When we don't get what we expect

No! We don't want to ever suffer! - Calm down, crybabies. Here's the solution: NIRVANA.

(Buddhism Podcast) Live with what we can't change? No, there's much to do beyond that

Accept what we cannot change? No

Why do we fall into the trap of our expectations? The Truth is much better.

Cry, Homer. But it's okay. It'll all be alright.

(Buddhism Podcast) When life, which is full of disappointment (dukkha), is not what we expected.

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?

1. This is disappointing, incapable of ever fulfilling us.
2. This is how pain/disappointment/suffering originates.
3. This is the cessation of all suffering (nirvana).
4. 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.

I'm not like this. I'm just having a bad day, k?

That is nirvana, attainable here and now, no having to wait till death, which is actually a lot late to be starting to do anything about all the suffering that awaits us for remaining ignorant and asleep. So since we don't suffer, we dismiss anything they Buddha said, thinking it doesn't apply to us. But do we suffer? Well, that depends on, What is "suffering"? The Buddha defines what he is calling suffering (dukkha):

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.

Oh, the Buddha found the end to all pain?

This process itself (the Five Aggregates clung to as self) is suffering, is unsatisfactory, is disappointing, is liable to great pain, is utterly incapable of ever fulfilling us. Rebirth is suffering (unsatisfactory, disappointing, painful, unfulfilling) as are growth (maturation), aging (slowly breaking down), illness, death, loss, sorrow, crying (lamentation), physical pains, grief, and despair.

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

US killer survives torture with slave philosophy

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.

List: Seven Stages of Insight

The process of craving, grasping, and clinging starts with sense-contact, part of the Five Aggregates clung to as self, and how this corruption, this misapprehension, this forming of wrong view, this distorted seeing can be overcome by progressive training of the heart/mind, culminating in progressive insight, which can be remembered as the 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.

So there is an END to all this suffering, now?

This includes a fundamental, inescapable unsatisfactoriness that pervades all things in and states of existence, all situations and future lives in any world (of which there are countless), any plane (of which there are 31), and any sphere (of which there are three), because all things all the time are incapable of fulfilling us and are always changing, hurtling towards destruction, and are ultimately impersonal, not ours, not under our absolute control.

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

There's much to do to be free.

The first ennobling truth is the recognition that there is suffering, not because there is but because we don't even recognize it. We think we do. As soon as it pops up, we turn away, move on to something else, jump for distractions. We have next to no idea what it really is or what is causing it.

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

The Empty Nature of All Things

(Buddhism Podcast) The empty nature of all things: Buddhist philosophy on reality

The Suñña Sutta [15] ("Discourse on Emptiness"), part of the Pāli canon, relates that the monk Ānanda, the Buddha's attendant, asked:

"Venerable sir, it is said that the world is 'empty,' the world is empty. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?"

The Buddha replied, "In so far as it is empty of a self or of anything that belongs to a self. So it is said, Ānanda, that the world is empty." More

Dukkha Girl: 4th of July w/ Lana Del Rey

(scorpio) "Dangerous Girl" (lyrics) starts at Min 1:33 (unreleased) by Lana Del Rey

I'm cutting my own throat chasing romance

LYRICS, DANGEROUS GIRL: He's my drugstore cowboy/ Italian alloy, classical American/ And I'm America's sweetheart/ Chic, delicious, sweet tart/ Sipping on my Diet Coke/ Singin' in the trailer park// He like my jeans tight (Yeah)/ He likes me mean, right? (Right)/ He like my long hair, corset, heels high/ We were born to kill, stripped for success/ I'm his sweet mess/ Do you love me?/ Yes, yes/ Hell yes!// Baby, I'm a four-alarm fire/ And I'm what you desire/ Like a siren in the night (Going Nero, Nero)/ Baby, you's a man on a wire/ Risking all that you got/ For the love of your life/ (You're my hero, hero)// CHORUS: Let me be your dangerous girl (4x)// He's the get-rich-quick type/ Mafioso-hit type/ Girl, I'm gonna marry him/ I'm the bad girl next door/ Baby's always wantin' more/ Buyin' diamond jewelry/ Take me to the Jersey Shore// He like my mink white (White)/ We go out all night (Night)/ We're living off the grid/ Shinin' in the crime light/ We were born to kill, best of the best/ The new Wild West/ Honey, put on that party dress/ Hell yes!// Me and my baby plannin' world domination/ Together, takin' over our fair nation/ 'Cause we're born to kill, keepin' it fresh/ Gold chain, white mesh/ Fame is the name of the game/ Yes, yes (Yes, yes, yes, yes) (Genius Lyrics)

