Cuddling and Suffering
nakazcid
Somewhere in Dixie, y'all Veteran
Last night I cuddled with my fiancee. It was wonderful. I got a nice feeling of peace and love from it. As far as I can recall, I had no ulterior motive. I wasn't looking for, um, more intimate relations, just spending some time with my beloved. I did derive pleasure from it, both in the sensual feeling of touch and contact, but also in the sense of loving and being loved.
Why am I bringing this up? Because the Buddha says all life is suffering. But how is this suffering? Yes, there was a pang of disappointment when it was over, but it was gone quickly. It didn't turn me into a helpless cuddle junkie. On balance, it seems like there was significantly more joy than suffering.
How should an innocent, yet pleasurable, moment like this be looked at in light of the Four Noble Truths?
Comments
I have wondered about this as well. When I am out cycling, the smooth functioning of my body relaxes me and gives me pleasure. Also when I relax into a state of meditative calm lieing on my back the feeling of my body at rest is comforting and soothing. And when I am walking on the beach there is a lovely freshness, the wind through my hair, water against my feet, which is tremendously refreshing.
It's not just a cuddle, there are many moments and sensations in life which appear pleasant and good, and not related to suffering. In my life, the good has outweighed the bad much of the time, and I found it really difficult to reconcile that with the Four Noble Truths and the view of life as suffering. I still do.
At most, I would say that these things are impermanent - the situation from which one derives pleasure is impermanent, the body itself is impermanent. But then, both the good and the bad are equally impermanent, and over the arc of an entire life for most people will be in balance or tending towards the positive.
It is a question of how you frame things, that is true. I am an optimist, and that means I see much of what happens in a positive light. In many ways I live in a cloud of optimism, but I am aware that disease and old age will happen to me as well, so I doubt it is ignorant or a wrong view.
I'm not so sure he meant that all life is suffering but rather all that lives, suffers. Moments of joy are not suffering until we wish on them.
Say if you guys ever break up and you find yourself longing for that moment you had last night, then you will see how it is also suffering.
We may suffer all the more by clinging to that which has changed beyond our reach but if we understand that all is impermanence then we can cherish it all the more for that instead of taking it for granted.
I think to cherish is different than to cling.
I think mostly that such moments of joy and happiness are temporary. Its not that they themselves are painful but since they are only there sometimes they aren't a very reliable source for our efforts at happiness. Buddha advocated finding a constant source of happiness that isn't subject to the whims of the world.
I had to look it up the exact quote in Pali (or is it Sanskrit?) It goes: sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā. The translation is: All conditioned things/phenomena are suffering/unsatisfactory.
I'm not precisely sure what a conditioned phenomenon is, but I'm pretty sure it includes cuddles.
EDIT: Maybe unsatisfactory is a better translation in this instance. Perhaps we can take it to mean that the phenomenon's temporariness is unsatisfactory, rather than it being outright painful?
I vote with @nakazcid . I am not an etymologist, but I believe that elsewhere the word dukkha is described as better translated as "unsatisfactoriness" rather than "suffering."
The unsatisfactoriness of things lies in the fact that everything changes AND I have an ego to cope with. "Suffering" has all the trappings of something painful and wrong and ... get me the hell out of here! Suffering feels like a no-no. As the old saying goes, "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
I see no reason to sidestep or avoid cuddling just because there are times when there is no cuddling.
Remember this innocent, yet pleasurable moment when you are embroiled in a squabble with your GF and your sense of innocent pleasure is severely shaken. Then you will know how to perceive it, in light of the Four Noble Truths.
True, but what if one opens ones heart and mind to the good moments, and closes them to the bad? There are not so many moments where one truly experiences unsatisfactoriness. Anyway, they build character, or so I am told. One should put ones est leg forward and do something about it. Gird those loins. Apply fortitude. And so on.
Not always so.
"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same...."
A good and happy situation is unsatisfactory, because it will end.
A bad and unhappy situation is unsatisfactory because it happens at all.
The heart should be open top both.
One should embrace both.
Both have an effect, it's just that one is heads, the other tails.....
Both will pass.
Both are ephemeral.
Both should be paid attention to, at the time, and emotions should be observed arising and manifesting.
Both should be released.
Alright so the problem appears to be the fleetingness of the moment. But let's try a thought experiment. What's so bad about it being temporary? After a couple of hours of cuddling, one of us is probably going to have to get up to have a drink of water or go to the restroom. A few more hours, even if the cuddle session is pleasurable, and one of us is likely to get bored. I'm OK with that.
