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Is suffering that big of a deal?
I am afraid I am getting a bit hung up on this one. Yes there is suffering, but part of growing up and becoming a mature adult is coming to terms with reality, being independent, learning to be content and to enjoy the little things, and not craving what you cannot have, should not have, or don't really need within your present means. This just seems like basic life stuff, stuff which I never would have thought about building a religion around.
Is there more to suffering than I am getting? Was there a great deal more daily suffering in the time of the Buddha, and thus the need for a practice which emphasized it over other things? And if there was,then wouldn't that make Buddhism, like all other religions, a product of a time, place, and personality, subject to update and reinterpretation and/or shifting emphasization?
Psychology, perhaps because it is a science and more open to review and scrutiny, has shifted from an emphasis on suffering to an emphasis on happiness within a little more than a century.
Whats the deal with suffering?
Is there more to suffering than I am getting? Was there a great deal more daily suffering in the time of the Buddha, and thus the need for a practice which emphasized it over other things? And if there was,then wouldn't that make Buddhism, like all other religions, a product of a time, place, and personality, subject to update and reinterpretation and/or shifting emphasization?
Psychology, perhaps because it is a science and more open to review and scrutiny, has shifted from an emphasis on suffering to an emphasis on happiness within a little more than a century.
Whats the deal with suffering?
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Comments
<table id="sortable_table_id_0" class="wikitable sortable" border="1"><tbody><tr><th>Drug
This is not true! Much of western psychology is focused on understanding past issues, or interacting with the present clear from mental problems. Your misconception about Buddhism's focus on suffering might account why you consider it 50% poop.
Your mind might do better to think of it as a study of the causes of confusion and mental stress? Much like learning to drive might be described as the cessation of accidents, so is Buddhism a way to avoid mental accidents. I've always regarded it as a method of practice that leads toward joy.
The trouble is, most people think they know how to drive, or that it is automatic, and accidents are just life. This is a fundamental misconception, as experienced practitioners will tell you.
Nobody ever teach you how to use it.
If you are lucky, you programmed it well when you were a kid.
If you are un-lucky, you will have many programs that create enormous amount of pain and misery.
Most people fall somewhere in between.
Either way it would be nice to learn to program the computer by ourselves, so we can choose and be the masters of our lives and not the victim.
If I may joke- just wait till the shit really hits the fan. Those things are much more easily said than done.
In this definition, suffering is what underlies much of the violence, war and hostility in the world. On the domestic front, it underlies things like drug addiction, child abuse and depression/anxiety disorders. On the international front, when suffering is mass-marketed and strategically propagandized, it can result in things like Germany after WWI, Bosnia in the 1990s, and Sudan in the 2000s.
One would hope that people would be able to take their adversity in stride naturally as "basic life stuff" but the fact is, so long as human beings are deceived about what really is the source of happiness in this world, suffering will continue to be a problem. A very big problem.
'suffering' in moderation helps one grow, but for some people they're under constant panic attacks, depression, physical pain, starvation, extreme financial troubles etc. etc.. Just because you luckily had a good moderate amount of suffering and were fortunate to shrug it off without getting shot in the face or raped as some people in this world are.. doesn't mean suffering isn't a big deal. It's a HUGE deal to a great number of people in the world .. the 3 billion that live under $2.50 a day.
i can't blame you though.. in our situations it's easy to live in our relatively rich bubbles
Wow, thats one of the best posts ive read in a while.
http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/the-issue-at-hand/
The Dalai Lama
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Buddhism probably applies today more than it did 2,500 years ago.
I agree that if you only had to go through the growing (and decaying) pains of life one time that wouldn't be so bad. Rebirth gives you the bigger picture of suffering. Remembering past lives (not just 1, 2, 3, not even 100, 1000, 1000000, but many universal expansion/contraction's worth) was one of the key events in the Awakening of the Buddha. If rebirth is true then this is not the only time you've had to be born or wear nappies or be breast fed or learn to walk, learn to talk, go to school, get a job, get married, get divorced, retire, get sick and die. It has happened countless times before (if rebirth is true). Do you really want to go through all of that again?! Besides, many of us human beings live in terrible circumstances; in the middle of war zones, poverty-stricken, orphans, etc.