"Music to Watch Boys To"

Am I pretty or am I actually suffering from body dysmorphia after being fat?

(Lana Del Rey) "Music To Watch Boys To" with lesbian mermaid sirens in a pool

LYRICS, MUSIC TO WATCH BOYS TO: CHORUS: (I like you a lot)/ Putting on my music while I'm watching the boys/ (So I do what you want)/ Singing some rhymes just to suffer the noise/ (Where ribbons are knots)/ Play 'em like guitars only one of my toys/ ('Cause I like you a lot)/ No holes barred, I was sent to destroy, yeah// Pink flamingoes always fascinated me/ I know what only the girls know/ Hoes with lies akin to me/ Ah, I see you're going/ So I play my music, watch you leave// CHORUS// Velveteen and living single it never felt that right to me/ I know what only the girls to know/ Lies can buy eternity/ I, I see you leaving/ So I push record and watch you leave// CHORUS// I live to love you/ And I love to love you/ And I live to love you, boy/ I live to love you/ And I love to love you/ And I live to love you, boy// Nothing gold can stay/ Like love or lemonade/ Or sun or summer days/ It's all a game to me anyway// CHORUS// Putting on my music while I'm watching the boys/ Putting on my music while I'm watching the boys (Genius)

• "Music To Watch Boys To"

We found the new Dukkha Girl! (WQ search)

Wisdom Quarterly's own Dukkha Girl is back (in a new incarnation after we scoured the country).

Q: DG, what will you be doing for the 250th 4th of July celebration?

Listening to a lot of Lana [Del Rey] because she really gets it.

"It"?

Dukkha, disappointment, never being satisfied or getting fulfillment out of relationships and drugs and experiences, suffering.

B', don't 'ill my vibe, clean up, eat right for abs 👀

So what you're saying is that you're a Dangerous Girl?

Pretty much, because I actually believe it. I believe we can find satisfaction and ultimate fulfillment in romantic love relationships. But you know what? It's never worked! Never.

So you mean the Buddha was right?

Why, what did he say?

He said that all existence bears "Three Marks" or characteristics: All things are impermanent, unsatisfactory (disappointing), and impersonal.

Well, I don't about impersonal, but disappointing for sure. I take it very personally. But come to think of it, they are all impermanent, too, like not even lasting till death do us part.

Why is Lana so blue, so sad, Dukkha Girl?

 

Finding the right boy: "Shades of Blue Cool"

(LanaDelReyVEVO) Daddy issues with music video maker Lana: "Shades of Cool" He unfixable!

She can't find the right relationship, but she keeps searching, and she used to have weight issues, so she's hyper-sensitive about her looks.

But, Dukkha Girl, what about "Summertime Sadness"?

What about it? It's summer; you're sad; it's pretty straight forward.

No, the big Lana Del Rey hit song, don't you want to post that one?

That is so played out! She has hundreds of better songs. No wonder Taylor Swift rips her off so much.

Why does Taylor copy Lana so much?

(PopCultureTalks) Why is "Taylor Swift copying Lana Del Rey?"

• Has Taylor Swift lost the plot? Exploiting fans, feuding with CharliXCX, AI allegations
• The most punk rock [Dukkha] Girl in the world

"Pretty When You Cry"?

