One thing that’s always confused me about Buddhism is that there seems to be a contradiction between what the central goal is and what one ends up attaining through enlightenment. Buddhism begins by offering us a means to alleviate suffering, but the solution is to simply accept suffering. I’m not a Buddhist, so correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the technique to learn to dispense with desire, and thus to dispense with the urge to rid one’s self of pain? This means just accepting pain and suffering. So far from eliminating it, one has given up trying to resist it.
I guess that boils down to a matter of perspective.
If I eliminate my suffering, then what other suffering is there?
But then there is the old Mahayana saw where people take a vow to reject Nirvana, viewing an escape from suffering as, quite possibly, a form of attachment, so instead they work selflessly on alleviating the suffering of all sentient beings thoughout all eternity.
But since suffering doesn’t exist independently of the sufferer, I’m not sure I understand your question, because the way it was posed, it seems as though you want to make the sufferer and suffering seperate entities.
Well, I certainly think the sufferer is a distinct person apart from the suffering. One continues to exist even after his suffering ends. Yet, at the same time, the person ceases to be a “sufferer”.
I just don’t understand how detaching one’s self from the desire to end one’s suffering leads to the end of that suffering.
Since the suffering is caused by the sufferer, I don’t see how the concepts could be seen as distinct. And since desire causes attachment, which causes suffering, the point is to remove desire so that one becomes detached and suffering ends.
I think this sentence also shows part of your problem:
Since the self is an illusion created by attachment, I’m not sure how this sentence makes sence within the context of the question.
Isn’t it thus: suffering is the consequence of desire; eliminate desire and you will have eliminated suffering; however, the desire to eliminate suffering (the desire for Nirvana) is also a desire, and should therefore also be eliminated; do this, and you become a boddhisattva, who does not want to change anything.
Personally, I would rather argue thus: suffering is the consequence of desire; eliminate desire and you will have eliminated suffering; however, the desire to eliminate desire is also a desire, and should therefore also be eliminated; and the same goes for the desire to eliminate this desire, etc. etc.; this is a vicious circle to which the only solution, I think, is the following: desire suffering, so that, if you don’t attain it, you suffer from not having attained it, whereas if you do attain it, you suffer all the same.
However, the Buddha is said to have said: “It is not life and wealth and power which makes slaves out of people, but the attachment to life and wealth and power.” So one should, to speak with Nietzsche, always will power, but not be attached to one’s power; indeed, this attachment is already a sign of impotence, of dependence upon one’s power; one should, therefore, always will new power, and not care about the preservation of the old.
The Bhagavad Gita, which was written around the time the Buddha walked the earth, says: “Be a warrior and kill desire, the powerful enemy of the soul” [3.43]. Nietzsche, however, said that killing the passions is a naivety: one should rather temper them and yoke them to one’s purpose (the word yoga is cognate with “yoke”).
Part of what makes questions linger like this is a strange sort of urge we all seem to have when discussing things like Buddhism. This is an urge to keep our sentences and discussion on the most abstract and cursory level possible.
Examples include saying things like have been discussed here (such as “remove desire and suffering ends”. This cannot be understood by merely parroting this highly introductory statement back and forth.
What’s more important is to talk in applied detail about what is meant technically by ‘suffering’, ‘desire’ and ‘removing’ and so on. Then we can get somewhere 
Perhaps our resistance to doing this comes from a feeling that we might remove some of the ‘mystique’ from Buddhism when it’s really just about wise pragmatism.
If Buddhism is actually about removing suffering then Its full of shit.
Unless someone can show me any life of any kind that is without any misery.
Life is pain, anyone that says different is selling something.
But if there is no self, what is attached to the suffering? What is it that desires?
The only thing I can think of is that the desire is one and the same as the suffering. If this is the case, then the Buddhist motif is “one ends suffering by removing suffering” - not very enlightening.
“Existence is suffering” – Buddha.
So, it is about ending suffering. Because of this people sometimes think that Buddhism is nihilisitc, and I think that such a description is fair, as long as they view the void in a positive (rather than a negative) light.
