How well are you coping with dukkha?
Buddhadragon
Ehipassiko & Carpe DiemSamsara Veteran
I am reading Dennis Tirch's book "Buddhist Psychology and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy," which delves into the relationship between both suffering-relief approaches.
Both Buddhism and CBT stress the importance of three key elements to lead as much a dukkha-free life as possible:
❤️Mindfulness
❤️Acceptance
❤️Compassion
These three elements may mean different things to different people, but basically, for me:
❤️Mindfulness implies being deeply grounded in the present moment experience, without grieving over a past which is gone and done with, nor stressing over a future which is yet to come
❤️Acceptance of reality as it is, as it unfolds, as it presents itself, rather than wishing for situations and people to be whatever else I would like them to be
❤️Compassion, which begins with self-compassion and radiates out to other fellow sentiment beings who, like me, are striving to come to terms with dukkha, impermanence and not-self.
Some people aim to attain Enlightenment, which also may mean different things to different people.
But me, I just aim to attain inner peace, equanimity, suffer less over situations I cannot change, react less and respond more...
In a nutshell, teach myself to accept.
I am a better version of the "bundle of processes and becoming" I was ten years ago, though not as good as I hope to be in ten more years.
What about you?
How well are you coping with dukkha?
Is your practice helping you?
Comments
There is Dukkha?
I am gonna build a sukkha ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukha
Wait wrong one ...
I needs one of these Sukkahs ... wonder if Ikea does them ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukkah
What was the question again ...
On the outside...
On the inside...
Constantly aiming to balance the two.
Oh yes...
We make dukkha in our minds. My struggle is not with suffering but why it would be a concern.
I found this quite touching. The second image is how a lot of us are taught to be by our environment, while the first image is the ideal of the meditator, and of many stories of zen hermits.
How well are you coping with dukkha?
Not well but trying to apply everything buddhist and non-buddhist to help. Dukkha is like fire, there's many ways to put it out, prevent it, but we kind of need to use it sometimes too.
Well, it does take some practice to ably develop a detached rationale about dukkha.
It did take some practice to the Buddha himself, and the 4NT revolve around the notion of dukkha, its cause and its cessation.
It may take a while before it sinks in that dukkha is very much what we make it.
Some days we cope better than others...
Some days we are the embodiment of equanimity and others, it's back to square one all over again
Funnily enough the game of Snakes and Ladders has its origin in the Hindu lesson of precisely that issue....
I hear you. Each day at a time! Year by year, month by month, day by day, ...thought by thought...to qoute L.Cohen.
Vast improvement since committing seriously to the study of the Dhamma and beginning regular, daily meditation.
Not quite there yet
Much improved over the past few years, although I tend to find it lacking sometimes when people "push my buttons" and wound me with words. Then my compassion tends to be directed solely to myself - I'm trying to work on that. 2018 has given me many lessons.
I thought I was coping ok. Have had a few setbacks over the last two weeks. Nothing that won't keep me down or do me in. I have found refreshing myself on the 4 Noble Truths and Eightfold Noble Path have done wonders on my perspective of why what happened, happened. My meditation practise has helped me view the situations from a neutral perspective and actually realise the blessing in the situations and be thankful they happened.
Hopefully, this will continue
_ /\ _
Sometimes not taking dukkha too seriously is the antedote...call it out for what it is...
Yabba dabba duuuukkha
Scooby dooby duuuukkha
The authors in the book highlight "clear seeing" as one of the positive benefits that comes from gradual Buddhist training and one of the best practices to help release dukkha's hold:
How much of what we experience as dukkha are entrapments of our own delusions?
Do we suffer less if we are able to rise above our conditioned mind, biases, prejudices, subjective take on situations?
Tee Hee.
Snakes and ladders as @federica mentions ...
Matthew 10:16 (includes doves and wolves) ???
Without practice I would be a duck by now.
Coping with duckha-ha:
Dukkha? Just bubble bath for us ducks ...
Well, I'm still here so...
Here in the general sense, not here on the forum, lol.
Just AWESOME @lobster . I love it. ?❤?❤
... so coping well?
☺️
Glad you are here..and here on the forum @David . ??
When I meditated with an Advayta Vedanta group during my late teens, we used to play an interesting version of Snakes and Ladders called Leelah, where we had to move up and down different levels, from Samsara to Nirvana...
?
I would have to say as well as well can be ... (given the circumstances as and when they present themselves)...which I guess relatively speaking means for the most part I'm coping relatively well
Without our friend Dukkha standing in the shadows of Samsara (waiting to pounce) there would be no happiness (in whatever form it takes) to speak of or strive/practice for... but then on the other hand it could also be a case of no Dukkha (no self) no Worries ...Or perhaps this is the ultimate goal...
Apparently, Samsara is a case of "No pain, no gain" situation.
Were it not for dukkha, we would not know the satisfaction of the personal exertion that ultimately leads to us attaining our personal version of Nirvana.