(Songs Galaxy) Lana Del Rey "Pretty When You Cry" from Ultraviolence

Dysfunctional solution: Get high by the beach

(LanaDelReyVEVO) "High By the Beach"

LYRICS, HIGH BY THE BEACH: High, high/ High, high// Boy, look at you lookin' at me/ I know you know how I feel/ Lovin' you is hard, bein' here's harder/ You take the wheel/ I don't wanna do this anymore/ It's so surreal/ I can't survive/ If this is all that's real// CHORUS: All I wanna do is get high by the beach/ Get high by the beach, get high/ All I wanna do is get by by the beach/ Get by, baby, baby, bye-bye/ The truth is I never bought into your BS/ When you would pay tribute to me 'cause I know that/ All I wanted to do was get high by the beach/ Get high, baby, baby, bye-bye// Boy, look at you lookin' at me/ I know you don't understand/ You could be a bad motherfather/ But that don't make you a man/ Now you're just another one of my problems/ Because you got out of hand/ We won't survive/ We're sinkin' into the sand// CHORUS// Lights, camera, acción/ I'll do it on my own/ Don't need your money, money/ To get me what I want/ Lights, camera, acción/ I'll do it on my own/ Don't need your money, money/ To get me what I want// CHORUS// High/ High/ High/ High// Anyone can start again/ Not through love, but through revenge/ Through the fire, we're born again/ Peace by vengeance brings the end

She's our summertime girl!

What about Taylor Swift, Lana?

As kids my sister and I appeared in an Abercrombie & Fitch ad w/ Lindsay Lohan

Two Paths to Knowledge (Bhikkhu Bodhi)

I trust the Orgy Pit's been scraped and buttered

Many of the most formidable social and cultural problems we face today are rooted in the sharp divide (schism) that has divided Western civilization between science and religion.

Science claims invincible knowledge based on testing (empirical investigation of) the natural world. Most religions do little more than call for faith in supernatural beliefs along with obedience to codes of morality and ethics that require restraint, self-discipline, and worst of all self-sacrifice.

Since most religion, as traditionally understood, often rests on no more than blithe promises and pompous threats, its appeals to our allegiance seldom win.

The ethical ideals it claims to advocate (when not being hypocritical) don't stand a fighting chance against the constant injunction — thrust in our faith by screens, radios, and signboards — to ENJOY life to the hilt while we can.

What'd you do in there? - Well, I took the butter

As a result, a most of humankind has become alienated from religion as any kind of meaningful guide to life, left with no alternative but to plunge headlong into another kind of religion: secularism, the religion of rejecting religion through mass consumerism and hedonism.

Too often, those in the religious camp, sensing the threat secularism poses to their own security, feel driven toward an aggressive fundamentalism in a desperate bid to salvage traditional loyalties.

The quest to establish a sound basis for proper conduct in today's world has been made particularly difficult. Why? A consequence of the "scientific" worldview has been to banish values from real life.

While many scientists, in their personal lives, are staunch advocates of such ideals like world peace, social justice, and greater economic equality (parity), the worldview promoted by modern science gives values no objective grounding, not in the grand scheme of things. Thinking like this, values' root and basis is purely subjective. So they bring along all the qualities that subjectivity suggests: being

• personal,
• private,
• idiosyncratic,
• relative,
• not to be talked about with others
• and sometimes even arbitrary.

The overall effect of this is that, despite the best intentions of many of them, scientists give a green light to lifestyles founded on a quest for personal gratification. Not only that, it's also based on a power drive aimed at exploiting others.

The Buddha's Teaching

"If there's any religion...it would be Buddhism"

In contrast to the classical Western antithesis of religion and science, Buddhism shares with science a common commitment to personally test and uncover the Truth about the world.

Both Buddhism and science draw a sharp distinction between the way things appear and the way they really are. And both offer to open our minds to insights into the real nature of things normally hidden from us, sometimes in plain sight as falsified ideas based on distorted sense perceptions and "common sense."

Forget science-school and meditation. Let's dance!

Still, despite of Buddhism and science's affinity, it is necessary to recognize the great differences in the aim that separates Buddhism and science. Both may share certain conceptions about the nature of reality, but science is essentially a project designed to provide control and objective, factual knowledge, with information about the public domain. Buddhism is a spiritual path intended to promote inner transformation and the direct realization of the highest good, called awakening, enlightenment, liberation, or nirvana.

