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Dukkha Sucks
lobster
Veteran
Who noticed?
In some religions, everything is perfect, we just need to understand Cods plan. Sound fishy to you?
Me too.
It is true that Dharma leads to a freedom but not from old age, death and too many mince pies [oops].
I am convinced we cling to aversion, attraction and . . . wait a minute . . . I am going through the Four Noble Truths again . . .
Any Maitreyas out there able to show how Dukkha does not suck?
3
Comments
I must say being raised as a catholic it seems quite nice. They tell me God loves me they tell me God cares for me. But they also tell me I have to follow rules such and such, if God really cares and loves me and even made me, why did he make me in such a way that I cannot even follow his orders? If I had to make my son myself I know I would make him obedient to me. So I gave up on religion but won't lie I went to church and such as I was younger, I am even good friends with a priest.
But to take all your worries and put them to God, this God that I never experienced, in meditation at least I can feel better and fight my ego. And in the future I can meditate on my own death, I am quite sure God or his spirits do not show us our own death unless your called Scrooge.
So while Dukkha might suck at least it's something I can grasp and does not raise so much question instead of religions in which God governs all. Questions like what happens with tribe people that never heard of the Christ and such and so on. And if you read Dante's divine comedy hell seems quite a pain.
It fascinates me that I am attached to what I dislike, hate, don't want. It is exactly the opposite of conclusions my ego comes to. More like, "It's attached to ME, it won't let me go!"
As if 'it' is a being with a will. Which is impossible and I don't believe in demons.
Dukkha neither sucks, nor does it not suck.
The Buddha only taught that there is Dukkha. He assigned no judgement or value.
YOU do that.
In his first sermon (I'm using F.L. Woodward's translation of the Samyutta Nikaya here) the Buddha includes decay, sickness, death, sorrow, grief, woe, lamentation, despair, to be conjoined with things which we dislike, to be separated from things which we like, not to get what one wants, in his definition of dukkha.
If that doesn't suck, at least it can't be called your average joyride.
It sucked enough for the Buddha as to send him reeling for answers on his big renunciation journey.
No, the Buddha sought the cessation of the cycle of birth, old age sickness and death - samsara. The realization of the first noble truth came in the moment of enlightenment. not before.
The Buddha finally saw past the dualistic evaluation of good/bad, right/wrong, and so on and relaized that even that sort of elaboration was a cause of Dukkha.
If you want to assign some sort of value to Dukkha, have at it, but you will ultimately find that it will prove as unsatisfactory as anything else in Samsara.
I spent a lovely day with my wife, lounging around, watching TV. It was Samsara, sure as god made little green apples, but it was still a lovely day I wouldn't trade for much of anything.
It didn't suck.
Thanks guys
So Dukkha is more than aversion or attraction, perhaps it is better termed 'entanglement with dreams'?
Must be time to wake up.
Buddha means 'one who is awake' . . . now the question is . . . 'waking up - will it hurt?' or is that part of Dukkha?
Answers in a yellow box to the usual place . . .
Before his Enlightenment, the Buddha had four visions.
Those visions triggered certain feelings in him which were certainly not anything related to Sukkha.
Samsara does not suck. Samsara is what it is: sometimes dukkha, sometimes sukkha.
Both are part of the convention we call reality.
We feel good when sukkha is around, we cope as best we can and strive to accept when dukkha takes over.
'Waking up -will it hurt?"
I don't know @lobster. I am not that close to awakening, whatever that may be, nor past dualistic evaluation and subjective judgement.
Sukkha still makes me happy. Dukkha still hurts.
Though I must admit I do a hell of a job not getting entangled in the fiction of both.
Dukkha happens, yo.
Which sucks worse -- dukkha or enlightenment?
Remarkable @Chaz:
I probably got the marking code wrong, but I usually LOL someone's comment when I celebrate a person's witty joke or to join in the forum's general merriment.
There's nothing remarkable in LOLling people just because you disagree with their opinion.
Quite the opposite, indeed.
But you can't trick the process by 'trying' to accept Dukkha as a trick just to get it and thereby get the reward.
Dukkha "sux0rz" as the kiddies would say.
Apparently, being awake is quite pleasant. Waking up? Will it hurt? As long as you are still asleep. So the remarkably 'awake' people alive today (whatever their tradition) say. Once awake (ned) all is well because we accept what is.
ooohhhhh we get a choice . . .
In both cases it is the choices that determines the outcome.
No choice there in samsara
. . . Whereas the Dukkha the Boddhisatva takes on is a free choice . . .
Far shore first . . . then decisions, decisions . . .
If we are too fixed on the goal of awakening, dukkha weighs more heavily on us, until it sucks no more.
Growth pains?
A yogi friend of mine said it is a universal truth 'no pain, no gain', which I feel goes against the core of yoga, which is more 'no pain - gain'. Come to think of it his quote was more like, 'there is no growth without struggle'.
The reality of building a better yogi, Buddha or practitioner, I would contend, is paradoxically not about growth or changing being. It is about entering 'non being' which of course means we have to have a viable base to build on.
