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What does Suffering mean to you?
Gui
Veteran
From time to time, I've noticed what seems to me to be a misunderstanding of meaning when discussing Suffering. I capitalize it for it's Buddhist usage.
So I am asking what Suffering means to you in regards to the 4 Noble Truths.
My own understanding is:
All desires
All aversions
All emotions
2
Comments
From The Secular Buddhist Association website:
The first thing we notice is that Gotama doesn’t say, “Life is suffering.” The word usually translated as “suffering” is dukkha, and as Gotama uses the word above, we can see that it is much more complex than just suffering. It is a characteristic of our lived experience which we encounter when we confront the realities of the human condition: sickness, ageing, death, the inability to get what we want and the necessity of putting up with what we don’t want. Dukkha is what it’s like to be a human being.
That's how I see it.
Maybe like dissatisfaction
Suffering: Things aren't going MY way.
Or maybe they are.
The Buddha explained perfectly well, within his 4NT what Dukkha is.
I think he probably got it spot on, if you ask me.
Mind you, what would I know....?
I'm always Dunkin' Dukkhas....
A definition might be 'short of enlightenment'
Desire is not suffering - it is what we do, or do not do, in response to our desires that causes suffering. Do we use our desire, or are we used by it? If it cannot be fulfilled, do we cling to it? That's real suffering.
I think it is the same story with aversion and with emotion. What do we create with those things? Suffering, or Joy?
Problems arise when one takes things to the "extremes"
This is why the Buddha said (in colloquial language/terms) :
Don't let emotions make you their bitch. Perfect!
Opportunity
I think suffering and dependent origination go hand in hand. Because nothing exists by itself (it is always caused by certain other conditions), nothing can really give us true, lasting happiness. I believe Buddha was referring to this.
I can't get no, I can't get no
I can't get no satisfaction
No satisfaction, no satisfaction, no satisfaction
The Rolling Stone
"Bhikkhus, all is burning. And what is the all that is burning?"
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn35/sn35.028.nymo.html
That's not very satisfying.
I feel that is an opportune question @Gui
We can not avoid circumstance.
Stress points, the points of agitation are opportunity.
In other words, if sufficiently detached and mindful we can see inherent nature as empty of dukkha and merely dependently arising.
http://secularbuddhism.org/2012/06/07/a-secular-understanding-of-dependent-arising-table-of-contents/
[babble removed by request, see following post]
Oh @lobster you make it so hard to moderate. Your posts are half substance and half babble.
Please - less of the latter, more of the former!
It would be of great support right now.
How do I delete a post made in error? I'm having a brainfart and have completely forgotten
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/dukkha.html
Discomfort.
suffering is craving and not accept whats happening right now in the moment.
Confusion
Discontent.
Contact me. I'll do the rest.
O @federica , I beg you not to deprive us of @lobster 's babbling. It can have substance, if we are mindful of it. Sometimes we can through this medium
I deprive you of nothing. But it's been a while and after a while, once it's a laugh, twice it's a giggle third time - it grates - imagine after 8 years....
Wanting something else.
Mental anguish.
Every day i wake up and expect things to be difficult. I am rarely disappointed. i can approach life with a much greater degree of equanimity.
The way I understand suffering in short is that it is what subtracts or takes away from positive or neutral feelings that is observable, and also that which takes away that is not observable. Negative karma in process is an example something not observable.
Because sometimes we don't have what we want, and sometimes we have what we don't want....
Illusion
I agree. I can't help wondering though, if the Buddha understood it differently? 2500 years ago, life must have been different than today.
I think my favourite word is "unsatisfactoriness" because it conveys both the breadth and depth of what we're discussing.
Here, here. Not that I am biased or anything ...
Unravelling babbling is one of the ways I overcome unsatisfactory dukkha. Sadly sometimes temporary tightening also happens ... 
and now back to the unbabbled ...
The Confusion of Dualism ~ Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche
But if, through fundamental misperception of reality, the individual enters into the confusion of dualism, primordial consciousness, which is in fact the source of all manifestation (even of dualistic consciousness and, in fact, of all phenomena), itself becomes obscured. The individual’s deluded mind then mistakes the manifestations of its own pure, innate primordial awareness for an external reality existing separately from itself, which it endlessly, and ultimately unsuccessfully, attempts to manipulate, trying in vain to bring an end to the continual underlying sense of dissatisfaction and unease which is the inevitable experience of the obscuration of pure awareness. The experience of underlying dissatisfaction (or ‘dukha’ in Sanskrit) that unavoidably arises with a deluded mind, continues, no matter how ‘successful’ the individual becomes in dealing with his or her world in materialistic terms, until the individual regains the experience of the primordial state.
Indeed.
I have a lot of time for the successful primordial staters as opposed to my babbling that 'Dukkha is primordial' or Samsara is Nirvana as the precious say to the jewelled.
and now back to the insufferable
Not an easy question to answer, as suffering has many faces. Restlessness-worry can become suffering in extremes, as can the others of the five hindrances. That all qualifies as mental anguish. And of course there is physical suffering.
Specifically in relation to the four noble truths, I think it is more about dissatisfaction. There are certain things we all go through which causes life to be less than unalloyed bliss. We all go through periods of pain, confusion, events which cause emotional anguish such as the death of a partner or loved one.
Whether that truly means that all desires and all emotions are suffering, I believe not. If you can approach them without clinging, letting them come and then go freely and without attachment or aversion, you will find they become just sensations, mostly neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Although most do cause a certain wonderment.
The other day, I was at my fathers house, and I realised that on one level I did not have the respect of my father. And suddenly it was like a vast overwhelming sadness descended on me, it was like the sky was sad above me. I had never felt an emotion as completely as that, and it lasted about half an hour. I went home, and eventually it passed. It came, it went and left nothing behind, except a slight puzzlement.
so, it DID leave something behind.
We can never be totally emotionless. And emotions are a result of attachment.
To have none, would make us an automaton. Like Spock, or Data. Both of whom examined the virtues and advantages of 'feeling'.
The secret is to manifest emotions without unsatisfactoriness, and to let them pass completely, with nothing lingering behind as a tell-tale footprint in the snow.... the pressure of the foot compacts the snow, and the footprint is the last thing to melt and disappear....
But melt, they will....