Do you need to be jaded to become enlightened?
zenguitar
Bad BuddhistNew England Veteran
Greetings, patient Sangha. Here is another question that has been bothering me a little. As we all know, the Buddha was a prince who initially lived a sumptuous life in a palace full of inexhaustible luxuries and sense pleasures. By the time he left the palace to seek something more noble, I think it is pretty fair to say that he was kind of jaded toward those things, that is, weary of excessive sense pleasures. I am guessing that this attitude helped him achieve enlightenment more efficiently than others who are still caught up in those pleasures.
But of course the average person has never lived like an ancient Indian prince, and so the ordinary joe is unlikely to have the same world-weary attitude as Siddhartha Gautama when he left home. So I wonder, does this put us boring ordinary unprivileged folks at a disadvantage when it comes to losing our attachments to pleasure? Can you achieve enlightenment effectively without having a thorough experience of samsara first?
Comments
I don't think it's necessary to live an over-indulgent life of sin to experience the "proper" path like Gautama did.
The palace and its pleasures were Gautama's attachments. What are yours?
Good point @Invincible_summer. We get attached to whatever is in our immediate environment. The slum dweller is as attached to his special garbage cache as the Buddha was with his jewelry and beautiful women.
Again it's not the 'thing' or the 'object', it is our attachment to it that is the cause of suffering.
"Things" of the world are basically neutral until human beings get a hold them ... including atom splitting, projectiles, genetic engineering . . .
In theory, one can be a slum dweller, attached to all sorts of garbage, and 'bypass' the jewels and plush living, running water and fresh food and become Awake, having never experienced a soft bed. Once awake, theoretically, the slum dweller would sleep in a soft bed, find it quite lovely, but not find himself all attached and craving a soft bed. The conditions for craving and attachment are no longer there.
What you/we are attached to NOW are PLENTY enough trouble
. As for living such a plush life as Siddhartha did, well, that is something 99% will never even have on an expensive vacation. Thankfully all the 'necessary' material seems to be right in front of us, not out there somewhere.
Which underscores the SOURCE of our attachments is not 'out there' but 'in there', we carry it with us wherever we go
You ask good questions
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@zenguitar
If one likens suffering's cause to a fire that a Buddhist practitioner is working to extinguish......
Big fire or small .....we are all just firemen/women with a job to do.
but there is a Zen expression..
Small ignorance= small potential enlightenment experience
Big ignorance = a potentially big enlightenment experience.
This however actually only refers to a before /after comparison, and is not a statement that one enlightenment experience is preferable over the other.
It is more of an opportunity for a master to point out to a student who is spouting off about the size of their own experiences, that it isn't all that surprising to anyone considering what a doofas they been to teach to this point.
I like what @how quoted.
There you are with everything. Wife, newborn, luxury life. You give it up to live like an ancient street bum . . . oops holy yogurt . . .
Then . . . gawd knows how . . . realisation.
Oops you say. So humbled. So humiliated. You spend the rest of your life spreading the obvious. Gosh is that really how Buddhism started!
Maybe so. Maybe so . . .
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I think a better question is how much time you or anyone else would spend trying to gain and experience the good life. Then when you have used so much of your effort to that end there is little time left for anything else.
That was not what motivated him. He saw the ugly side reality when he went out to see the outside world. That made him think deeply about life.
Here is the video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YsEksMEE2Eg
I'm not so sure that in many ways even someone of a lower economic status in the west doesn't live better than an ancient Indian prince did. Running water, electricity, magically disappearing poo, portable musicians you can carry in your pocket.
Jaded means that you see the downside, the suffering side of something. So, yes, I do think one needs to be jaded towards a thing to want to be rid of it. Maybe you're not all that jaded to some things but since you are here I assume there must be something.
If you don't want to give up certain things then don't, just try to notice the negative aspects and maybe over time your attachment will lessen.
I don't think you have to be a prince in a palace to become weary of worldly pleasures. They wear on me, and I work on simplifying our lives as much as we can, and we are barely middle class, much less rich. I think for most people, regardless of station in life, there is a sense of boredom, un-fullfilledness (I made that up, lol) or whatever because they seek change. You don't have to be privileged to get to that point. But you have to realize there is something else to start to seek it (or at least I did, I didn't know what to seek until I realized I was not content in my life).
Zen,
If you want to have better understanding about suffering and how it motivates people, you should also watch the video about Melarepa. There was a video at YouTube, but I couldn't find it. Maybe you should try Red Box or Netflix. Both Buddha and Melarepa experienced suffering in different ways. Buddha experienced it as a rich man, while Melarepa experienced it as a poor man.
There are always exceptions. The word "need" is misplaced, as is often the case. Of course being jaded with the ups-and-downs, the ceaseless search for happiness of Samsara, will predispose you to look for an alternative. Yet there are instances of people awakening without being necessarily "jaded", so...
Can you achieve enlightenment effectively without having a thorough experience of samsara first?
I think that without clearly seeing the nature of samsara and dukkha there would be little motivation to seek enlightenment. One would be basically content with the status quo, and worldly pleasures would seem like enough.
