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Impermanence, DO, etc.
techie
India Veteran
In Buddhism, there is no such thing as permanence.
No entity has an independent existence.
Even ideas evolve over a period of time.
What we think or feel changes over time.
In this context, consider happiness or virtue, love or creativity, or the good things in life. Are they not subject to DO (dependent origination) and therefore have no intrinsic worth?
Consider happiness, for example. It does NOT exist as a permanent, unchanging entity somewhere that we can go and grasp. It is the result of various conditions. When those conditions are fulfilled, we are happy. If not, we are unhappy.
So wouldn't DO/impermanence render our search futile?
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Comments
That, @techie, is a clear description of one aspect of dukkha, the pursuit of lasting happiness in conditioned things, inevitably futile. But while dependent origination constructs one reality (samsara), its deconstruction reveals another (nibbana).
I would say so because they depend on others and are of the nature to change.
This does not logically follow. It makes them even more precious.
If we are searching for happiness instead of actually choosing happiness then yes it can get pretty disheartening especially without a positive understanding of impermanence.
However, with a positive understanding of impermanence our search could be rendered futile just as finding my glasses on my forehead renders my search for my glasses futile.
We are all quite literally in this together... The logic of compassion and happiness without an opposite in dukkha stems from a proper understanding of D.O.
Of course it is my understanding so obviously I could be biased.
I think I half agree. They have no intrinsic worth in the sense that the good things in life aren't good in and of themselves, they are only considered good because of their relation to people. In other words, there isn't some kind of happiness essence within them, they only create happiness in people because of the make up of human beings. But I disagree with any sense that it's all pointless, so why bother in the statement.
I think you could also look at like better or worse rather than good or bad. Good and bad have the notion of something fixed, immutable regardless of the situation. Better and worse are changeable and relative depending on circumstance.
From one point of view happiness is still better than suffering even if temporary.
From another, this is the definition of samsara and a good reason to let go of the struggle. When we let go and renounce we aren't simply left with a grey void, there is peace and bliss underneath.
Search is futile but finding is as others mention, dependent on non-attached searching. Who is crazy enough to seek for non-searching (lobster raises claw)?
Impermanence is a constant/permanent. Ay caramba! Will it ever change to unchanging? Not in this do-do ... How do we get done? We get done with dependence/attachment and become free/changing/unattached ... It's dharma dude.
Same questions? No questions? Indubitably!
I think that when it comes to "Happiness" from a Buddhist point of view (taking into account Conditioned, Impermanence & DO) the happiness that is spoken of is "Unconditional" no strings attached
I guess one could say a sense of well being ... a sense of finding the contentment that comes with accepting what is....Like knowing intuitively to...
..
Dhammapada Twin Verses
Unconditional Happiness (so it would seem) comes from knowing & accepting that one can't always be happy...in the conventional sense
)
Change is inevitable...Suffering is optional
Understanding that our experiences are conditional and transient is very liberating. We can appreciate our experiences without grasping at them.
This is essentially what the Heart Sutra is describing.
That may be, but how is any of this spiritual or liberating? Seems like a mundane, worldly path, with some hippie wisdom added to it. And I don't mean this in a sarcastic way. Just that Buddhism, when deconstructed, appears so.
I would say that there is a difference between sitting around in a drum circle, smoking dope and talking about this stuff and what it does to the mind when taken to heart in a meaningful way.
That, for all the world, sounds like someone constructing an Ikea flatpack with instructions in a different language to theirs.
Another perspective from the Agamas outlines how it is liberating.
Peace, love and ... disenchantment?
Damn hippies new-agers!
That would be true of worldly happiness because the things that it depends on have the same impermanent quality.
For worldly happiness sure. But not for the happiness of enlightenment.
When that happens, that happiness is permanent because those things, that obscure it, are permanently gone.
Happiness is not a result nor a search.
It is not dependent on external conditions.
It is a state of inner peace which comes from the acceptance of impermanence as a fact of life and of life as it really is, not as we want it to be.
We can be happy beyond any conditions and we don't need to search what we already carry within.
What is futile is opposing what IS, rather than simply accepting it.
We can come to understand karma or in other words what makes us happy and unhappy. That's one thing.
And then we can see things are impermanent to help with attachment.
And we can see how all other beings are suffering and help them out when we can.
As a non-saint, I try to be good or at least not naughty. However it is a hard ... wait for it
practice
You knew?
We get more refined or subtle at it ...
The Middle Way is between happiness and unhappiness. Peace is what you're looking for.
@seeker242’s post highlights a good point in yours, @techie.
This not-worldly happiness depends on the temporal condition of reflecting on the absence of the taints. It wouldn't induce craving, clinging, etc., leading to dukkha, because the taint of greed is absent, so DO wouldn't occur. I’d disagree with this small point in @seeker242’s clear analysis: that instance of happiness-on-tap would be impermanent.
The same would hold for positive virtues. Any instance of right speech, for example, in a positive form of being truthful, conciliatory, kind or beneficial would be conditional and impermanent. But the same wouldn't apply to right speech in its negative form, the absence of deceptive, divisive, harsh or idle speech. So long as that restraint is maintained, wrong speech is absent, and the joy and happiness of blamelessness in regard to speech, another form of unworldly happiness, is always accessible by reflection.
As @seeker242 alluded, negative virtue as absence of the taints can be permanent. Whether there's something or nothing, the taints are absent. In this case, there's something, a taint-free monk, permanently free of greed, hatred and delusion. The last, delusion (moha), is the active form of the passive condition of ignorance, (avijja), the root of DO. Permanently absent the catalyst, DO can't occur, dukkha can't come to be.
I'm unclear about this (maybe there's a paradox or some missing IQ points), but I think the above makes the concept of intrinsic worth inapplicable in this context. What doesn't exist can't have intrinsic worth, yet the permanent non-existence of the taints is the circumstance valued. The absence doesn't depend on anything. “It” is a permanent, unconditioned and negative virtue. From reflection on “it” arises “the happiness of enlightenment.”
OP, in Mahayana Buddhism there definitely is permanence. The Buddha's Parinirvana Sutras were all about that. Buddhanature is permanent, for example. Enlightenment, once attained, is permanent.
That is why the quest for Enlightenment is not futile.
The way I've heard it is that Buddhanature is not exactly understood with our assumptions of time.
edit: in other words if we try to think of it with our concept of time we end up with funny ideas like 'buddhanature' is like a backpack of karma or whatever that hops from this life to the next life.