How did suffering begin?

nubuddh4

Maybe its not useful to think such thoughts but for a moment help me to ponder how suffering all started. If I understand correctly, we are here because of debts but I was wondering who originally created the debt to begin with?

lobster

You mean like a Cosmic Big Bank?

Here is something on psychological and banking on past and future withdrawals ...
https://thebuddhistcentre.com/westernbuddhistreview/two-meanings-karma

Are you saving or frittering? Do you feel entitled to credit?

federica

Can you be more specific regarding your concept of the meaning of 'debt'?

Jeroen

I think it is quite unlikely that financial, worldly concepts such as debt provide a spiritual motivation for being. From what I have seen and felt, the outer worlds are a place where your joys are what matter...

Bunks

It’s more important to focus on how to get out of suffering than worry about where it began. No one on here will ever be able to answer that question.

seeker242

Suffering begins with ignorance.

federica

Indeed. As this article outlines. However, the word 'debt' doesn't appear once. So I am curious, honestly, as to where @nubuddh4 found the notion that debt has anything to do with our suffering?

person

I believe the standard answer is that the ignorance that is the root of suffering has always been without beginning.

Imagining no beginning to something intuitively goes against our normal experience. Everything we know and see have beginnings and endings. But if you try to trace back cause and effect to a first cause it becomes logically problematic. For example, scientists have problems tracing back the Big Bang to a first cause, they can get back to trillionths of a second after the "start" but it all breaks down trying to explain a first cause.

"There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause."
~Bertrand Russell

Jeroen

Although... one could argue that ignorance is relative to one’s surroundings. If you live in a spiritual realm where there is no need to eat or have shelter, then there are vast swathes of suffering that you will never encounter.

As a baby the womb is a near perfect environment - always warm, always fed, always loved, all you have to do is grow. As soon as you leave the womb, you start to contact different facets of existence in our world such as the need for food, warmth, safety.

Snakeskin

Maybe its not useful to think such thoughts but for a moment help me to ponder how suffering all started.

As @person pointed out, the Buddha, in the Assu sutta, says “this samsara is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.”

It’s not entirely useless to think such thoughts, as in what is regarded as the Buddha’s first sermon, the Dhammacakkappavattana sutta, he says, “This noble truth of suffering is to be fully understood.”

If I understand correctly, we are here because of debts….

In the second noble truth, the Buddha says, “It is this craving that causes repeated becoming.” It’s craving that borrows, that turns the wheel, that spurs actions which incur debt, i.e., result, consequence, fruit. And just as the Buddha says in the first sermon that the first truth, suffering, should be understood, he also says the second one, the cause of suffering, craving, should be abandoned.

Back in the Assu Sutta (among my personal favorites), the Buddha continues:

For a long time, you have experienced the death of a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a son, a daughter, the loss of relatives, of wealth, of health; as you have experienced this, weeping and wailing because of being united with the disagreeable and separated from the agreeable, the stream of tears that you have shed is more than the water in the four great oceans. For what reason? Because this samsara is without discoverable beginning.”

Jeffrey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Nidānas

from the link above: The Twelve Nidānas (Pali: dvādasanidānāni, Sanskrit: dvādaśanidānāni, from dvāvaśa ("twelve") + nidānāni (plural of "nidāna", "cause, motivation, link")) is a doctrine of Buddhism where each link is asserted as a primary causal relationship between the connected links.[2][3] These links present the mechanistic basis of repeated birth, saṃsāra, and resultant duḥkha (suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness) starting from avidyā (ignorance, misconceptions).[2][a]

Shoshin

@nubuddh4 said:
Maybe its not useful to think such thoughts but for a moment help me to ponder how suffering all started. If I understand correctly, we are here because of debts but I was wondering who originally created the debt to begin with?

I blame Mr & Mrs Ignorance and their children Craving & Clinging...
The Cosmic Big Bank (being a bank...I think @lobster has shares in the bank ) freely gives out 'unlimited' karmic credit cards, (to any Tom Dick & Henrietta ) and Mr & Mrs Ignorance being Ignorant (none the wiser) decides to contact the bank and apply for one, they then make the mistake of letting their children Craving & Clinging have free 'unlimited' access...and next thing you know Mr & Mrs Ignorance find themselves in karmic debt up to the eyeballs

However thus have I heard... the Financial Mentor ( AKA The Buddha) came up with a foolproof karmic budget plan, which if followed diligently will eventually lead one out of debt... Well this is the plan

Tosh

@Bunks said:
It’s more important to focus on how to get out of suffering than worry about where it began. No one on here will ever be able to answer that question.

I think evolutionary science can offer an insight into suffering. Our brains have evolved to be geared up for survival, not for happiness. Mother Nature want's us on our toes, anxious, keeping an eye out for predators. She wants us out of our caves, grasping for stuff, like status, food and sex.

Mother Nature isn't keen on chilled peaceful animals who just sit about all day. They generally end up extinct.

Obviously a lot of our software is out of date; we usually don't need to keep an eye out for predators anymore (for example).

But your point is spot on.

Kundo

If you start with the 4 Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path, your understanding will naturally progress, then you can take on the rest.

David

I think it starts with self awareness. Once duality is perceived the truth gets a bit obscured through borders of convention.

I also think when talking about the beginning of anything we can only go by a case by case basis and not try to find a prime case.