What's Wrong With Suffering?

[phetaroi]

I'm having a little difficult with the concept of suffering in Buddhism.

I understand that we all have a desire to make pleasure, happiness, and love last forever and that we all wish that pain, distress, and grief would simply disappear from life.

Does Buddhism believe we should avoid pleasure, happiness, and love because later we will pay an emotional place when it ends?

I am more than willing to suffer when something ends, and do understand that all good things must come to an end, as the old saying goes.

Or, is the concept of "trishna" saying that as long as we understand and accept that all things are imperfect and impermanent, we can accept those things into our life and put things in perspective?

Thoughts?

[Texpat]

ทรมานตัวเอง

Anybody willing to trade their happiness credits for my suffering credits, please PM me.

I think we can make a deal.

Edited May 19, 2009 by Texpat

[fabianfred]

as we know...all things in Samsara are subject to the law of impermanence....change is inevitable

imagine it like a pendulum which swings from one extreme (suffering) to the other (pleasure)...it will not stop swinging....you cannot hold it leaning to one side only (trying to have only pleasure)

The Buddha said that the only true lasting state is....peace....the pendulum stopped in the middle.... Nirvana

Have you ever enjoyed sitting quietly in a country setting...beside some water perhaps.....surrounded by nature....not experiencing either extreme of sadness or happiness...just peace and quiet

THAT is our natural state.....with the pendulum stopped

[agent69]

I would settle with being content.

[camerata]

Does Buddhism believe we should avoid pleasure, happiness, and love because later we will pay an emotional place when it ends?

I think the idea is that suffering and all the other impermanent emotional states should be replaced by permanent peace (i.e. equanimity). Regarding love, there is a revealing scene in Thich Nhat Hanh's book, Old Path, White Clouds, where a woman falls in love with Ananda and drugs him to make him stay with her. He resists by meditating. Eventually, the Buddha comes to take him away and says to the distraught woman, "It's not that he doesn't love you, it's that he loves everyone equally."

I'm not sure about Theravada, but there is a Mahayana teaching that one can enjoy worldly pleasures as long as you don't get attached to them. This seems like a good starting point for the average lay person. Ajahn Brahm has a good story about true love. He says that if your wife calls you from Paris and says she's run off with your best friend and she's happier than she's ever been - if you truly love her you should be happy for her too. That's true, unselfish love, without attachment.

For me, the starting point is to develop equanimity where previously there was suffering, and to reduce the attachment involved in pleasurable experiences.

[chutai]

I'm having a little difficult with the concept of suffering in Buddhism.

I understand that we all have a desire to make pleasure, happiness, and love last forever and that we all wish that pain, distress, and grief would simply disappear from life.

Does Buddhism believe we should avoid pleasure, happiness, and love because later we will pay an emotional place when it ends?

I am more than willing to suffer when something ends, and do understand that all good things must come to an end, as the old saying goes.

Or, is the concept of "trishna" saying that as long as we understand and accept that all things are imperfect and impermanent, we can accept those things into our life and put things in perspective?

Buddhism teaches that suffering derives from karma, the causes that we ourselves have created for ourselves in the past. It's how we respond to life's inevitable sufferings is the key. Negative, painful experiences can often be necessary in order to motivate us. One Buddhist scripture describes illness, for instance, as awakening the desire to seek the truth.

We call this the process of changing poison into medicine that begins when we approach difficult experiences as an opportunity to reflect on ourselves and in so doing strengthening and developing our courage and compassion. The more we are able to do this, the more we are able to grow in vitality and wisdom and realise a truly expansive state of life.

Suffering can thus serve as a springboard for a deeper experience of happiness. From the perspective of Buddhism, inherent in all negative experiences is this profound positive potential. However, if we are defeated by suffering or respond to challenging circumstances in negative and destructive ways, the original "poison" is not transformed but remains poison.

My favourite quote from the Buddhist philosopher, Daisaku Ikeda:

Hardships make us strong.