What Saully wrote is perfectly correct for Mahayana Buddhism, which is generally what we talk about when we discuss Buddhism anyway, and I think he did a pretty good job of explaining it. Certainly better than I have so far.
That’s just it – remember, according to Buddhism, reality is an illusion. So ‘what is attached to suffering’ isn’t necessarily the right way to phrase it, since it is suffering that keeps and creates the illusion in place. So, what is attached to the suffering, for lack of a better term, is the soul. But I use that term very loosely, since the idea of ‘soul’ in Buddhism is anachronistic and implies a good deal more ‘self’ than the Buddhist construct of the thing-that-gets-passed-on does.
So, the self is a manifestation of suffering. This suffering creates desire, the desire to end the suffering. Generally this is accomplished by latching onto fleeting pleasures like wealth, or food, or sex. These attachments, in turn, increase both our desire for more as well as our attachment to the illusion of the world because we have invested more into it. More attachment, more desire, and then, more suffering which sprung forth from suffering, which desired to alleviate the suffering and tried to do it through things which it becomes attached to. It is proto-logic, but you can still see bouncing back and forth along those lines how easy it is to become attached and increase one’s attachment, and thereby increase one’s suffering.
If you think of Buddhism as a representing a path, then one starts from a point of ‘vexed mind’, for lack of a better term. The Buddha’s Four Noble Truths (suffering, cause of suffering, cessation of suffering and path to cessation) were presented in a framework so that they would be comprehensible at the starting point, the level of conventional reality. To minds unawakened to the true nature of reality, or ‘suffering’ and thus subject to a cyclical existence of birth and death. From this starting perspective, there’s the perception of one’s suffering as something solid and real and also of a real goal to end suffering that can be achieved. However, that’s an illusion. When I say ‘illusion’, I don’t mean it isn’t caused by something and that we don’t ‘feel bad’. It’s caused by the clinging and grasping to things, ideas, ‘self’. The ‘self’ is an illusion as well, we perceive it as inherently substantive and independent, but this is only a conventional view.
This is what the mind training aspect of Buddhism is about, perceiving ultimate reality, that which can only be pointed to in the conventional realm of concept and language. Again, “Nirvana” isn’t a place ‘somewhere else’ and awakening isn’t a goal that’s to be achieved, that’s a conventional perspective of it. But one has to actually do the training (Buddhist meditation, mindfulness practice, there are various techniques) to realize that. What happens over time is that the illusions slowly dissolve and there is what is sometimes characterized as ‘selfless awareness’.
Actually, according to Buddhism, reality is not an illusion. Saying that presents a potential for misunderstanding. Christians hear that and think it means that the real world is behind the one we see, like a heaven/world duality or like the Matrix - this is not what Buddhism says. Buddhism does not deny the reality of what is around us.
Here is what that phrase (reality is an illusion) really means:
When we look at our world around us, we see things and label them in certain ways, but they actually exist in ways we are not always percieving as accurately as we could.
For example, we see a wave in the water, and notice it moving from left to right. We conceive of it as a ‘thing’ as though seeing a bird flying from left to right. In reality, nothing is moving from left to right. The atoms making up the water are merely moving up and down. The ‘wave’ doesn’t really exist as such.
Likewise, the self doesn’t exist. There is no isolated thing we can say is the self. It’s all a bunch of interrelated particles moving around in a system. The self is an emergent property (to use a Complex Systems term) but this dissipates when the pattern of activity in the atoms changes.
This, and the many other misconceptions our mind creates about the world, is what Buddha was talking about. It was not intended to mean that we’re in some sort of fantasy realm.
Sincerely,
Thanks for that clarification, DT. Would this be the same way we are to understand the illusions of pain and suffering? So if I am to relinquish my attachment to the pain by relinquishing my desire to rid myself of it, would I then come to see the pain as something other than what I took it to be?
I’ve tried to post this dozens of times to the thread and all I get is the preview window and it will not post.