In Buddhism, the quest for knowledge is important but not as an end in itself or to control others. The main cause of our suffering and bondage is ignorance.

What does that mean? Ignorance (avijja) is not understanding things as they really are. Instead, we distort things even as we perceive them, judge, and label them. So the antidote needed to heal ourselves is knowledge or liberating-insight.

The type of knowledge acquired by practicing Dhamma differs from that sought by science in several ways. Most importantly, the knowledge sought is not gaining objective information about the physical world. It is about a deep personal insight into the real nature of our personal existence.

The aim is not to understand reality from the outside. It is to understand it from the inside, much as psychology originally intended to do. Knowledge from the perspective of one's own living experience is the key -- as it is to shamans, Gnostics, and experimenters on a quest in this lifetime.

We seek not debated "facts" and "opinions" as knowledge, but insight, wisdom, personal knowledge that is inescapably subjective. That's the point. The whole value of it lies in its transformative power and impact on our own life.

Concern with the outer world as an object of direct knowledge arises only insofar as the outer world is inextricably implicated in personal experience.

As the Buddha says, "In this body, with its perception and thought, I declare

• the world,
• the origin of the world,
• the cessation of the world, and
• the way to the cessation of the world."

First, I'll be born as a prince then renounce it all

Buddhism takes personal experience as the starting point, without aiming to use experience as a springboard to an impersonal, objective type of knowledge. Buddhism includes within its domain the entire spectrum of qualities disclosed by personal experience.

This means that Buddhism gives prime consideration to values. But even more, "values" for Buddhism are not merely projections of subjective judgments fashioned according to our personal whims, social needs, or cultural conditioning.

On the contrary, they are written into the texture of reality itself just as firmly as the laws of motion and thermodynamics. So values CAN be evaluated: rated in terms of being true or false and ranked as valid or invalid.

And part of our task in giving meaning to our lives, which means unearthing the true scheme of values. To determine the true gradation of values, we have to turn our attention inward and use subjective criteria of investigation. So what we find, far from being private or arbitrary, is an integral part of the objective order.

This order is permeated by the same lawfulness that governs the movement of the stars and planets.

Science says it's for something

Natural science (wiki)

Affirming the objective reality of values implies another major distinction between Buddhism and science. For liberating-insight or knowledge of enlightenment to arise, an investigator has to undergo a profound personal transformation guided by the inner perception of genuine values.

While natural science can be undertaken as an intellectual discipline, the Buddhist quest is an existential discipline. That can only be implemented by regulating and restraining our conduct, purifying our mind, and refining our capacity for attention.

What is there to pay attention to? To our own physical (bodily) and mental processes.

This kind of Buddhist training requires ethics all the way through. Ethical guidelines support and pervade the entire training. The starting point is right action, and the culmination is the highest liberation of the heart/mind.

OK, there's escape from this lack-of-fulfilment?

What is noteworthy is that the ethical thrust of Buddhist training and the mental thrust of it converge. Where? They converge on the realization of the ultimate truth of selflessness (anatta). [This is an advanced notion, but it is the gateway to stream entry, the first stage of enlightenment.]

It is just here that contemporary science approaches Buddhism in its discovery that "nature" is a process actually. It reveals the lack of any ultimate substance hiding behind a sequence of events. There are events. But this correspondence again points to a fundamental difference.

In Buddhism the impermanent, unsatisfying (unfulfilling), and impersonal nature of reality is not just some factual truth to apprehend (or believe in). It is above all an existential truth. It is a transformative principle.

It offers the key to being able to stop clinging to the false and to let go as we gain right understanding.

Right understanding (seeing things as they really are) leads to right liberation. To use this key for its sole purpose, which is to open the door to spiritual freedom, we must govern our conduct on the premise that the false idea of a substantial self is a delusion.

It is insufficient to merely intellectually grasp this selflessness as some idea or to turn it into a plaything of thought. The principle must be penetrated by training ourselves to discover the absence of selfhood in its subtlest hiding place, the deep recesses of our own bodies and minds.