How to do this with minimum effort and ease?
(sit down Mr Cushion . . . everybody knows your answer)
For those who do Tai Chi or yoga, the idea of relaxing or letting go, rather than burning ourselves into Jane Fonda is present.
For those thinking meditation is useless, hard or impossible, try taking a moment . . .
If "no pain, no gain" is taken at face value -- the one element being requisite to the other -- then turning it around must also be valid:
No gain, no pain.
I loooves me some dukkha!
Unpleasant? Not fun? Maybe annoying?
Obviously dukkha is unpleasant, usually isn't fun and can be annoying.
I wonder @chaz, how do you define "sucks"?
No good?
Dukkha can be good as a lesson but other than that it pretty much sucks, buddy. That would be why we seek it's cessation.
Sucks, to me, means pretty bad.
Dukkha, as I've been taught, is a word that is also used to descibe a wheel that is ever-so-slightly out of round or balance.
based on that, sucks & dukkha don't really go together too well.
How about for the sake of sentient beings? As long as we assign value to it, we will never attain it's cessation. There's a lot of people out there wallowing in how awful they estimate their world to be. We see them come here every week. Sometimes every day. Life isn't that bad. They just think it is. Dukkha doesn suck. You just think it does.
I don't think it sucks, it sucks. Children starve because others feel the need to over indulge. This creates a lot of dukkha and many have no idea how to deal with it.
That's just one example.
I don't think it sucks that people get raped and abused every day, it sucks and it is dukkha.
I'll keep your response in mind when I see famine commercials and can't afford to help. Maybe it will make me feel better. They don't have it that bad after all... They just think they do.
You say life isn't that bad sitting in an abode with running electricity and water and you think you can speak for those that really do actually have it "that" bad?
Give your head a shake, lol.
If I compare my life to a life of someone in Africa whose family has been decimated by ebola, and who is themselves, feeling ill and without immediate aid, then by comparison, yes, I would say my life does't suck as much as theirs does.
If I compare my life to someone I see on FB, lauding how marvellous a time they had this Christmas, doing all the really great, 'traditional' Christmassy things many people do, within the bosom of their families then yes, my life absolutely really does suck.
It's a little like trying to define what 'Yin' and 'Yang' are; thy have different qualities and attributes, but fundamentally, you cannot concretely define Yin or Yang, unless you compare it to something closely comparable .
Gymnastics: Yang. Ballet: Yin.
Ballet: Yang. Yoga, Yin.
Yoga: Yang. Meditation: Yin.
Gymnastics: Yang. Meditation: Totally different plane.
I never intended to imply it was. However, on the whole, I would say it's considerably more than 50%.
Oh, ok, sorry about that. It just seemed like a couple of people were using it as if life itself is dukkha.
Really? That's odd because a wheel that is slightly out of round is a good example of something that sucks.
That sounds like a sweeping under the rug to me. Why would we want to bother attaining its cessation if it is already neither good nor bad?
Sure, in hindsight dukkha may have served us well but hindsight is where it belongs.
Sounds nice but also off the mark.
I'm just going to use the wiki definition because it's handy but if you can find one that better suits your needs, I'm all ears.
Obvious and common physical and mental suffering, anxiety/stress and unsatisfactoriness.
That doesn't sound like something we should let slide without assigning value. Buddha got up from his tree because he assigned value to the suffering of others and vowed its cessation.
(Not as good a rebuttal as hitting the "lol" button perhaps but we work with what we have)
Yes, the infamous LOL button some character uses to sneer at people's comments when he disagrees.
If we were all that tacky...
I find this very insightful so quoting it again.
We are I feel in samsara, attachment, delusions, ignorance, floundering about, running towards the attractions, running away from the realities.
When we sit in the middle and quieten the running, jumping through hoops, mind juggling, joke life and general monkey mind tendencies we start to fathom the nature of our potential Dharma salvation.
If we try and avoid or indulge, we end up unbalanced. So this centrality of calm dispassion that comes from practice is so harmonising of our rough edges.
Ideas of everything is OK, which can be found in Zen, Dzogchen/Mahamudra are from a calmed perspective genuine insights . . . if they equate with our experience.
Looking for ME, we find nothing is the Buddhist experience.
I've always known life is unfair because I've been given so much. Wish I could balance things with you and anyone else who has more than 50% dukkha and both get 50/50.
That is indescribably selfless of you, and indicative of someone who frankly right now, is so much further up the path than I am, that all I can see is your little dust cloud.
I just tripped, and so have paused to catch my breath.... take in the scenery.... have a bite of my sandwich and sip of my drink.
I'll get up in a moment and be right as rain shortly.
No prob's.
Why try escape samsara of it doesn't suck. XD
Dukkha is muddy but just look for the diamonds. Or gems
Dukkha keeps you alive, brother!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objet_petit_a
"Dukkha Sucks"
Bedbugs Mozzies, Fleas...Now they really suck
Are they Dukkha ? Or just trying to 'scratch out' a living on a convenient food source ?