Ultimately, both Samsara and Nirvana are frames of mind, with dukkha blocking the view, I guess...
☺??
I find I get dragged away in dukkha’s stories... one moment I am perfectly calm, and the next I am deep in believing all kinds of aspects of this crazy world. It is all part of the mind, but we often involuntarily adopt a certain perspective which convinces us that we can feel or see deeply real things, and once you do you’re caught in the net, you lose the blissful state of independent viewing.
I’ve learnt over the past two weeks that I have doubts that sometimes make me either over taking the right path, and that I’m quite slow in the process of letting wisdom emerge. It’s often only when I really strongly focus in a relaxed way, bring myself to a peak but still stay in relaxed awareness, that I can speak my best truths. And that has little to do with the brain, it just comes from somewhere in the mind.
I find giving up on any form of "self help" quite liberating. improving myself with myself is pretty tricky, especially as that "self" is pretty dysfunctional as standard. like someone on LSD trying to do a horrifically hard Sudoko.
just calling on and then staying with a modicum of awareness is often enough to move into calmer waters. i had spent a life time on "self improvement" before mindfullness, and throwing myself into self improvment was always exhausting and 7 times out of 10, futile. acceptance, acceptance, acceptance. what did alan watts say, "when you speak, it is silent, when you are silent, it speaks."
Our conditioned thinking system, our reactive patterns, our afflictive emotions took years to develop and habitual repetition has rendered them difficult -though not impossible- to uproot.
Our dukkha seems pretty real to us.
Perhaps more than some external dukkha, what is worse are the stories we tell ourselves about that dukkha.
Hopefully, our practice eventually will help new patterns of response to become second nature and we, less prone to get carried away by the stories we tell ourselves about dukkha.
Self-improvement does not need to have a negative ring to it.
Suffering less and leading a more dukkha-free life requires developing new, more skillful patterns of thinking and responding.
It's not about berating ourselves into a new person that negates who we already are.
Rather, it's about breaking through barriers of affliction and delusion that get in the way of our sukkha.
Dukkha and its subtle threads of enticing entitlement are (so it would seem) woven into the fabric of every daily life...how "I" think what "I" say and what "I" do ...in any given moment "I" may feel a sense of satisfaction and the next moment "I" may [k]not...Such are the aggregates that have been conditioned to cling....
I guess the most important finding that may help us break the dukkha neurotic circle is the fact that most dukkha is self-imposed.
When we come full circle, it all comes down to us buying into the negative, self-sabotaging storyline we tell ourselves about reality.
how well are you coping with dukkha? doing ok.recognize personal dukkha is ongoing.
is the practice helping you? yes. the tried technique of shifting attention to breath help from theravada.this zen im working on is just breathe . also strengthen awareness to be a mirror to try to stop thought patterns that arent beneficial.
mindfulness,memory or recollection is ok.awareness can be better .little by little aware of feelings and awareness recognition help subside strong feelings such as anger.
acceptance,how things are better if aware and observe pattern.personal self acceptance? my personal zen reminder just be helps to accept me.
compassion? my new zen phraise let compassion be. let the mind-heart be moved in tears or action as the situation present itself.
Which is unreal.
Self improvement is another method of travel sickness. Hence the need for stillness ... How are we to improve on flawed perfection?
Tee Hee. I iz melting ...
"I" can't deny ...Dukkha is bad company till the day "I" die...
Maybe whether dukkha is good or bad company depends on us, @Shoshin
It's a long journey and we never stop learning...
??
Dukkha as in unsatisfactoriness is unavoidable, but one can sink deeper into the mire. It all sprints from our delusions but the question is how deeply do you engage with those delusions? To what extent do you lead those delusions to the deeper sources of your being, where you have the choice to “just be”.
To copy @federica's visualizations to my state of being...
On the outside:
On the inside:
My co-workers say I'm imperturbable and virtually immune to stress, yet at times it feels quite turbulent on the inside. Strong emotions seem to ebb and swirl. Some of them are positive, but the negative ones (like anger) cause dukkha.
As to my practice, it's not actually striving for nirvana with frequent meditation and mantras. While my fiancee was alive she seemed puzzled by my lack of engagement with my lama, but that's not really how I practice spirituality. For me it's about about being the best person I can be, being compassionate and helpful to others, and doing my best to not cause harm. Perhaps I should try harder to follow the traditional path to enlightenment, but I don't know that I can.
It seems to me that your phrase very much encapsulates what Enlightenment is about, @nakazcid
Some posts should deserve a double awesome
❤️
There is a traditional path? Nobody tells me nothing ...
The Buddha was so non-traditional, he started his own path ...
I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the Fandango
Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me
(Galileo) Galileo (Galileo) Galileo, Galileo Figaro
Magnifico-o-o-o-o
I'm just a poor boy nobody loves me
He's just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosity
Freddie Mercury
... and now back to the dharma bridge over troubled waters ...