Thanks everyone, this gives me something to think about. I have always wondered though (respectfully), how people who have been monks since childhood could possibly fully understand samsara, since they have been virtuous and self-disciplined all the while, and hence haven't experienced the suffering of overindulgence (or any indulgence at all). But perhaps they experienced it in former lives...
I don't think one can escape samsara in any way. Samsara is the weft in the weave LOL, and just as prevalent and ugly in a monk's life as it is in a rich Saudi prince's life. There have been expose's on sexual abuse in monasteries. Very young children who still need their mothers are placed in monasteries away from family and familiarity, those kids suffer terribly. I doubt the average six year old initiate has a sense of pride and a goal of Nirvana when they are shamed for crying for their mothers at night. Well, I'd like to think they are comforted . . . hopefully they are . . .
Anyway, samsara can put on an infinite variety of 'hats', so no one born here will escape suffering and at that level, suffering is relative. My point is, I'm pretty sure we ALL start out on equal footing, you have as much natural, inborn capacity for awakening as the little child monks. I'm not taking into account the tulkus (so called rebirthed teachers) because I don't really know much about them or how their wisdom and insight function after rebirth.
Overindulgence is relative . . . one little monk can eat his fellow monks bowl of rice as well as his own because the other monk has a belly ache -- and be in a position of 'overindulgence'. Having two pillows instead of one to sleep on, same thing. Having more fat on his body than his skinny fellows, same thing. Nope, no escape from samsara, even for the ones 'brought up' from earliest life in the monastery -- at least so I imagine
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Even though they live a different life, they still suffer in their lives. They still lose their parents, they still lose siblings, they lose close friends, they get ill and suffer, they get frustrated with their teachers/fellow monks, and so on. There are monks who overindulge quite a lot to the point they are overweight and suffering diabetes like so many others in the world...because they eat what they are giving and sometimes that includes treats, soda, and other types of junk food. They aren't perfect just like the rest of us. They just have different sorts of problems.
Good points @hamsaka and @karasti, thanks.
No, you don't need to be jaded to become enlightened.
You need to be touched by suffering.
And dukkha has a way of showing its ugly nose independently of your social status and walk of life.
For starters, the Buddha set out in life having lost his mother. Then, even before coming face to face with the realities of old age, illness and death, he must have perceived the first stirrings of dukkha behind the ephemeral pleasures afforded by his privileged life.
Whatever your social standing, nothing is ever whole and complete, except that the grass always looks greener in one's neighbour's garden.
Whatever your social standing, you're enlightenment material.
The idea of conditions required for enlightenment is important but difficult to quantify. Being motivated or moved towards making sense of life the universe and everything is normally part of the requirement. It is possible that this can be triggered by external events or people. In a sense we all have the potential and requirements but Buddhist practice is a way to accelerate our potential. Some start a spiritual life without being jaded or disappointed with normal living samsara style . . . :wave: .
I reckon the Buddha left his palace because he was bored, & then became depressed when he saw reality for all the other people..He probably felt very guilty, which led him to his depression..I reckon even someone born rich is still here to be tested, as they will all experience loss/death & jealousy etc..Even the native red indians of america who i reckon we're enlightened people, would still have had some big questions going around inside their heads & will all experience jealousy & loss/death etc..So I'd say we are all here to be jaded, & we are all jaded with experiencing loss/death & jealousy etc..Their built in as defaults until we learn how to control our selves, & i just wonder where we go when we've learn't it all.
until we see a glimpse of 'Light' we think what we have is only the darkness
Lets think about it in the cultural context of the time. You have a man given to contemplation from a young age. He was given every pleasure we'd want in life, but yet there was always this sense of unsatisfactoriness. This is not the end all be all of his reasons though and played only a fairly small role in his renunciation.
He was hidden away from old age, sickness, and death, and it was in fact these three sights that when he first saw them and understood their implications, who wouldn't become disenchanted with life.
now of course if he was living in a christian, world, oh well I'll just suffer until I die then I go to heaven.. but he lived in a world of rebirth. It dawned over him, that he, and everyone he loved, was doomed to be born, grow sick, grow old and die..over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, as it was from beginningless time and shall be for eternity. That is where compassion kicked in, he wanted to find a way out of this trap (cue star wars ITS A TRAP meme :P) for both himself and all beings.
I don't know about you, but I've had enough realization with old age, sickness, and death to realize I sure as hell would not want to do that again. I'm with Siddhartha and feel the same way, although probably to a much lesser extent then he did... there is a term for that disenchantment, Nibbida.
I'm not so sure the Buddha or any awakened being is jaded though:
Yes some of the definitions match, but Jaded has this extra connotation of negativity that is not there with Nibbida.
I think the difference lies in the definition of Nibbida as a "SKILLFUL" turning away. Where as a Jaded person is seen as a cynical negative person, something that is fairly unskillful and not very beneficial to themselves or others.
Regardless it is a hard thing to explain unless you have begin to develop the wisdom to see it for yourself.
^^^ Jedi must we be not jaded . . . [said in my best Yoda voice]
there is a term for that disenchantment, Nibbida.
Nibbida is good!