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Craving and aversion
genie
Explorer
I understand the craving part - if we crave for things (whatever that may be), we may not get it and end up getting frustrated. So avoid craving. Makes sense. But the aversion part makes no sense. If something causes pain, shouldn't that be avoided? I should not crave a million dollars. But shouldn't I avoid poverty?
Let's talk about this.
0
Comments
Hi @Genie - you are getting pain and suffering confused.
Yes - if I stick my hand on a hot plate it will cause me pain so I should avoid it.
If you think about it a bit more you'll realise that aversion is actually craving (is it not?)
Aversion is the result of fear. There is fear of death, sickness, separation, loss etc. Isn't fear a cause of suffering?
Aversion, tome, is pushing things/people/situations away. It's not about being careless, but about accepting what comes and knowing how to deal with it skillfully. Living in a manner that leaves you making decisions out of fear (as pegembara said) or jealousy or whatever is aversion.
Middle way. Not over-attachment. Not aversion/looking away/turning a blind eye. It is facing reality head on and dealing with it appropriately.
How big is the heart in that bumble bee
That makes even a great ox
Rise from his rest in the shade?
I think it might help to think of it in two levels, there is the coarse / blocky outside level of "i want a car" which is kinda like craving, but really it's more like a big mix of inclinations and desires...
Then there is the craving that is happening in the background. The subtle one. The near-fundamental pull into the next moment of dualistic experience. Consciousness isn't specifically seeking a car or a diamond, but there is a driving force behind a lot of what we do. Where that driving force gets us is largely based on how clear our view and how perfect our understanding of reality truly is. If we are blind while we are driving then we are likely to bump into things, hit snags, crash. In fact, I think most of us would not study buddhism if there were no suffering to jolt us into the perspective that our situation has a lot more going on than we can see/hear/taste/smell/touch.
If you could see that every time you stuck your hand in a bag it got bit by a snake, you wouldn't go looking for jelly beans.
But, of course, that is pretty old-school. Everything is on fire! Don't touch! Don't grab it anyplace! Drop the whole thing! Zen Samurai Bamboo SWACK
Really, it might help someone nearby to see you reach in and get bit by the viper. Then maybe they won't want to grab a seemingly-delicious no-strings-attached jelly bean. Your suffering leads to anothers' wisdom.
How many people are on the boat? The big boat of the cosmos has all the beings.
Yet, to know the shade from which no bumble bee can stir one takes a lot of study and meditation.
To your original question; aversion is like saying "this part of the universe should be different" and wanting to shirk or avoid. It's a packaged deal, though. Wave up wave down. Wave up wave down. Wave down wave up.
I want a bicycle, but I don't want a flat tire. Even though it's perfectly natural to have flat tires, we convince ourselves that some chunk of our situations are perfect while others are imperfect. Alas, the whip of experience takes us for a roller coaster ride.
I think the most fundamental teachings on overcoming aversion is to recognize that every situation is flowing, changing, shifting, expanding, not gonna stay the same. A flat tire will change. It could become a neighbor smiling coming to help. It could become a grizzly bear attack. It could become a dancing poodle. It could become a quiet tranquil patio and cup of tea.
Basically, the teachings on aversion and craving are summarized in one of the Four Dharma Seals:
http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Four_seals
Defiled emotion and actions that are done from a state of frustration/perturbedness/anger/fear will lead to suffering. One gets angry and burns down their neighbor's farm, and their own house burns up with it.
Aversion is like an animal emotion, and we all have a lot of beastliness that we must transmute through zazen/meditation/sitting/awareness.
When the impermanence of a situation shines through then everything is bearable. Maybe not comfortable, maybe not pleasant, but the knowledge that it will pass is a good half of the story. The other half is letting go of the history of the event itself.
Newton's third law states that to get anywhere we have to leave something behind. Craving toward something, aversion against something, and clinging to something are like subtle thorns.
So now that we can see the issues more or less, how do we remove where they came from? How do we step back out the door we walked in from?