Problems give birth to wisdom.

Sorrows cultivate compassion for others.

Those who have suffered the most can become the happiest.

Edited May 20, 2009 by chutai

[Nampeung]

Thank you so much Chutai for your last post here, it means an awful lot to me and I read it several times and really understand it now. Thank you...

[Worldvisitor]

There's nothing wrong. Suffering is necessary to understand the impermanence of this realm or whatever you wish to call it. Unfortunately it takes a long time.

[rockyysdt]

I also learned that through suffering we can learn, grow & move on.

Those who try to escape suffering through drugs, alcohol & self deception postpone or retard their spiritual growth.

Pain & suffering, like joy & pleasure, is something which we should observe without attachment until it passes.

[cognos]

good observations..without hardship one cannot properly grow.. a sailor does not become a good sailor by sailing on calm waters..

[sleepyjohn]

Buddhism teaches that suffering derives from karma, the causes that we ourselves have created for ourselves in the past.

I think there is more than one facet to dukkha.

There is the one as described in the posts above for which the quoted statement probably holds.

Then there is a subtle not-quite-rightness, a what-if-ness, what one monk friend, Charles at Wat Umong, describes, I think well, as a tension.

Personally I think this last is not at root the result of karma, ie karma vipaka.

I think it has become inbuilt in man as a (natural) selective advantage.

The man whose mind scans the possible futures for danger is the man likelier to survive. Not to be happier, but to survive. To survive is to propogate. To propogate is to pass on the selective advantage.

Luckily we only need to realise this to take some of the wind out of it's sails, and a mind calmed by practise is no doubt less affected too.

Which is good.

Edited June 9, 2009 by sleepyjohn

[rockyysdt]

I think it has become inbuilt in man as a (natural) selective advantage.

The man whose mind scans the possible futures for danger is the man likelier to survive. Not to be happier, but to survive. To survive is to propogate. To propogate is to pass on the selective advantage.

Luckily we only need to realise this to take some of the wind out of it's sails, and a mind calmed by practise is no doubt less affected too.

Does this reveal a catch 22 situation we find ourselves in?

On the one hand having a mind in the future enhances survival & propagation amongst other things.

On the other hand our meditation & self awareness practice is designed to bring us into the here & now, to live in, and experience the present.

[sleepyjohn]

I think it has become inbuilt in man as a (natural) selective advantage.

The man whose mind scans the possible futures for danger is the man likelier to survive. Not to be happier, but to survive. To survive is to propogate. To propogate is to pass on the selective advantage.

Luckily we only need to realise this to take some of the wind out of it's sails, and a mind calmed by practise is no doubt less affected too.

Does this reveal a catch 22 situation we find ourselves in?

On the one hand having a mind in the future enhances survival & propagation amongst other things.

On the other hand our meditation & self awareness practice is designed to bring us into the here & now, to live in, and experience the present.

Luckily natural selection gives us enough positivity, QED, to balance, in fact outweigh, the negatives associated with dukkha.

Luckily again, it seems to me, is that simply realising what's going with our "unpleasant" mental factors makes them impotent at best and less potent at least. (The same of course applies to the pleasant sides).

We may have to be satisfied with less than perfection in our self-training. Our brain has developed over long ages to act in certain ways, one of them being to scan futures for danger and the best option. To not be in the present.

Telling it not to do so, certainly at first, is somewhat like telling our heart not to beat. Luckily not quite so difficult!

Luckily also being out of the now is nothing bad. It's just a matter of realising that if we're out of the now we're in a world of concept which is all too easy to forget as something we habitually reify into something "real". And from that reification there's a simple chain to potentially painful consequences. We don't want that do we?

cheers John

Edited June 10, 2009 by sleepyjohn

[jamesc2000]

Ajahn Brahm has a good story about true love. He says that if your wife calls you from Paris and says she's run off with your best friend and she's happier than she's ever been - if you truly love her you should be happy for her too. That's true, unselfish love, without attachment.