I’ve had this problem for a few weeks now off and one.
The short answer (in classical Buddhism as the Buddha taught) is:
To become a renunciate and practice the 4 noble truths
and through the perfection of the eightfold path
thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html
to free oneself from the 10 fetters that bind a person to cyclic existence
buddhism.about.com/od/keyconcepts/a/Fetters.htm
and thus become an arhat and enlightened
and through a few lifetimes of such practice to extinguish reincarnation, leave the cycle of samara
accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth … msara.html
and reach nirvana.
acay.com.au/~silkroad/buddha/p_nirvana.htm
…that is how the pain of life ceases. (finally, as the story goes)
And when this classical Buddhism became too hard - Mahayana Buddhism was invented.
When Mahayana Buddhism became too hard - Pure Land Buddhism was invented
When Pure Land Buddhism became too hard - Won Buddhism was invented. (just to name a few)
But for the average folks…meaning 99.9% of the Buddhists.
Pain is decreased in proportion to your efforts at perfecting the eightfold path.
The long answer … my discussion of this topic from an earlier post to eSangha (where I was banned).
I believe the traditional views of Buddhist beliefs of escaping samsara are dead as far as practical application for the most part of society. To escape rebirth is impractical for the vast, vast majority of Buddhists. You must essentially give up your current life and take up a life of homlessness, never handle money, do any business, beg for food, give up entertainment of any kind, live celibate, live perfectly devoid of passion, possessions, cravings, desires, ill will and a host of other things…and then escaping samsara it is ‘still’ only a theory at best. Then this process must be repeated for many, many lifetimes to come.
I’ll give you an example you can all relate to. If you are reading this you have no chance of escaping rebirth…you are too full of passion to escape anything. What you ‘should’ be doing as a self proclaimed ‘serious Buddhist practitioner’ is; instead of reading and writing on the computer you would be meditating on the three liberation’s. By meditating on emptiness, formlessness and passionlessness, this will allow you, with a few lifetimes of diligent practice, to recognize the three liberation’s of the ego and the dharma as being empty, the dharma as formless and this eventually the recognition of living is an unworthy desire as our existence is characterized by suffering.
Practitioners that will escape samsara can best be described as barley leaving a trace or ripple on their life and slipping by unnoticed when they depart to avoid rebirth. Others will argue they ‘are noticed’ and this is what distinguishes them from being reborn again. In either case, it is a ‘specialized life’ that allows them to escape samsara and the ‘why is it so’ is not as important as the ‘how it is so.’ Every step they take barely has weight on the earth and is more of a caress than a step. Their breathing hardly disturbs the air and every breath in and out has reverence in it and mindfulness. TNH describes this in his peace is every step book. Such practitioners are passionless and desireless and as such they are tethered to nothing in life, not even the thought of escaping it. Their actions are of no karmic consequence and after some lifetimes of this type of practice they can slip away unnoticed.
Personally, I am not concerned with developing this type of ‘escape’ practice and only played around with it for my own edification. The trouble is with many a practitioner is they say they are serious, but in reality are just playing around and deluding themselves. They might practice Buddhism as a hobby or to pass time or to escape the troubles in their life, but that is it. Just burning incense and chanting is not going to do much when it comes to escape vehicles. Oh well, it may be a useful pastime to escape a delusional life? Of the three unwholesome roots, delusion is the most important one. For it is basic to any successful Buddhist practice to dispel such delusions, otherwise you can see little else clearly.
Karl Marx said - religion is the opium of the masses. Many of us need such ‘drugs’ as a way to not face thoughts and fears of dying. This is what many of us run from with our various ‘concentrations’ and ‘distractions’ we tie our minds up with trying to avoid the thought of death. Better to accept life, as well as death and then you can be at peace with it as part of natural law. This frees the mind to look for truth instead of drugs. But just freeing oneself from the fear or delusions of Yahweh is not the answer for finding inner peace. The wrong living atheist need distractions as well from the ugly lives they have created for themselves, just as every other person does that fits this equation.
