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| No! We don't want to ever suffer! - Calm down, crybabies. Here's the solution: NIRVANA. |
Accept what we cannot change? No
Why do we fall into the trap of our expectations? The Truth is much better.
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| Cry, Homer. But it's okay. It'll all be alright. |
There are Four Ennobling Truths, four realizations that lead to enlightenment here and now and awakening in this very life, with spiritual liberation and freedom for all time. What are they?
- This is disappointing, incapable of ever fulfilling us.
- This is how pain/disappointment/suffering originates.
- This is the cessation of all suffering (nirvana).
- This is the Path to the cessation of all suffering.
- Craving, grasping, lust, longing, "thirst": taṇhā
- The Three Marks (Characteristics) of Existence
- Things keep changing, hurtling towards destruction
- The Eight Worldly Conditions: praise and blame...
Wait, remind me. What is "suffering"?
Many people misunderstand Buddhism because the word "suffering" comes up so much that it seems that's all there is -- depressing talk about pain. This is very misleading. Buddhism is ALL about bringing about the END of all suffering.
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| I'm not like this. I'm just having a bad day, k? |
Various sutras sum up what unpleasant things and experiences in countless rebirths we undergo. It is not just the pain that touches us in this life; the process rolls on and on in the "continued wandering on" of saṃsāra.
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| Oh, the Buddha found the end to all pain? |
Contact with unpleasant (hateful, unloved, unwanted, repulsive) things suffering, as are being separated from the pleasant (wished for, loved, wanted, attractive). Not getting what we want, getting what we don't want, never being satisfied with anything we get, always longing and craving for more...all of it is unsatisfactory, disappointing, painful, suffering.
Things we can control
Stoic philosopher/pilot James Bond Stockdale
And it all comes back to a more fundamental disappointment beneath it all -- the Five Aggregates clung to as self: body (form); feelings (sensations), perceptions, formations, and consciousness clung to as "self."
Emphasis in Buddhism is NOT on belief. That's nearly useless and only preliminary. The emphasis is gnostic like the ancient Gnostics, for whom direct personal experience of the Truth is everything. Part of that is cultivating insight (vipassana, lit. "clear seeing") into the nature of this "suffering" along with the other two marks of existence.
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| List: Seven Stages of Insight |
This begins by moral restraint (virtuous conduct, sila), which makes meditation (the absorptions, jhanas) possible, which makes mindfulness into the four foundations (body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects) possible.
This brings us back to the basics, the foundational summary, of what we need to penetrate -- not memorize, recite, "believe," argue about), the Teaching of the Four Ennobling Truths. What's "noble" about them or about suffering? They are not noble in the English sense of the word. The Buddhist sense of noble is arya or Aryan, which means "enlightened" or "enlightening."
The list is not a formula but a very general outline of the reflections that bring about what the historical Buddha called "enlightenment" (bodhi, "awakening"). We would rather stay asleep and perchance dream a pleasant fantasy full of pleasure and sensual experiences, delights, happiness in all its forms, of which there are many.
But this dreaming is very prone to nightmares, for in pursuit of pleasure, we ill-conduct ourselves and those karmic deeds come to fruition and ripen in great suffering, unimaginable suffering. We already taste that now, when we would dream and be full of pleasure and happiness all the time or, at least, at will. But that doesn't happen. We can't make that happen. We think we can so, like a donkey after that carrot, which is just right there in front of us, we keep going, pulling a heavy load of a cart laden with more and more karma (all our actions).
Buddhist sutras, or discourses, show the broad meaning of "suffering," from the slightest agitation to the greatest agony, coming in three categories:
- dukkha-dukkha, aversion to physical pain – which includes physical and mental suffering, such as rebirth, aging, illness, dying, distress due to the undesirable.
- viparinama-dukkha, the frustration of disappearing happiness – which is the suffering of pleasurable, pleasant, and happy experiences changing to painful, unpleasant, and miserable ones when the causes and conditions that produced the pleasurable are exhausted or lost.
- sankhara-dukkha, the disappointment and unsatisfactoriness of transient, changing, impermanent "things" – the inability of [conditioned] things to give us constant, lasting pleasure and happiness.
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| So there is an END to all this suffering, now? |
At this level, the term dukkha, "suffering," indicates a lack of any lasting satisfaction, any ultimate fulfillment, any that things can ever measure up to our expectations. More
What is the point of all this talking about or even mentioning "suffering"? Yeah, yeah, we get it; we know we suffer, duh! Can't we just talk about nice things -- bliss, lights, expanded meditative states, magical powers, insights into all physical and mental phenomena, joy unending, nirvana-fication, quenching thirst, dousing the flames of greed, hatred, and smoldering delusion, stuff like that? Suffering is the problem that pleads for a final solution, a state and trait, a condition in need of a cure, an unbearable thing that we at some point have to deal with and bring to a final end.
Four truths to freedom
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| There's much to do to be free. |
That is the second ennobling truth: What is causing it? The ROOT cause, the fundamental cause, the ultimate cause is? It is not craving (desire, wanting). It is ignorance (avijja), manifesting as wrong views (miccha-ditthi) and delusion (moha), confusion about reality.
The solution is? Awakening to the Truth, the ultimate truth (paramattha), enlightenment right now -- through realizing the causal links of Dependent Origination, the process by which this suffering is arising. Among those 12 links, of which ignorance is the ultimate cause, is one the Buddha singled as the one we can actually do something about right here and right now directly, and that is craving (tanha). Why do we crave? Ignorance, which is the same reason we have aversion and why we are deluded. The Buddha singles out craving to work on undoing the causes and conditions bringing about suffering. Why?
That is the third ennobling truth: What is not-suffering? Nirvana. Nirvana is the end of all suffering. How do we realize nirvana, directly perceive and experience it here and now?
That is the fourth ennobling truth: There is a Path to the end of suffering. What is it? It is outlined in general in the Ennobling Eightfold Path. However, to be more specific and less general, the Buddha spoke of 37 "things pertaining to enlightenment," the bodhipakkhiya-dhamma, for immediate development to know-and-see nirvana.
- Buddhism Podcast (videos); Dhr. Seven (text), Ashley Wells (ed.), Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit
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