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Dukkha....That's life !
Shoshin
No one in particularNowhere Special Veteran
Kia Ora,
Happiness is dukkha...Sadness is dukkha....That's life....
Don't Underestimate Karma Keep Highly Aware
What's your personal understanding of dukkha ? (How you are experiencing it)
I'm under the impression most members here have developed a fair understanding of dukkha as they go about their daily lives, so please try not to quote from the suttas, but if you must, you must (you won't lose any brownie points if you do) . 
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In a nutshell...What is dukkha ?
Metta Shoshin . 
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Comments
I have said this before and I'll say it again, but in a slightly more refined way, and it's heart is found within the 4NT's
I believe the buddha taught that there is dukkha, because he saw that we lived our lives in a certain way. He clearly saw that we have what amounts to an unquenchable thirst for life and what it offers: pursuing happiness, substantiality and delight, but without realising that everything in life seen in this way has a polar opposite, namely sadness, emptiness and darkness. And when these opposites arise we reject them as something which might be viewed as unfair.
By showing us that there is dukkha, and that our desire for life is trishna (thirst or craving) he enabled a balanced view. And so in balancing the view such that we can accept that we cannot have good without bad, light without dark, love without hate etc, we are destined to find the middle way as the awakened state of equanimity and understanding aka cessation or Nirvana. This is the yin and yang. The sweet and the sour. However, we tend to remain ignorant of this fact, so for cessation to continue, we need to be constantly aware of this state of affairs. It can be harder to realise than it seems?
So yes there may be dukkha, but theres something else that comes with it. Enjoy it when it arises!
Shinzen Young is a complete Buddhist geek, and has a formula for suffering (dukkha) that rings my chimes.
Suffering = Discomfort X Resistance (Suffering equals Discomfort multiplied by Resistance).
He has some other formulas, here's a Youtube vid where he explains four of them.
What do you mean by 'happiness is Dukkha'?
I am sure it is a misunderstanding @Jeffrey, which I have attempted to demonstrate, but, hey - That's life!
Happiness is also a samsaric pleasure, To me it is like a poison in candy wrap.
So when you have achieved Nirvana and can disappear from this samsaric realm - what do you think awaits you @Meatball that you can't experience here and now?
I thought after nirvana, it is natural peaceful but beyond conventional happiness and sadness.
I think it depends what you mean by happiness. I recall happiness in Samahitas daily lessons in his posts. He is a monk so seems legit. Maybe someone who knows the sutras can help @Victorious @Jason
I would say that you can be naturally peaceful now, with happiness and sadness as male-female bed-fellows? It just requires a certain view of yourself and of the world... You don't need a sutra (or other persons interpretation) to validate your personal experience to tell you what is right or wrong @Jeffrey.
I was interested in the differences between male and female myself anataman. How does happiness and sadness relate to the sexes? It's probably hard to explain, right? If you are interested in this let's start a thread
I think any kind of samsaric pleasures are impermanent and also cause one to develop attachment to it, which will eventually cause suffering. They also make hard let go ego because it is ego that is making one to indulge in it.
Yes, the happiness that rely on external source. Nirvanic happiness is permanent because it is internal and doesn't depends on external source, I think.
@Meatball, what would you think the inside eternal is? Is it our feelings? Just Curious.
Not at all if you don't want me to put it into words @Jeffrey ... \ lol / ....
However, I won't, I'll just describe what I see:
Everything in experience fits neatly together in my world view. In fact it's so neat you cannot see how it's stitched together. Whilst I do not see that male is sad (per se) and female is happy (per se), there is something brilliantly unique about how things fit and come together, bring forth life or events, and dissolve again into nothing, that I, for what I am worth at any rate can't marvel at it. So like my profile avatar the male and female are both independently separate yet simultaneously create something complete and whole.
I am happy to contribute to a thread on the masculine and feminine - but I need to know what aspect to assume.
@Meatball - please deliver up to me your ego that is a permanent and independent fact of your life and will stand up to the most rigorous scrutiny? And I will demonstrate unequivocally that it does not exist... But first you must define your ego...
Only kidding! I wouldn't do that to you as I don't know you well enough, but you can do it for yourself, and take it gently - go study Nagarjuna's philosophy
The thought gives it away!
Transformed mind that is free of ignorance and ego.
@anataman like you said the male and female are constituents of life. Just as the four elements. I'll try to start the ball rolling.