Not only that, but we might not even be so fortunate to be human beings in our next life. We might be born as an ant or a spider or any number of different beings. Do you really want to be chased to your death by some gigantic being with a can of poison?
It's amazing how many things there are that aren't.
As I said, the emphasis has shifted in the past century, what you are speaking of is psychotherapy, which reached its peak in the early 20th century. There have been several large movements within the field since then, and today the dominant therapy is cognitive behavioral, which is essentially being mindful to align one's perception of reality with reality as it actually exist(there is more to it than that, but that is a good one sentence definition).
Not sure that I got the joke. Are you assuming that the shit has not hit the fan in my life? Why would you assume that?
Again with the assumptions. Bizarre. No one here knows me, so you should probably stop commenting on my level of suffering. I have experienced the suffering, and I have also experienced that life goes on, and that it is mostly beautiful. And if life is not beautiful for people, or they do not have the means to pursue happiness, then shouldn't we be advocating on their behalf for educational and economic development? Teaching and helping them to lift themselves from the pit of hell rather than learning to be ok with hell?
Not to be rude, but it is helpful for the reader if you put an argument before the conclusion.
Also I noticed last night as I looked around at the teachers who have supposedly reached enlightenment(or whatever)...they are not people I would ever want to have a cider with, and I do not think that i would ever want to be a person whom I would not like to have a cider with.
If you have the desire and the means to help others, then that is wonderful, I encourage you to do so! Generosity is often the first thing that the Buddha teaches to new disciples. This is a really good starting point, but it is not unique to Buddhism and it is not the whole of the Noble Eightfold Path.
Buddhism goes much deeper than that. If we accept that rebirth is true (and I know you don't currently accept it, that's fine - but for the sake of understanding what the Noble Eightfold Path is aimed at, let me try to explain further) then we will start to see that if we are born then we are subject to all of the problems that come later (such as aging, disease, death, etc.). This being the case, if we are not born, then we are not subject to the various forms of suffering that are inherent in having been born. So the highest goal in Buddhism is the ending of those causes which lead to future birth.
Generosity is good (but limited in its potential), keeping moral precepts is good (but limited). It doesn't matter how many problems we fix, there will always be new ones, this is the nature of the world. Having no further rebirth (leaving the world) is the highest good that human beings can achieve.
I think samsara might not be a huge deal, but to me nirvana is a big deal.
Interesting. Anymore details? Can I ask what you do practice and to what end you practice it?
Guyc: I appreciate your post, but they are equivalent to you telling me that there is a tea kettle orbiting the earth which is too small to be detected by any human technology, and I am telling you that there is not. I cannot prove that there is not, but the disproving of claims based solely upon traditions and wishful thinking is not my job to do. When someone is trying to illustrate a principle using some sort of supernatural phenomena, it just turns into fantasy fiction for me, and I have always preferred hard boiled detective stories.
I understand where you are coming from. Unfortunately, proving definitively that rebirth exists is, I believe, beyond the scope of scientific endeavor. Even before I was a Buddhist I was always fascinated with supernatural stuff, I wanted to know what, if any of it, is real and what is just old wives tales. One thing I came across was the research of the late Prof. Ian Stevenson into the claims of past life memories. Although his research cannot undeniably prove rebirth, it is at the very least thought provoking. I highly recommend checking out his case studies.
This might be a good place to start: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation01.html
With Metta,
Guy
Have you heard that old song Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive?: "You've got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative and don't mess with Mr. In-Between." The flipside of all this talk of the cessation of suffering is the cultivation of happiness and joy.