To carry it a bit farther, if we were blissed out all the time (say in the sense of being on a permanent heroin or oxytocin high), wouldn't the thrill of the high wear off and get boring?Furthermore, probably not much would get done and there'd be little desire for personal or spiritual growth.
My fiancee and I haven't had a good fight in ages. Maybe it's time to test your theory.
You misunderstand the 4 noble truths, Buddha does not say life is suffering he says Samsara is suffering, Samsara is the cycle of contaminated rebirth and death, there are situations that we derive TEMPORARY pleasure from but they are just that temporary pleasures. Buddha teaches several different levels of teaching for us for those who are more inclined to personal liberation Buddha teaches us how to abandon our attachment, for those of us who rather like our attachments Buddha teaches a special method (Tantra) in which we do not abandon our attachments but transform them to help release us from Samsara and its causes.
In this day and age we rarely want to abandon our enjoyments so it is wise to seek a method that helps you reconcile them with the path to liberation, this is why Buddha taught the Tantric paths.
The problem isn't that it is fleeting. The problem is how we suffer when we no longer have that moment of happiness/pleasure. The happiness is temporary and Buddhism is about being able to find happiness that isn't based on temporary pleasures. That means accepting equally the moments of joy in cuddling and the moments without cuddling without longing for it. The longing when we don't have something we enjoy is the suffering. It isn't about finding a way to stay in that bliss/joy forever. It's in completely accepting that it's impossible to do so and to equally accept all moments.
If you meet The Buddha on the road, give them a cuddle.
Iz plan!
Thanks for the response @karasti. This was a little confusing for me at first. I thought that I could let go of the cuddling and continue on my merry way with the life. But then I thought about it like this; if I were suddenly thrown into solitary confinement for the rest of my life, would I long for cuddles? Probably, yes.
Exactly the point I was making.
@nakazcid
When you can see that an attachment to anything corresponds to sufferings creation then most of the Buddha/Dharma begins to make much more sense.
Then the question is just "Is this cuddling in any way an attachment for anyone or not?
The question I'd ask myself is...
Would this cuddling in question cost me my equanimity
if I want to have it and it is not provided
or if I don't want it and it is provided
or if any of my expectations around it are not met?
Here, what causes Dukkha and what extinguishes Dukkha
morphs from formally being processes of mystery
into states of personal responsibility.
Thanks for the elaboration, @how
It just seems like a relentlessly negative worldview. All experience, "good" or "bad", pleasurable or unpleasurable, is going to come back to torment you. All existence is a steaming pile of doggy poo. Yes, I know there's the third noble truth, but it seems impossibly distant and out of reach.
I need some time to think about this...
the point of practice is to realize it doesn't have to torment you. Part of the Four Noble Truths is, that we suffer because of those things. Part of practice of the Eightfold Path is to realize that it doesn't have to. That we can train our minds differently rather than succumb to that suffering. It isn't that existence is a pile of poo, it's that our thinking about it makes it seem so. And we have the amazing ability to change the way we think about it so that that is not how we experience it anymore.
It is confusing, and hard to grasp. It's one of those things that kind of "clicks" and it's not nearly so dark sounding is it seems when you are first trying to understand. I walked away from Buddhism many years ago because of that. But it was an incorrect understanding on my part (and a bad college text that explained it poorly). When I really started to understand it, it was incredibly freeing rather than steaming poo torment. The steaming poo is how I was living before. But not anymore.
That doesn't mean I don't still experience negative emotions or really hard times in life. I just am better capable of dealing with them now. I also understand that all this line we are fed from the time we are young children that we need to always be looking for ways to be happy all the time is the steaming pile of poo. You cannot have happy without the sad. Both are ok. We are not meant to seek out one and attempt to never feel the other. We are meant to realize we will experience both and that both are ok. That we shouldn't constantly strive for happy while pushing away the sad, and that true bliss and joy is in realizing that.
@nakazcid
While our worldview represents the view of a self verses other mentality, this view inevitably ends up being adversarial or defensive and a spiraling into greed, hate and delusion.
When our worldview represents views that illuminate our delusions that there is a self that can be separated from others, then such views can manifest as the transcendence of greed, hate and delusion.
What we typically fear to lose, is only a dreamer dreaming about it's own validity.
Don't let an idea of some type of future perfection, stop you from waking up to the only present nano second that we can do anything in.
Cheers
Howard
@nakazcid you sound a bit like a kid who's had his balloon burst by the class bully...
In fact, once you come to terms with all things being transitory, an not let it bother you so much, but gladly greet each day as an opportunity to grow, live well in joy and engage with others with a Wise and Compassionate mind-set - in other words, just 'let go' - you'll feel better
here, have a lollipop....