The formula for failure is: Authentic Nature + Wrong Actions = Destruction
The formula for success is: Authentic Nature + Right Actions = Peace
See:
jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=342.0
The distractions atheists use to escape life are their constant battling with the theists and their hatred and defiance against anything related to spiritual guidance. Now, all atheists are not of this sort. Some atheists are spiritually based and some are defiance based, but that is a different post.
See:
jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=380.0
Getting back to Buddhism, I would rather see Buddhism be used in realistic and practical ways to develop a life of peace generation, both inner and outer peace in this world. Now, this is a real goal that all can achieve with such a practice. This way living in such a peace based world will not be viewed as hell, but as joy and compassion. Sure there are bumps and bruises along the way for all, but it goes with the territory of life. When I kayak and flip I get beat up on the rocks…it goes with the territory, but I enjoy the rest of the ride. If you look at the population it is not declining…escaping rebirth very impractical.
I guess it is a fantasy for most, just as heaven is a fantasy to those not believing in Christian doctrine. In either practice though, it is much better to be peace based and make this a life of acceptance and peace instead of one to dread, a life that one would not mind living indefinitely and one that you were happy to live in any case. Unfortunately when I talk of a practice based on inner peace most people are dumbfounded, or as one Buddhist practitioner asked me, 'what is your great attraction to inner peace and happiness?" - as he could see little benefit in such a practice.
I have become somewhat aquatinted with a newer form of Buddhist practice…Won Buddhism. Here is a short snip from their site about what Won is and what they work towards.
Practical Application of Won Buddhism
"Although the teaching of the Buddha embodies supreme truth and skillful means to save sentient beings from misery, the Buddhist system was formed mainly for the life of monks in the monastic order and was not suitable for people living in the secular world. Anyone who wished to he a true Buddhist under such a system, had to ignore one’s duties and obligations to the secular life and give up one’s occupation. Under such a system, the Buddha-grace, no matter how great the Buddha-dharma may be, cannot reach the numberless sentient beings of the world. Thus, Won Buddhism teaches that a Buddhist should not be shackled to the Buddha- dharma and Buddhist system or disabled to manage the worldly affairs as in the past.
A Buddhist should be able to manage the worldly affairs better by being a Buddhist. In other words, one should not become useless to the world by being a Buddhist. By making a lively application of the Buddha-dharma, one should be a valuable person to oneself, one’s family, one’s society and one’s country. Thus, one of the mottos of Won Buddhism reads: Do not separate the Buddha-dharma from daily life; Realize the Buddha-dharma in daily life. The Buddha-dharma here means only those most fundamental teachings which are simple enough and potent enough to deliver all sentient beings suffering in the sea of misery."
For more information about won Buddhism go to:
Now, I do not know that much about this sect, so do not hold me to any shortcomings in my recommendation. If it is what it says it is, then a Won practice is what the vast majority of Buddhists would fall into that do not wish to be monks or nuns, yet wish to derive benefits from their practice as well as to help others.
To get back to the subject at hand - a snip from Bhikkhu Bodhi on suffering:
“The Buddha does not merely touch the problem of suffering tangentially; he makes it, rather, the very cornerstone of his teaching. He starts the Four Noble Truths that sum up his message with the announcement that life is inseparably tied to something he calls dukkha. The Pali word is often translated as suffering, but it means something deeper than pain and misery. It refers to a basic unsatisfactoriness running through our lives, the lives of all but the enlightened. Sometimes this unsatisfactoriness erupts into the open as sorrow, grief, disappointment, or despair; but usually it hovers at the edge of our awareness as a vague unlocalized sense that things are never quite perfect, never fully adequate to our expectations of what they should be. This fact of dukkha, the Buddha says, is the only real spiritual problem.”
V reponds to Bhikkhu Bodhi:
Yes, the above is true…but Bhikkhu Bodhi also touches on an important concept that can help us find peace in this life when he writes:
“a basic unsatisfactoriness running through our lives, the lives of all but the enlightened.”
