can be dulling out, trying to grasp at nothing, or dull with a sense pleasure.
That was just about what I was going to say, so I second this.
It is the Craving to Be someplace else, something different, somehow transported away from Present condition or circumstances that is the cause of this dukkha. It is not craving for things, but a craving for a more exalted or safe BEING, for lack of the right adjective.
The Buddha makes this clear in the Four Noble Truths, I believe --namely that craving is the cause.
I suppose the problem is wanting answers over questioning needs. The necessity for existence is love, breath, food, shelter. this is my home when all else fails.
Seeking a cause can lead me down a rabbit hole of chasing the next cause of each cause. For my self, it is most helpful to stay in the moment even if it is suffering. Then see what I can change within myself and my perceptions as my first action unto changing my present experience if it is suffering. Yet always mindful that much pain is chosen, but some pain is unavoidable and a simple reality.
They are the three primary causes . . .
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_poisons_(Buddhism)
The problem is one mechanism. The ”three poisons” describe it very well I think.
We are driven by aversion and desire and are ignorant of how this never stops; how running around in circles gets us nowhere; how we never reach the point of contentment for very long.
One way of describing practice is to stop doing this. Stop adding the words, the concepts and the preferences on top of the actual experience. Just sit and allow thoughts and feelings to come and go.
At this point for me aversion is the topic. I think it is an underestimated poison - for me; and now that my focus is on the subject I see it more clearly in people around me too.
It can also be part of a “spiritual” identity; having aversion towards “worldly” people and their interests, or simply having aversion towards life in general.
Hmmm...ignorant about how the unknowable (reality) actually is... perhaps ignorant about how I perceive the unknowable hits the 'mark" closer for me. Perhaps that's what you meant. I don't know . Perhaps I just wanted in on the conversation! lol! Bob
Ok, thanks everyone. I feel a little less ignorant now.
Ignorance is the state of not knowing or not seeing things as they really are. Or "things as they have come to be," if we agree with the theory that the Buddha refused to uphold any view as the ultimate reality, and rather stated that he knew "the dependently arisen."
What in the wikipedia on the Three Poisons quoted by @lobster is translated as 'ignorance,' Bikkhu Bodhi calls 'delusion' (moha), which he defines as "mental darkness: a coat of insensitivity which blocks out clear understanding."
According to him, the defilements of greed (lobha), aversion (dosa) and delusion (moha) are at the root not only of our suffering, but also at the root of other defilements, such as conceit, jealousy, lethargy, etc. "We have to find out what the defilements depend upon and then see how it lies within our power to remove their support."
And always according to Bikkhu Bodhi, "The Buddha teaches that there is one defilement which gives rise to all the others, one root which holds them all in place. This root is ignorance (avijja)."
This ignorance he describes as the basic root of dukkha because it distorts our perceptions. It makes us take for reality our own distorted figments of imagination and therefore provides "the soil that nurtures the defilements."
So basically, the cause of our suffering would be the ignorance of reality as it really is, and our attachment to our distorted mental constructs.
It kind of goes back and forth with seeing that there's "a problem", and not seeing that there's a problem. When everything goes our way, there's no problem. The source of the problem is not seeing the problem, which would be considered ignorance/avijja.
As long as things go our way we don't experience dukkha. Our first contact with dukkha happens when we stumble over the first roadblock experience will place in our way.
Ignorance would be trying to get rid of the roadblock or striving to groove it into our personal vision of life somehow, rather than accepting it for what it is and going on living despite its presence in our life.
According to dependent origination the proximate cause of suffering is craving, and the root cause is ignorance. So while ignorance persists, craving persists and suffering persists.
Yes, good summary.
Someone recently asked me my perspective on Buddhism on another site, and I assumed he wasn't a Buddhist and really was interested, and this is what I told him (trying my best to encapsulate what Buddhism means to me without putting him off):
This will be a mercifully brief answer. The Buddha says that our psycho-physical body (the five aggregates/skandhas) is suffering. He also says the origin or cause of suffering is clinging/desiring the psycho-physical body.
I think you can say that cravings are the smaller roadblocks along the way, and ignorance is the larger roadblock made up of those smaller roadblocks. It would be easier to try and remove smaller roadblocks at a time than to try to remove the larger roadblock at once.
Thanks a lot, everyone, this is enlightening stuff.
I'm not sure how the aggregates themselves can be suffering if the cause of suffering is clinging to the aggregates?
I'm not sure @SpinyNorman but part of suffering is 'pervasive suffering'. It is something that ordinary beings can't see because it is like noticing an ear ache when you are covered all over with painful sores. Once you get rid of the sores then you might feel the ear ache.
Sure, there are different levels of suffering. But if the aggregates themselves are suffering, and the aggregates represent the totality of our experience, how can there be any release from suffering? Or are you saying there is something "outside" the aggregates?
I don't think the aggregates are our whole experience, but I could be wrong. I think that when we stop grasping they turn into their enlightened qualities. Or 'thus have I heard'.
form -> morality
feeling -> meditation
perception -> wisdom
formations -> liberation
consciousness -> knowledge of liberation
I learned that in an aol chatroom taught by a longtime practitioners home made teachings. It was one of my first Buddhist experiences.