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Don't we create our own suffering?
ravkes
Veteran
So most people can provide for themselves (food, water, security).. that's reality (how the world works)..
Past that, isn't it just a trip of your own self-creation?
All desires, clinging, attachments, labels, suffering.. isn't it all there because YOU want it to be there? Because YOU do it to yourself?
Even with physical pain, it's pain. YOU create the suffering around it, YOU attach to the drama.
And most people don't even have to deal with physical pain regularly anyways..
Isn't life then just left for you to enjoy as you choose if you choose to live it? What prevents anybody from enjoying life? Doesn't enjoyment come from US and not necessarily what you're doing or what's happening? It's just a state of mind that YOU choose to create..
This entire universe is YOUR creation.. The key to happiness and the end of suffering is just having that mindset is it not?
Like seriously, we do it to ourselves (create the problem) then ask for help about it.. WHAAA?! I've done this before, how idiotic. When all it is, is just a simple freakin' choice. Between suffering and not suffering about what happens..
UMMM .. I choose not suffering.
Past that, isn't it just a trip of your own self-creation?
All desires, clinging, attachments, labels, suffering.. isn't it all there because YOU want it to be there? Because YOU do it to yourself?
Even with physical pain, it's pain. YOU create the suffering around it, YOU attach to the drama.
And most people don't even have to deal with physical pain regularly anyways..
Isn't life then just left for you to enjoy as you choose if you choose to live it? What prevents anybody from enjoying life? Doesn't enjoyment come from US and not necessarily what you're doing or what's happening? It's just a state of mind that YOU choose to create..
This entire universe is YOUR creation.. The key to happiness and the end of suffering is just having that mindset is it not?
Like seriously, we do it to ourselves (create the problem) then ask for help about it.. WHAAA?! I've done this before, how idiotic. When all it is, is just a simple freakin' choice. Between suffering and not suffering about what happens..
UMMM .. I choose not suffering.
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Comments
yes, unknowingly (because of ignorance), in the Buddhist context.
this is why it is also up to you to remedy the problem.
I don't think so
But understanding that whatever happens in reality, life, the universe.. whatever you want to call it happens and we have a CHOICE about whether or not we want to suffer it.
That is our gift, our freedom.
Meditation has shown me that we have a choice over HOW we experience reality, not necessarily WHAT we experience in it all the time.
"What we think, we become."
Buddha
Thank you.
EVERYTHING is in the eye of the beholder.
When you know that it burns to put your hand in a fire, you stop doing it. Likewise when you know which ways of thinking, speaking and acting lead to suffering you stop doing them. Hence Buddhism. Hence the Noble Eightfold Path and all of the teachings meant to awaken us to how reality actually works, to destroy that ignorance.
The Meaning of the Buddha's Awakening
by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
© 1997–2011
The two crucial aspects of the Buddha's Awakening are the what and the how: what he awakened to and how he did it. His awakening is special in that the two aspects come together. He awakened to the fact that there is an undying happiness, and that it can be attained through human effort. The human effort involved in this process ultimately focuses on the question of understanding the nature of human effort itself — in terms of skillful kamma and dependent co-arising — what its powers and limitations are, and what kind of right effort (i.e., the Noble Path) can take one beyond its limitations and bring one to the threshold of the Deathless.
As the Buddha described the Awakening experience in one of his discourses, first there is the knowledge of the regularity of the Dhamma — which in this context means dependent co-arising — then there is the knowledge of nibbana. In other passages, he describes the three stages that led to insight into dependent co-arising: knowledge of his own previous lifetimes, knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of all living beings, and finally insight into the four Noble Truths. The first two forms of knowledge were not new with the Buddha. They have been reported by other seers throughout history, although the Buddha's insight into the second knowledge had a special twist: He saw that beings are reborn according to the ethical quality of their thoughts, words, and deeds, and that this quality is essentially a factor of the mind. The quality of one's views and intentions determines the experienced result of one's actions.