You mention the trend towards positive psychology. If you read a lot of the lay literature by positive psychologists (Martin Seligman, Tal Ben-Shahar, Sonja Lyubomirsky), you'll notice many of them incorporate quite a lot of practices either directly culled from Buddhism or very similar to many Buddhist practices. In The How of Happiness, for example, Lyubomirsky advocates doing gratitude exercises like writing letters of appreciation to someone who has helped you in your life. This is quite similar to the Buddhist practice of metta bhavana (cultivation of lovingkindness) in Buddhism. Lyubomirsky even mentions Buddhism by name throughout the book for its teachings on the benefits of practicing compassion as well as mindfulness. In The Pursuit of Perfect, Tal Ben-Shar illustrates how the myopic pursuit of external validation and gratification common to Americans can be a huge obstacle to true happiness. This mirrors Buddhist teaching on how worldly gratification ultimately doesn't lead to happiness as well as the teachings on how clinging too hard to a specific self-concept can lead to disappointment. He even advocates breath meditation, citing studies of Tibetan monks and longtime meditators who actually were able to rewire their brain for optimum happiness.
As for advocating for those for whom la vita non è bella, there is nothing unBuddhist about activism. Buddhism isn't about learning to be okay with Hell. It's about learning to see how we are creating our own Hell so that we are in a better position to nip it in the bud before it spirals out into things like depression or violence. It's not about a passive resignation to the cards that life deals us. It's about learning how to accept that life deals out cards to begin with, and making the best of what we have without causing harm to ourselves or others. This might sound simple, but it can actually be a rather hard path to navigate.
I don't need the lecture on logical argumentation. I'm fully aware of logical fallacies, however, I was typing on an iPod and didn't really have the time to type out a long explanation for my assertion. I thought I would make the distinction clear before the false idea was promoted further.
It's really hard to prove that Buddhism is a philosophy that is timeless and universal unless one delves deep into Buddhist philosophy. If you think suffering is the only tenet of Buddhism, I will let you do the studying for yourself rather than go through the pains to teach you Buddhist philosophy.
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Buddha did this two and a half thousand years ago. Perhaps the first misconception people have about Buddhism is it's about suffering. It's not, it's about escape from suffering, exactly the same as psychology.
Really? You don't think different schools review each others findings? You don't thing different people scrutinize each others opinions, just read this forum.
He starts:
He offers us the Dharma Seals to consider. In the Southern Transmission (Theravada), dukkha (suffering) is listed alongside anatmam (nonself) and nirvana as one of the Seals. Elsewhere, and TNH finds this more convincing, anitya (impermanence) replaces dukkha. and this wonderful chapter, to which I return again and again, concludes
This, of course, will not remove pain. As many of us have learned by hard experience, pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.
That is what the Buddha said he came to teach.
The origin, and the cessation of 'suffering'.
of course, it would be helpful to gain an insight into what a person's own personal definition of 'Suffering' is....
But then, the Buddha went on to teach what causes suffering.
And he also taught the best way to recognise it, appraise it, and release it.
I really don't see what the problem is.
Awareness practice says that if suffering is not a big deal to you then it is not..
You don't have to bend to an ideal. If its not a big deal then it is not.
As long as you understand that you cannot suppress suffering by denying it... but I wonder if suffering is present then? Maybe there is pain without confusion? That is a Zen idea for sure, and might be what you're expressing here.
Interestingly I made this post and I feel slightly depressed lately sometimes.
Bhante Vimalaramsi is a very experienced meditator with alot of insight. He's my favorite monk to listen to ATM. Except for the Dalai Lama I just love his voice lol. Anyways.
I am going to be honest and say I have not tried much of his advice but I am certainly going to try. I find the video itself excellent excellent excellent but that's based on my own quick judgement and intuition. What I like about it is his view on depression. Anyways here you go I hope it helps you and you learn from it.. and I'd encourage everyone to watch it. It's a pretty interesting perspective on depression and it could start a good discussion and I might start a threat. Anyways here you go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKTSeeS21Io
and another
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn_KILZYEkc
Can I ask a bit more about this? I'm still fairly new to bhuddism and I am struggling with both.