Just a few questions @Meatball:
"> Only kidding! I wouldn't do that to you as I don't know you well enough, but you can do it for yourself, and take it gently - go study Nagarjuna's philosophy"
Okay, thanks. I am going to see if I can find any books on Nagarjuna.
if we have (bodily or mentally) painful feeling that itself is Dukka
if we have (bodily or mentally) pleasant feeling but we can not keep it without changing, so that also becomes Dukka
You might find these interesting reading and a leapfrog as I did @Meatball:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna
http://zen-ua.org/wp-content/uploads/avatamsaka_sutra_english.pdf
http://www.inquiringmind.com/Articles/Enlightenments.html
I feel like I have a better intellectual understanding of what enlightenments are after reading this article by Jack Kornfield.
Kia Ora @Jeffrey,
That which is impermanent...
Metta Shoshin .
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First of all, happiness is sukkha, @Shoshin, not dukkha.
I look upon samsaric pleasures as a temporary, even if illusory, respite from the blatant truth that life is basically dukkha.
As such, samsaric pleasures are not to be frowned upon per se. It's rather our attachment to them that we have to keep in check and on our insistence on trying to prolong what by nature is impermanent.
So, if we can go about our daily life in perfect awareness of the truth of impermanence and that it is our futile attachment to these fleeting respites of samsaric pleasures that engenders affliction, we can guiltlessly enjoy them while they happen.
But then again, that's the hedonist in me speaking... And it's almost three in the morning here in Europe, so maybe I need some sleep...
GUILTLESSLY enjoy your sleep @dharmamom.
When all is viewed as fleeting and impermanent, what is there to cling to - really?
Kia Ora @dharmamom,
Sleep well....
(It looks like @anataman answered it for me) but anyway....
The experience of happiness in samsara (which normally comes with conditions attached - a desire for it to last), is dukkha due to the impermanent nature of all things...
Hence why (in samsara) happiness is dukkha just as sadness is dukkha...
Thus I have heard (In a nutshell)
Dukkha=the wheel is hard to turn... Sukkha=the wheel turns freely...
Metta Shoshin .
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To the pillow, I guess, @anataman.
Good night to everyone!
You haz plan! I bringz . . . virtual mousse . . .
:buck: .
Dukkha is not easy to see as it may seem in terms of developing right view. Seeing or realizing dukkha then easily falling victim to dukkha is not really "seeing" dukkha. Yes happiness can become dukkha easily in some situations. Yep that's life, but also try to enjoy the good things that's available.
Heretic!
What are you some kinda Tantrist? Go find a corpse to meditate on before you die of shamelessness . . .
The power of mousse compels you . . .
I think the noble truth of suffering is that all mental states leads to suffering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths
Even happiness once lost induces craving/desire for that happy state again. This is I think the second form of Dukkha. Vipariṇāma.
But the path to liberation needs desire too. So dhamma seperates Tanha from Chanda.
Simply put Chanda is the desire to follow the path and achieve nibbana. It is the last desire that is dissolved.
But sometimes the suttas use these words interchangeably. So it is complicated...
It helps me to see dukkha not as an isolated characteristic but to think of it as one aspect; as one of the three marks of existence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence
They describe reality as a process that is based on previous processes and can only lead to following processes.
There’s no more-substantial rock-bottom of reality underlying it.
Dukkha when taken in such a context is not a qualification, saying things are not good enough or something like that. It is more like one finger that points at emptiness and at the possibility of awakening.
Clinging to one or more of the 5 skandhas is dukkha.
I would say that dukkha is easy to see, or rather to experience.
What we fail to see through lack of right view, lack of wisdom or lack of good judgment is how we ourselves create the conditions for dukkha to arise and keep festering.
Especially how we tend to re-create more dukkha while foolishly searching for its opposite, happiness, in all the wrong places possible.
The important thing is to accept that dukkha is simply inevitable. There is self-created dukkha and there is the dukkha that comes with the fact of being entrapped in our set of skandhas in this samsaric loop. So it is. That is the First Noble Truth.
But the third and fourth Noble Truths are about what we can do to create beautiful lives for ourselves despite dukkha.
And well, happiness that turns to dukkha was probably not real happiness in the first place. It's important for us to learn to point out the difference.
And I totally agree with you, @namarupa, "try to enjoy the good things available."
The mind is formless so can't make physical transformation. I meant like cleaning lenses of my glasses so that I can see things clearly as they are, not how they appear. Yes , it is possible if I can gain more wisdom.