You see, a person cannot be at peace within and with all with their current life if they are always trying to escape life out of fear and hatred for living it and feeling regret for it as a burden unjustly imposed on them. No, such a person is not an enlightened being nor is he or she even pointed in the right direction for reaching enlightenment - other than to say he or she needs to look in the ‘opposite’ direction from where they are looking. An old saying tells us, “A diamond cannot be polished without friction.” So, by applying the ‘rule of opposites’, the once unenlightened mind, can use this ‘friction’ or former despair to help them turn around to find peace.
This is why I always stress to look at the extremes and every option in between to find the answer. For if one direction doesn’t work, the opposite direction or a blending of the two just might. Unfortunately, when ‘self rules self’ the mind is stubborn and fixated on the being right and there are few options to try when the ego rules the roost. Develop ‘self without self’ and look for universal truth for the answer you seek. The truth is that which doesn’t not change, whereas ‘self’ always changes.
Mixing the Eastern and Western philosophy is tough sometimes as the East puts mind before heart and the West tends to put heart before mind. If we go back to the basics of Buddhism we can check our progression as to why there is any dissatisfaction in our progress for finding peace. In Buddhist threefold training we train in moral discipline, we train the mind and we train in wisdom. The training in moral discipline or ‘precepts’ brings one enough initial peace to advance to the other disciplines which require more work. Training the mind helps concentrate it as well as calm it, so one may see things in clear light with wisdom training. But without removing the basic obstacles to our growth, we cannot go onto more advanced training successfully.
For wisdom is the final destination for the enlightened mind, as you can have concentration and calmness, but still not possess wisdom or enlightenment. Calmness and concentration are prerequisites to enlightenment, they are not guarantees of enlightenment. For enlightenment we need to bring the heart and the mind together for balance. When trained in properly, these three areas help with discerning truth and being at peace with it and this quality of being at peace with ourselves as well as with others is the foundation for enlightenment.
I have only brought all this up to help dispel some delusions in practitioners. As I said above, the three unwholesome roots of delusions, greed and hate are very basic to a practice. Out of these three, delusion is the foundational root, for without seeing delusions for what they are, you cannot distinguish the other two unwholesome roots of greed and hate. But this is only restating the eightfold path of right actions, right thoughts, right view, right intentions, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. As I have mentioned before, a wooden Buddha will not get through a fire, a clay Buddha will not get through the ocean and a bronze Buddha will not get though a furnace.
But, a clay Buddha can get through the furnace and turn to stone, a wooden Buddha can float across a river and a bronze Buddha will withstand a fire. So I use many tools to find peace and do not limit myself. I do not write on this topic to try to force a change on your journey or goals with your Buddhist practice. Only you can do that and that change must come from within you as a real and authentic change in your nature. But, if you have no goals or path to follow, maybe this post will ‘awaken you’ to finding one? I make no claim to have the ‘last word’ on this subject. I can only share how I practice and find peace with it in this life. When we put our peace first we will be awakened to a new life that we can ‘live’ with serenely.
In the book “The Miracle of Mindfulness.” it says: “If while washing dishes we think only of the tea that awaits us…then we are not ‘washing the dishes.’ If we can’t wash the dishes, chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either.” So it goes with a person that focusses their attention always to the future at some distant hope of finding the happiness through death to replace the lack of happiness that they cannot find in the present. I prefer to practice mindfulness of my life in the present moment. As such, I work to make the present moment peaceful when I have a say in the matter and make it one that I do not need to escape from through fixating on the future hopes of escaping life. And when I do not have a say in the matter, I am at peace with this road also.
I practice for inner peace, but also it might be termed enlightenment. Buddhism provides this tool, which is just one out of the many tools I use for peace development. For once we have found a contentment within and with all and are at peace - we are progressing on the road to enlightenment. You can also tell when you have “arrived” by your practice telling you so. Does your practice revolve around actually practicing what you have learned to generate peace within or are you on a never ending journey of always looking and never finding?