This insight had a double impact on his mind. On the one hand, it made him realize the futility of the round of rebirth — that even the best efforts aimed at winning pleasure and fulfillment within the round could have only temporary effects. On the other hand, his realization of the importance of the mind in determining the round is what led him to focus directly on his own mind in the present to see how the processes in the mind that kept the round going could be disbanded. This was how he gained insight into the four noble truths and dependent co-arising — seeing how the aggregates that made up his "person" were also the impelling factors in the round of experience and the world at large, and how the whole show could be brought to cessation. With its cessation, there remained the experience of the unconditioned, which he also termed nibbana (Unbinding), consciousness without surface or feature, the Deathless.
Now if you could simply choose to get rid of suffering, everybody would become enlightened in a second, because they just want to. But obviously that can't be done. However, you can work towards the removal of suffering by following the path.
In reference to your second paragraph, it is a bit of a learning process. It's like one re-engineers his mind in order to see things as they actually are. I've seen that the majority of suffering is held within thinking as we constantly give rise to thoughts that are not aligned with reality.. The 8fold path is essential in helping us move towards removing the ignorance that really we've been born into and perpetuated unknowingly..
LOL, I basically rewrote what you wrote Cloud haha, but yeah.
Well said.
And so we come back to craving (with ignorance) being the cause, as stated in the Second Noble Truth. We want to be happy. That's not a bad thing, but there's only one way to go about being happy that has eradicated suffering, and that's becoming unfettered from all of these clinging views.
It's a mistranslation of the first two verses of the Dhammapada.
With an emphasis on 'Mistranslation'....
That got mistranslated?
"What we think, we become." doesn't really say that... it's more generalized and can be taken different ways.
Karma shows how only we can free ourselves, no one can do it for us. We have to align our thoughts, speech and action with how reality actually is, and this conditions the mind toward awakening. That's the whole purpose of the Noble Eightfold Path (how it works).
So yeah, as far as I know karma is all about the mind. That's why the first verse of the Dhammapada says if you speak or act with an impure mind (meaning impure intent), suffering is bound to follow you. It all connects.
A lot of the time karma is taken in the wrong way, or people bundle it with rebirth as a superstitious/supernatural teaching (possibly even throwing it out!), but really it's important to understand because of what it shows us about our choices leading to either wholesome or unwholesome results.
But in the actual experience sometimes we are using the wrong faculty to make that choice. When we force things in a conceptual way of 'us' doing something. When really it is a sensitive awareness to the present rather than a conceptual thing. Of course we are also sensitive to concepts!
Sutra:
A foolish passing thought makes one an ordinary man, while an enlightened
second thought makes one a Buddha.
Therefore, once concentrates on the Buddha’s name with utmost sincerity and one-pointedness of mind, for that moment he becomes an awakened person silently merging into the stream of the Sages – can Enlightenment and Buddhahood then be that far away?15 As the Meditation Sutra states: “the Land of Amitabha Buddha is not far from here!”
There once was a little worm living happily in an apple and eating it away slowly, day by day. He didn’t lack anything. In fact all he needed was food, and food was all around him. But one day he started to do philosophy, or more formally – to investigate the principles of being. He wondered whether the apple core was all there was and whether the meaning of life consisted of nothing else but eating it away. He asked his fellow worms about this, but they didn’t know either and had never asked such questions. They sent him to the oldest worm, but neither did he know. “Why do you ask such questions?” he replied. “There is nothing more to life than chewing up this tasty apple. I could teach you several ways of chewing it, of shaping beautiful galleries through it or of digging faster than other worms, but stop asking such nonsense”. So the little worm gave up his philosophical inquiry and dedicated himself to the routine of a normal worm’s life. But one day he took a big bite and was suddenly blinded by the light of the sun. He fell out of the apple and landed on the ground. The only reality he knew had ended. But it was too late for him to learn from his experience, as the ants rapidly took him to their nest and ate him. Ignorance is not bliss.
Aya Khema