I always like Ajahn Brahm stories! And I guess it must also be good if you can still go drinking

with your best friend and listen to him complain that it seemed like a good idea at the time to

run away with your wife but having to live with her is another thing all together!

I think its hard to suffer if you dun have much of an ego and very relax about having or losing things

and not too bothered about being worked up about people or situations that annoy you.

There again, i am not an expert on suffering! I am not married - wife ran away with best friend!

[Xangsamhua]

I think it has become inbuilt in man as a (natural) selective advantage.

The man whose mind scans the possible futures for danger is the man likelier to survive. Not to be happier, but to survive. To survive is to propogate. To propogate is to pass on the selective advantage.

Luckily we only need to realise this to take some of the wind out of it's sails, and a mind calmed by practise is no doubt less affected too.

Does this reveal a catch 22 situation we find ourselves in?

On the one hand having a mind in the future enhances survival & propagation amongst other things.

On the other hand our meditation & self awareness practice is designed to bring us into the here & now, to live in, and experience the present.

I think Thich Nhat Hanh says that it's natural and beneficial to plan for the future, but to become anxious about the future is not helpful. Nor is it helpful to be regretful or resentful about the past, though we can certainly learn from the past.

He was once asked if he could be happy while suffering. I don't remember just what he said, but I think it was along the lines of this being possible if one acknowledges the source and cause of the suffering, tries to understand it and sees it in relation to impermanence and, yes, the possibly beneficial spinoffs. TNH is one who experienced intense emotional suffering during the Vietnam War.

I may not have got this altogether right and don't wish to be insensitive to those who are really suffering and who must find well-meant consoling comments annoying sometimes. Still, if meditation helps one to live fully in the present moment, it must at least put suffering in perspective.

It would depend on the nature and intensity of the suffering though, wouldn't it? If I were really suffering physically, I don't think I'd like to be fully engaged in the present moment. I'd go for painkillers or anaesthesia.

[oldsparrow]

I think it's only wrong as long as you suffer it.

Buddhism teach us to realise that suffering is NATURAL thing in life, nothing wrong with in when it come into your life. This is the way to end it.

It's best if you didn't even feel it at first.

[RY12]

Autonomous creatures can only ever act through pursuit of desire and repulsion of suffering, to claim one is possible of doing anything else is a lie. 'Equanimity' is a stylistic demeanor feigned by practitioners ever so keen on attaining happiness. The scene where the fundamental teachings of the Buddha are practiced and learned takes place in the anterior of the brain far, far behind this stressful interplay of emotions in the prefrontal cortex. There is absolutely no reason, neurologically or logically, why a learned person possessing enlightenment would not still be capable of profound joy and enjoyment or deep suffering. imho

on a more basic note, whenever i'm really stressed out or depressed about something, i just simply recall how short and ephemeral life is, and it really does work if you deeply consider it. It's amazing how much suffering in our lives is based on the fallacious presumption, in the back of our minds, that we'll live forever.

Edited June 22, 2009 by RY12

[camerata]

Thanissaro Bhikkhu has a good essay on the subject: Life Isn't Just Suffering.

'So the first noble truth, simply put, is that clinging is suffering. It's because of clinging that physical pain becomes mental pain. It's because of clinging that aging, illness, and death cause mental distress. The paradox here is that, in clinging to things, we don't trap them or get them under our control. Instead, we trap ourselves. When we realize our captivity, we naturally search for a way out. And this is where it's so important that the first noble truth not say that "Life is suffering." If life were suffering, where would we look for an end to suffering? We'd be left with nothing but death and annihilation. But when the actual truth is that clinging is suffering, we simply have to look for the clinging and eliminate its causes.'

[Worldvisitor]

I'm not sure I understand your question.

The human condition is suffering by definition.

There is nothing wrong since it is inevitable?

However it can bring much more temporary suffering to detach I suppose.

I'm not ready but I will.

P.