@sova : thanks for the above teachings. brilliantly written. _ /\ _
My dog never worries about a flat tyre or what the neighbours dog said
Craving and aversion are two sides of the same coin. So for example a craving for wealth also means an aversion to poverty.
craving are things we cling to.
Aversion is things we are repulsed by.
But we still have them in our minds as something we are clinging to.
There is a saying that goes:
"When you hate (have aversion for) something in a strong and emphatic way, you hold them within your heart and mind just as much as if you loved and desired them".
The whole point is to be ensnared by neither one.
Craving obviously is due to attachment. Aversion indirectly has attachment as its root. That is why, non-attachment is considered at least a very important (if not the most important) thing in spirituality.
I'd say directly. Aversion arises when attachment is threatened.
Agreed sir. i said indirectly because a layman or a common materialist man, usually do not ponder much over why the aversion has arose at the first place, rather he thinks that he does not want that thing and if he does not get that thing, it comforts him, then he starts holding on to that thought that he does not want that thing, so in a way he becomes attached to that thought, which says he does not want that thing. so aversion towards a thing grows as a habit in him and he does not realize that he has become attached to this thought of not wanting that thing. so i said aversion indirectly has attachment as its root, though your reasoning is more appropriate that since at the first place attachment is threatened, so aversion directly has attachment at its root.
non-attachment should be considered with respect to greed, hatred and delusion. also non-attachment should be applied along with common-sense.
@0student0
That's what the Buddha discovered, The Middle Way. When he was experimenting with self-mortification, he realized that he needed food, not just to survive, but to stay healthy. He discovered he had become attached to his motivation to deprive the flesh.
No. Thank Buddha.
The Buddha tried starving during his ascetic pre-enlightenment yogi days. He was traditionally all skin and bones.
Fortunately he realised the Middle Way, remembering to eat once a day and not to indulge in extreme behaviour, such as not breathing, which he also tried and ended up having headaches. Not breathing was clearly an extreme form of pranayama that he abandoned for breathing as practice ...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anapanasati
Skin and bones?! Sheer luxury! Ascetics were wimps in them days!
“Everything is always changing. If you relax into this truth, that is Enlightenment. If you resist, this is samsara (suffering).”
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, “What Makes You (Not) a Buddhist”
Pema Chodron says that the more we resist something (and we DO resist our aversions), the more they hurt.
Think of a child about to get a flu shot .. how their resistance/aversion to the experience gets them so upset that they are shivering and crying even before the shot. The experience turns out to be horrible for them, but it is all created by their aversion. While an adult relaxes into it and never feels it at all.
Modern pain management theory has the patient who suffers from chronic untreatable pain, opening FULLY to the pain and then relax into it.
Our aversions create our pain. Our resistance to our aversions. This is so for emotions as well as for physical sensations.
Use mindfulness next time you are feeling an aversion ... are you happy, at peace, open and joyfully embracing the moment? I'm not, and I doubt if you are, either.
As far as my theoretical understanding goes : the Buddha did not realize by himself that he needed food. When he was on the extreme end of his ascetic practice, then a village girl (who was seeing him as a yogi meditating for quite some time and getting weaker due to his extreme practice) approached him with a bowl of rice porridge and said to him - eat this(rice porridge). if your body will die, then how will you achieve enlightenment - then this message from that village girl, who was not even much learned, shocked him and then he thought about it and found that the village girl was saying correctly. then he ate the rice porridge (or some dish, which she had prepared for him and brought for him) and then he gave up his ascetic practice.
may be this is why in spirituality it is often said that grace is needed finally to push us, as we cannot do it completely by ourselves, so that is why support is needed in some form from teachers, fellow colleagues etc and someone should give that final push to help us awaken. may be that village girl was the grace for Buddha in his life to save his life and finally help him indirectly in him getting enlightened. this can also be seen from the many zen stories or even koans, in which one action from one person finally helped another person to achieve realization.
Yes @misecmisc1 . I think the village girl did play a large role in the event.
Ah....! Behind every great man is a woman with a whole load of common sense....!
...and a bowl of something scrummy!
But is change the only source of suffering? I don't think it is.