• 

  Knowing and Seeing: True...

  [HOW? How can this ever be accomplished? Buddhist Meditation Master Pa Auk Sayadaw explains. By mastering "meditation" (the absorptions or jhanas), the mind/heart is purified and able to see. What does it look at? It breaks down this body, this materiality, into its components, the smallest of which are "form particles" (rupa kalapas). The body is not "body," but rather countless constituent elements constantly built up and torn down, rising and falling away. The mind is not "mind," but rather countless constituent elements (a stream of "mind-moments" called cittas) constantly built up and falling away. This is what's really there, if only we could ever see it as it truly is.

• 

  Venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw of Burma

  We can see it. That is to say, we can know-and-see directly. How? First, we settle the mind into absorption, emerge and move to a deeper absorption. With practice, this comes at will. Then we turn our attention to the "fourfold setting up of mindfulness." This is just a fancy way of saying we give systematic attention to body, feelings, the mind, and various phenomena. With exercises to directly perceive the Dependent Origination of things (the fact that everything that arises arises dependent on causes and conditions), the mind is made ready to see things as they really are. And in doing so, it naturally lets go of ignorance, illusion, and falsehoods. It thereby gains light, knowledge, wisdom, and liberation.]

Buddhist thinkers and open-minded scientists, if they were to share insights and reflections, could show us an effective way to heal the divide. What divide? The rift between seeking "objective" knowledge and spiritual wisdom. We could bring about a reconciliation of science and spirituality.

In this way, spiritual practice could become an integral part of the discipline that aims at knowledge. Spiritual practice and knowledge combined could become the tools for achieving the highest good stuck in the world and breaking beyond limitations to enlightenment and spiritual freedom.

Hedonist Stephen Hawking in Epstein Files

This has always been the position of Buddhism. The evidence is in the most ancient texts. The Buddha, the "Enlightened One," is not only a kind of scientist, a lokavidu or "knower of the world." He is also, above all, "one complete in both knowledge and conduct" (vijja-carana-sampanno). Could a scientist say that? Could one ever get to that through science? Source: Two Paths to Knowledge

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

American Theravada monk Bhikkhu Bodhi

Bhikkhu Bodhi (born Dec. 10, 1944) is an American Theravada scholar-monk and prolific translator of ancient Buddhist texts from the Pali canon. He was born in New Jersey and moved to California to get his PhD from Claremont before heading to Asia to ordain as a Buddhist monk. He went in search of a teacher and found one in Sri Lanka, Balangoda Ananda Maitreya Thero, along with many fellow Jewish Buddhists from Germany in and around the Buddhist Publication Society (BPS). He now teaches at the Buddhist Association of the United States (BAUS) in Upstate New York (Chuang Yen Monastery) and in New Jersey (Bodhi Monastery, which is not named after him). He is a Buddhist author, translator, and commentator, who was Wisdom Quarterly Dharma Editor Dhr. Seven's first theoretical Dharma teacher [who himself studied at Berkeley and UCLA before journeying to Sri Lanka in Bhikkhu Bodhi's steps and onto India, Nepal, Thailand, and Burma to meet his practical teacher, the great living Buddhist meditation master Pa Auk Sayadaw]. Bhikkhu Bodhi was appointed BPS's second president [2] after its founder, Ven. Nyanaponika, following in the footsteps of the great Western maverick Ven. Nyanatiloka. He is currently president of BAUS and the founder of the Buddhist feminist charity Buddhist Global Relief [3]. More

• Online Dharma Lectures | BODHI MONASTERY
• Bhikkhu Bodhi (accesstoinsight.org, 2005) clarified and expanded by Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Wabi-sabi: Perfection of Imperfections

(T&H Inspiration & Motivation) What is the most skillful art? Noninterference, flowing, surfing

The art of golden joinery

More beautiful for being broken? (Etsy)

Kintsugi (Japanese 金継ぎ, lit. "golden joinery," also known as kintsukuroi, 金繕い, "golden repair" [1]) is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with golden urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with actual powdered gold, silver, or platinum.