Actually I don't have to try to get rid of ignorance. If I can gain more and more wisdom, ignorance will lose it's power by itself. My mind is not my ego, but ignorance makes it believe it is.
It means gaining realization of emptiness through Dharma. Yes, it is possible and I have already made up my mind to get this phugger out ones and forever.
Ego believes it exist independently on its own, while mind doesn't exist in its own. It is continuation of previous mind.
The important thing is to accept that dukkha is simply inevitable.
But if that were true then the cessation of dukkha would be impossible, and the 3rd and 4th Noble Truths wouldn't make sense.
Or do you mean that dukkha is inevitable while ignorance, craving and aversion persist?
Dukkha is inevitable in any situation.
How we face that Dukkha, is what needs to be modified.
The Buddha said that Dukkha was one of the signs of Being . That it was one of the characteristics of all conditioned sentient life..along with Anatta and Anicca.
Dukkha can't be fixed. You might as well demand a world without ' up ' or a world without gravity, or a world without sour.
As long as we have sentient existence we will experience degrees of Dukkha..just as we experience gravity as long as we are embodied.
The Buddhas solution is far more radical than fixing it.
He says that what must be removed, by the arising of Insight, is the experiencer...is the apparent 'us '.
N o o o o o . . . . [screaming crustacean] . . . is it true? Is it really true, as long as we are in physical being we are in an unsatisfactory/dukkha condition? Mr Cushion is nodding in affirmation.
. . . wait just a minute 'samsara is nirvana' . . .
I iz happy again
. . . sure it will change . . . think I read something about 'impermanence' . . .
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence
:wave: .
I'm puzzled because this isn't what the 4 Noble Truths actually say.
The 1st truth is that dukkha exists ( not that it's inevitable ), the 2nd truth is that dukkha is caused by craving, the 3rd truth is that the cessation of dukkha is possible, the 4th truth is the way leading to the cessation of dukkha.
Is it really true, as long as we are in physical being we are in an unsatisfactory/dukkha condition?
Of course not! Otherwise nibbana ( freedom from dukkha ) would be impossible.
Of course it can - by removing craving, aversion and ignorance.
That's the whole point of the 3rd and 4th Noble Truths.
Samsara is Nirvana said Nagarjuna..Just as long as emptiness of self is realised .
And no one to realise it.
It all arises in mutual dependence..we, cats, cushions, stars, pain, pleasure, hotdogs, tofu, bacteria, the very cosmos..All arising, all passing, all empty of self.
Nothing to fix.
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Surely, if it exists, it's inevitable that we experience it? I haven't met one single human that says it exists, but it's evitable - just by deciding to avoid it....
Dukkha is caused by US craving. Again, craving is not a process that can exist on its own...
The cessation of dukkha is possible (Guess what? We have to do the leg-work)
along the way leading to the cessation of dukkha.
Unless we move, we stagnate,. It's up to us.
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And who has to do that removing? we do.
It's not WHAT afflicts us. It's what WE do with it. How WE cope with it.
The Buddha came to teach us how to ';end' suffering. But elsewhere, I have seen the term 'transcend'. In other words, the crap is always there. Do we lament the stench and amount, or use it to feed the roses?
The Buddha still knew suffering, right up to the end. Suffering did not Cease for him. Which is why I prefer the term 'transcend'. He suffered, but did not let the suffering afflict him.
I assume you mean nothing to fix except self-view? And I assume you accept that nirvana is a state free from dukkha?
When you say the Buddha still knew suffering, do you mean he still experienced dukkha, or do you mean he still experienced physical pain and disease?
If you're saying he still experienced dukkha then this directly contradicts the 3rd truth, the cessation of dukkha.
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If you're saying he still experienced dukkha then this directly contradicts the 3rd truth, the cessation of dukkha.
Physical pain and disease is still dukkha. It is one of the two arrows.
And as I said, the Buddha still experienced Dukkha, even though it was merely the physical type. He didn't cease suffering, he transcended suffering.
Like I said. Cessation to me, is not an adequate interpretation. Just as 'suffering' is not a good interpretation of the word 'dukkha'.
LOL
How's that 'possibility' working out for ya? I haz mousse . . . nothing for you . . . too wikid? I know, we can eat the air and leave the ingredients . . . well you can . . . :wave: .
And if emptiness of self is not realized? What then?
Dukkha.