I look at pain and suffering as part of natural law. I accept it as part of life and look at this as growing pains. Humans are not singled out in this area as every animate and most inanimate object suffer from impermanence as well. While inanimate objects do not suffer pain for the most part they would if they felt the changes happening to them…the rocks crumbling or the earth splitting. Nothing can live without experiencing pain - it is natural law and not just karma. Without this pain of impermanence we could not digest food nor could we even experience taste.
The embryo could not grow or rain fall from the sky.
Sometimes we can get blinded to the big picture when we concentrate on the minutia. I find many problems can be solved with a simple acceptance of what IS. Now, an area that humans can cause great suffering is through their actions. In this area we do have some control over our suffering and the suffering of others as all our actions have consequences and many of our actions are producing consequences that rob of us and others of peace.
Once I am at peace, I can share with others about finding peace for themselves, which is the secondary reason I practice. I have no interest in practicing Buddhism for extinguishing reincarnation. Such “fear based” reasons for being a Buddhist are not authentic or natural - the persons actions are based on fear or negative consequences otherwise they would not do them. My actions are based on inner peace and if I stray - there goes my peace - it is my choice. I enjoy life and realize that due to natural law, suffering comes about as part of the process and I accept it as a fair trade off for the privilege of living, so I would enjoy any reincarnation if given the privilege. Buddhism helps makes this trade off of life and pain more in my favor by lending me support to live a life at peace in the present. I do not practice Buddhism to earn merit for the next life - I practice Buddhism for my own peace generation in THIS LIFE.
If you would like to try another path to peace other than destruction of ones existence, try the path of the Bodhisattva. The world is ripe with those living in misery. There are no shortage of customers for you to offer peace to. And as you instill seeds of peace within others, you plant the same seeds and water these seeds within you as well. As you give so you receive. I hope you can find the same contentment within your life as I have found through Buddhism. And if you still wish to work towards extinguishing samsara, then by all means go in that direction. Give up your current life, all attachments and tethers and start on a new life this very instant by taking that first step and shutting your computer down for good.
How about asking a monk?
I’d agree that asking a Buddhist Monk would be the superior approach to these questions.
Well, I don’t know that there are many monks on this site. However, they can certainly be found on Buddhist sites. Some people can even find ‘real’ live ones where they live.
I guess the distinction is between “illusory” and “an illusion”, although that’s just semantics. It’s true that Buddhism doesn’t deny the reality of what’s around us. But it does clarify the true nature of that reality. In Buddhist terms, the phenomenal world we see is both relative and illusory; it’s not ultimate reality. You noted "the misconceptions of our minds’…the illusion is a creation of our mind and that illusion is relative to our conditions. You used the wave metaphor; another way for non-Buddhists to think of it is if we have the ability to look deeply at objects through a powerful-enough microcsope, we don’t see a chair or a dog, we see sub-atomic particles. Or even beyond that, we’d see some sort of energy without a defined boundary. There’s no substantive, inherently solid ‘thing’ to be found. We only ‘find’ things with our senses – including our conscious mind – to be substantive and independent because of our limitations.
It’s this misunderstanding that the Buddha aimed to correct. So stating that what we perceive to be reality is illusory specifically references the illusion that unawakened minds operate under. And, practically speaking, we have to ‘give it up’ in a sense, in order to realize that what we believe to be ‘real’ is relative and illusory. And the reason for making the attempt is that one can’t abide in just that one level of ‘conventional reality’ without suffering.
Wasn’t Buddhism born within Hindu society? That was 2 and a half millennia ago, but the Hinduism of today believes that the phenomenal reality that we see is an illusion and there is an ultimate reality (Atman) beyond it. If Buddhism teaches that reality is an illusion or is illusory, wouldn’t it be just because that’s just a older belief that the central tenets of Buddhism don’t effect, and so it carries on in Buddhism?
Is a plant consubstantial with the soil it grows in?
Sure, but that doesn’t make the soil the essence of the plant.