 |
| This sucks so friggin bad and I'm all alone. |
We miss our beloved, adopted (Shanghai victim) correspondent
Dukkha Girl. She was on, she was gone,
she came back, and now who knows
where she is? So here's a replacement,
Shoe0nHead, a clever allusion to that time someone asked the Zen master a
koan and he "answered" by putting a sandal on his head and walking out. Ha.
But in a serious vein, if people only knew what dukkha is, they would have much more respect for what the Buddha found. What he taught, which made him so famous, is how to bring all suffering to an end. "Impossible!," people say, but it is possible, and a fraction of beings have already done it, giving the world the Noble Sangha, the community of those on the stages of awakening.
We would like to leave the term dukkha untranslated -- and nowadays not attempt to define "girl" either because of the libcon rancor and feminist hypocrisy that tends to engender -- because it's a multivalent Sanskrit word, having a range of meanings, with many shades and intensities.
 |
| Does the Buddha have advice for worldlings? |
Translated, we prefer "disappointment," to show that it is much more than the common "suffering." Suffering sounds so bad that most of think we don't have that. But Tan Geoff is right to translate it as "stress" rather than distress, because even eustress (positive stress as comes from excitement) is included in this umbrella term. The best definition is long and comes from the Buddha:
It is not getting what we want, getting what we don't want, and all forms of ill and unease. It is pain, it is sadness, it is loss, it is ultimately that lack of fulfillment that drives us on to keep hoping and searching (craving) even though it continuously leaves us dissatisfied and off kilter and out of sorts.
 |
| No one gets me, except Grumpy Cats. He does. |
The word
dukkha at its root refers to an oxcart wheel that is off-center and therefore providing a bumpy, wonky, wobbly, uncertain, and unpleasant sometimes painful ride. All of life -- in all states of existence -- is beset by tinges of this. Hey, but what about the heavens? Even there, danger exists. They are not eternal, and they are certainly not fulfillment as they have been sold to us. They are temporary bliss, exalted, and that's the higher ones. The lower sensual ones seem little better than a good time on earth. Just ask the Indian, Greek, Sumerian, and Roman "gods" (the
deus, devas) of the various pantheons, visitors from above acting like spoiled children with lots of power and beauty.
 |
| We ignore the danger of suffering, the misfortune others meet, until the S gets real (bad touch) |
.
It is completely wrong to interpret Buddhism as saying there is no pleasure. If there were no pleasure, the Buddha explains, no one would stay in
samsara. Of course, there's pleasure. It is our relationship to pleasure that is problematic. We crave, grasp at, and cling to the pleasant; we exhibit aversion and fear toward the unpleasant; we get bored or confused and fall asleep with the neutral, the neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant.
 |
| F all y'all! Maybe pleasure's the solution |
Moreover, there is a hidden danger in pleasure and attachment, like a flower or fruit with a hidden thorn. Or to use a now less familiar simile, which was popular and easier to relate to in the Buddha's ancient agrarian proto-India, it is like licking honey off the blade of a knife or razor used to gather that honey. It's sweet until it slices your tongue.
Females can get lonely? But they're always going to the bathroom together, going out in packs, being friends on the phone and on social media with their filters and clique parties, accompanying each other to venues, talking to everyone, and acting like the whole world is a popularity contest in high school!
Of course girls get lonely, and women have it even worse. Everything that happens on the HS social scene is temporary, even in college, but IRL? Whoa, suddenly it's all forevermore.
Females are pitted against each other by the society, treated in curious and crappy ways by males, misunderstood by a male-dominated medical field, psychologized, medicated (with most of them being put on antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs), and told to smile to make viewers feel better as if it were their job to make us feel good. Dating/mating in particular is a problem. Anyhow, who knows? Let's ask a woman. Dukkha Girl! Oh, she's not here. Um, Shoe0nHead, take it away:
