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Comfort or truth?
SarahT
Time ... space ... joySouth Coast, UK Veteran
@SpinyNorman said:
are you seeking comfort or truth? There may well be a tension between the two.
The only "truths" I feel able to accept are:
- The truth of suffering (dukkha)
- The truth of the cause of suffering (samudaya)
- The truth of the end of suffering (nirhodha)
- The truth of the path that frees us from suffering (magga)
Beyond this, is it skillful to seek truth? But equally, is it skillful to reject comfort, however transient?
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The above, are the 4 'Noble' (inarguable, definitive) Truths.
Everything else is subjective.
I would suggest having a reasonable comfortable day dream is a big part of why people temporarily lose interest in Dharma.
'Oh samsara ain't so bad'.
Dream on . . .
So in a sense even during the comfortable times we have to maintain practice. It is why surprising as it may seem, dukkha can be very motivational . . .
I think it's recognising that certain beliefs can be comforting but will not necessarily lead one towards the truth.
This is a conversation I often have with my Quaker friends.
It's also important to understand that the 4NTs are not things to be believed, but things to be investigated
Nice one @lobster , I can quickly think of reasons not to sit and meditate, once I look at it deeply. It's only the ego who doesn't want to. He'd prefer a video.
I would suggest to anybody to seek truth. Truth is not belief, it is a completely unshakable comprehension of something. You can't see truth and take it back.
I truly believe that this is the path to freeing us from suffering.
Truth is also subjective to the individual. Their truth may not be mine. Both are still truth.
We have to be careful with this.
"Truth" is a very tricky word, particularly when it starts with a capital T.
Yes indeed, those truths scare me also. I believe truth is simply what is. Where as the Truth sounds like someone is about to sell me something I don't want...
Quite.
I've been known to be big on the snooze button, I admit.
When things are going really well, I tend to enjoy it all the more for its lack of permanence.
When smiling, smile broadly because this too shall pass.
A line I like from "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment:"
When you have learned to love hell, you will be in heaven.
Comfort or Truth? I'm comforted by truth, or at least comforted by knowing I've done all I can to verify that what I believe is actually true (and not just... well, comforting).
It is unskilful to reject if you gain a sense of, 'ain't I spiritual and ascetic and so on the path'.
I would suggest from my own experience, we need less comfort or rather become increasingly independent of comfort and discomfort, we take it as it comes.
I would also suggest initially we make dharma and meditation as comfortable and easy as possible. :wave: .
Comfort or Truth?
Just for a bit of fun folks, because it makes sense to me..1) It's there to teach us/test us/punish us..2) It's mainly ourselves causing our own suffering so that we can learn + some in built suffering such as death to teach us what it feels like to lose someone we love + other people's & our own minds identification with our past self..3) Is when we realise it's there to help learn/teach us, & everyone who hasn't learned yet will still try to annoy or upset us etc, & those people are now our vital practice in order to gain full control of our own emotions/feelings & mind..4) Is when we have learned what it's there for by learning emotions/feelings control & mindfulness practice, until we've shed the need to constantly use our mind when we shouldn't be using it..Once the minds hold over a person is shed their personal suffering has ended for good, that person will see everyone they know as still stuck in their own minds identification..So there will be no more blaming people who hurt us etc, because we see those people as people who haven't trained/practised/learned yet..So our hate that we once had towards them becomes empathy, & the same with all the people that's ever hurt us..It's not so much we have to forgive them, but rather we fully understand why they did it to us..Their own minds holds over them as their own negative past causes people to do bad things to other people, & all because no one ever shown them how to control themselves..So for me the end of suffering is understanding why we suffer, which is because we have to otherwise we would "never" learn. :-)
The truth isn't always comfortable.
Truth eventually leads to fearlessness thus it transcends the question of comfort.
^^^ Can you say some more about this transcending independence?
Personally I think life's too short to be comfortable. I'm only speaking from my own experience, but since I got sick, I've achieved more in 18 months than 39 years. (except maybe dealing with idiots, that's always going to be a tough one :P ...)
Go figure....
Metta,
Raven
_ /\ _
:bowdown: .
@SarahT
Beyond the 4 NT, is it skillful to seek truth? But equally, is it skillful to reject comfort, however transient?
This may sound heretical to some but in my experience, some of the most complex and difficult to discern attachments, piggy back the efforts of those who seek the truth.
A much safer path to consider is to focus instead on our ignorance's, which is all that ever obscured the truth.
&
A comfort rejected can be as attachment bound as a comfort embraced. It is not the comfort itself that is a potential problem so much as how we are enslaved by our habituated impulses to control that comfort.
.
how did 'independence' get in the discussion?
How do you do that?
@SpinyNorman
Ignorance is just truth obscured by our ego's habituated impulses.
Meditation is simply learning how to no longer feed that obscuration.
Meditation for meditations sake or the goal of goalessness leaves behind
even an ego presenting ones spiritual attainments,
Exactly so.
Unless we realise we are seeking comfort or comfortable truths, the cycle of samsara continues. We are not independent of comfort, just switching in a new model . . .
Here we have ideas of progress, meditative and virtuous accomplishments. Polishing the 'just so'.
Can we dance with discomfort? Can we be fearless without action? Would we seek a truth that was non existent and if we experienced it, would it be comfortable or just another label? . . . these and other 'Buddha killing' moments are always present . . .
:wave: .
There's a Hindu story (or was it Sufi?) that concludes that Truth (or truth ) is like a diamond: it has many faces.
Shall we get attached to the raft of our comfort? To the raft of our truth? To the raft of Truth?
They're still rafts. They're still attachments under the guise of words.