For example, say someone we have loved has died. Naturally, we will experience grief. Grief is a natural expression of our human capacity to connect deeply with others and to acknowledge that we are affected by their death. The death of our friend and the consequent grief is the first arrow. Oftentimes, however, we add a second arrow: perhaps on some level we are angry at the person for dying, or angry at the universe for letting people die, or angry at our own grief -- not wanting to experience it. Buddhism is about accepting that which we cannot change; early on the Buddha realized that things like aging, illness and death are an inevitable part of life, and peace was dependent on our truly learning to accept them as facts of our existence. That doesn't mean we don't feel grief. We do. But it means we allow the grief and the death it is responding to be as they are, without raging against it.
you can have a peaceful mind, even if the most terrible events happen in your life.
and you can have a life filled with misery and suffering, even if very little dramatic events happen in your life.
What happen in your life, many time you cannot avoid, you cannot control.
But how you react to what happen in your life will make the difference between a peaceful free mind and a tortured imprisoned mind.
For a crying heart, sometimes there is no theory.
Best wishes, dear friend. _/\_
They are events or stages or process...
Suffering is the result of reacting to these things in a unskillful way.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
Of course they are processes and events, but they are also clear sources of suffering for the unenlightened mind.
I'd venture to say the big majority of people react to these three instances of suffering in an unskillful way, since not many of us have the proper training in the Dharma to see these as mere events and processes.
Suffering IS optional for those who have found the Dharma and have properly applied it to their lives, but the for the vast majority of humans, death, aging and sickness ARE suffering/pain.
no. The source of suffering is their reaction.
They are not instance of suffering.
But i do agree that most people will react in unskillful manners.
no. for the majority of human, death, aging and sickness are events/process that people react unskillfully to, creating suffering.
No matter how they perceive it.
Things gets confusing real quick when you begin to switch around the name for the action and the reaction.
I see where you're coming from. Semantics aside, the reaction by normal unenlightened people to these processes/events, will indeed cause suffering, and that's all I was getting at.
Perhaps there is. I live a fairly simple life in terms of material things and I'm happy with that, but I still suffer a lot. Perhaps I am oversensitive, or perhaps I had a harder time than average, perhaps both. However, I suffer from terrible anxieties - for example that I don't do a good enough job as a parent/person/worker, or if I think there might be conflict. I am unable to relax, I never learnt how. I even had regular nightmares right up till my late 20s.
I am the type of person who steps in when other people need help, or when there's a crisis, and to most people that's the person they see. But privately I can have very strong visceral reactions to events and situations that other people might just shrug off. The kind of thing I mean is for example, I got so stressed about something last week (a legal situation that I've been dealing with on behalf of relatives) that I hardly slept for 5 days, and when I didn't control myself, I shook like a leaf for much of that time.
Obviously if I was a "better" person I wouldn't be like this, but I guarantee that I'm not the first person to have these kind of weaknesses.
As my practice develops, meditation will allow me to learn to calm myself, and to grow beyond this. At this time, I am still limited however. I know it's not logical or sensible to be like this, but the reaction comes before the reasoning.
This is what I'm counting on as well. I have only just started meditating and learning about Buddhism, but I hope that in time, I can be a better person in many ways and grow beyond my suffering and my attachments.
From what I've read and heard, it will take a while for the teachings to start permeating into my life, but once they do, I'm confident I'll be a happier and more fulfilled person.
Best of luck on your own journeys to all the members of this forum.
Whoa, that sounds very un-fun. This visceral response, does it coincide with a lot of mental rumination? It seems a shame that such an empathic, helpful person would experience a suffering this deep.
I hope you find some keys to your stress
With warmth,
Matt
To be fair I only usually get that bad maybe a couple of times a year.
Excessive rumination? Yes and no. I ruminate that much that I've even made myself a career out of it. It's usually stuff I'm putting to the back of my mind that sideswipes me like this, however.
Thank you both for your kind words though.