I'm trying to think of one but it all links with resisting or wanting(change)
^^^ constipation
Examples are chronic physical pain or chronic mental pain like depression. The suffering is due to unpleasant feelings persisting, not with pleasant feelings subsiding. In some scenarios suffering is about things appearing not to change.
Also see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha, where the suffering of change is one type of three.
maybe ur in the wrong thread?
(...that's 'moot.... 'mute' means unable to speak....
)
Oh the English language... No wonder we are so confused.
How can you avoid old age, sickness and dying?
....should HAVE.....
OK, I really am going to crawl back under my rock now....!
The Buddha talked about sankhata dhammas and asankhata dhammas -- conditioned and unconditioned things. Conditioned things are innumerable -- material or immaterial, big or small -- if our mind is under the influence of delusion, it will proliferate about these things, dividing them up into good and bad, short and long, coarse and refined. Why does the mind proliferate like this? Because it doesn't know determined reality, [25] it doesn't see the Dhamma. Not seeing the Dhamma, the mind is full of clinging. As long as the mind is held down by clinging there can be no escape, there is confusion, birth, old age, sickness and death, even in the thinking processes. This kind of mind is called the sankhata dhamma (conditioned mind).
Asankhata dhamma, the unconditioned, refers to the mind which has seen the Dhamma, the truth, of the Five Khandhas as they are -- as Transient, Imperfect and Ownerless. All ideas of "me" and "them," "mine" and "theirs," belong to the determined reality. Really they are all conditions. When we know the truth of conditions, as neither ourselves nor belonging to us, we let go of conditions and the determined. When we let go of conditions we attain the Dhamma, we enter into and realize the Dhamma. When we attain the Dhamma we know clearly. What do we know? We know that there are only conditions and determinations, no being, no self, no "us" nor "them." This is knowledge of the way things are.
Seeing in this way the mind transcends things. The body may grow old, get sick and die, but the mind transcends this state. When the mind transcends conditions, it knows the unconditioned. the mind becomes the unconditioned, the state which no longer contains conditioning factors. The mind is no longer conditioned by the concerns of the world, conditions no longer contaminate the mind. Pleasure and pain no longer affect it. Nothing can affect the mind or change it, the mind is assured, it has escaped all constructions. Seeing the true nature of conditions and the determined, the mind becomes free.
http://www.budsas.org/ebud/livdhamma/livdham09.htm
Wonderful quote @pegembara
Long live the Hinayana, Nikaya, Theravada, Enlightened
... and now back to the unconditional ...
Don't worry..." Shit happens!" @lobster
No anything for that matter.
Craving and aversion are equal misuse of our energy, away from the equanimity of our inner core, but in different directions.
Craving is close to greed and coveting, aversion is close to hatred and rejection.
@genie - In mindfulness practice mind states like craving and aversion should not be pushed away or getting rid of them. Rather the Buddha offers something to look into it - skillfully - investigate, study it more closely. When we are able to identify them clearly how they arises - That is buddhism is all about, able to see thing just the way they are.
By simply knowing them when arises is such a tremendous power, and together with regular meditation we will see how they are fuelled. Our response to those mind reactivity comes from our mind habitual patterns.
I disagree. What if you're stuck with a lifelong disability, physical or mental? Suffering seems to be more about rejecting one's current or ongoing circumstances.
Without change there would be no physical or mental processes of any kind. There would be no lifelong anything.
No causation without change, no impermanence without change, no suffering and no awakening without change.
Of course. I was disagreeing with the idea that it's only change that causes suffering.
Oh... Ok, well I wasn't trying to imply it is.
Strange... In Thich Nhat Hanhs The Heart of the Buddhas Teaching he says
"If we are not careful in the way we practice, we may have the tendency to make the words of our teacher into a doctrine or an ideology. Since the Buddha said that the First Noble Truth is suffering, good many students of the Buddha have used their skills to prove that everything on Earth is suffering. The theory of the Three Kinds of Suffering was such an attempt. It is not a teaching of the Buddha."
I wonder what he's basing that claim on? http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn38/sn38.014.than.html