• A crack in a vessel is not a mistake, not an error, but rather a means of allowing light in.
• "NO-MIND" (Japanese mushin, Chinese 無心, wúxīn, Sanskrit acitta, acittika, acintya, nirvikalpa) is a mental state that is important in East Asian religions, Asian culture, and the arts. The idea is discussed in classic Zen (Chan) Buddhist texts, described as "the experience of an instantaneous severing of thought that occurs in the course of a thoroughgoing pursuit of a Buddhist meditative exercise" [1, 2].
• It is not necessarily a total absence of thinking, however. Instead, it can refer to an absence of clinging, conceptual proliferation (cycling through an endless hamster wheel), or being stuck in thought [1].
• Chinese Buddhist texts also link this experience with Buddhist metaphysical concepts, like Buddha-nature and Dharmakaya. The term is also found in Taoist literature, including the Zhuangzi. This idea eventually influenced other aspects of Asian culture and the arts. Thus, the effortless state of "no mind" (flow state) is one cultivated by poets, artists, craftspeople, performers, and trained martial artists, who may not even think it is associated with Buddhism or Taoism [3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. More: No-mind

The method is similar to the maki-e technique [2, 3, 4]. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object rather than something to disguise [5] or hide.

History

Let's have a tea party with fine China, not wood

Kintsugi became closely associated with ceramic vessels used for chanoyu (Japanese tea ceremony) [3].

On the one hand, one theory is that kintsugi may have originated when Japanese shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China for repairs in the late 15th century.

When it was returned, repaired with crude metal staples, it may have prompted Japanese craftsmen to look for a more aesthetically pleasing means of repair [2].

On the other hand, according to Bakōhan Saōki (record of tea-bowl with a "large-locust" clamp), such "ugliness" was considered inspirational and Zen-like, as it connoted beauty in broken things.

Goryeo ewer with gold repair spout/handle (20th cent)

The bowl thus became highly valued due to the large metal staples, which looked like a locust, and the bowl was named 'bakōhan ("large-locust clamp") [6]. Collectors became so enamored of the new art that some were accused of deliberately smashing valuable pottery so it could be repaired with the gold seams of kintsugi.

It is also possible that a pottery piece was chosen for deformities it had acquired during production, then deliberately broken and repaired, instead of being discarded [2].

The technique of kintsugi was also applied to ceramic pieces with origins outside of Japan, including China, Vietnam, and Korea [7].

 

Wabi-sabi, philosophy of embracing flaws and imperfections

As a philosophy, kintsugi is similar to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, an embracing of the flawed or imperfect [8, 9]. Japanese aesthetics values marks of wear from the use of an object.

• WABI-SABI (侘び寂び) in traditional Japanese aesthetics centers on the Buddhist acceptance of transience and imperfection [2]. It is often described as the appreciation of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" [3]. It is prevalent in many forms of Japanese art [4, 5]. Wabi-sabi combines two interrelated concepts, wabi (侘) and sabi (寂). According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, wabi may be translated as "subdued, austere beauty," and sabi as "rustic patina" [6]. Wabi-sabi derives from the Buddhist teaching of the Three Marks of Existence (三法印, sanbōin), which states that ALL things are impermanent (無常, mujō), unsatisfactory (苦, ku), and impersonal (or empty, shunyata, devoid of self-nature, 空, kū) [7].

Maybe tai chi exercise would be good

This can be seen as a rationale for keeping an object around even after it has broken. It can also be understood as a justification of kintsugi itself, highlighting cracks and repairs as events in the life of an object, rather than allowing its service to end at the time of its damage or breakage [10].

The philosophy of kintsugi can also be seen as a variant of the adage: "Waste not, want not" [11].

Kintsugi can relate to the Japanese philosophy of "no-mind" (mushin, 無心), which encompasses the concepts of non-attachment, acceptance of change, and fate as aspects of human life [12].

Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated...a kind of physical expression of the spirit of mushin....often literally translated as "no mind," but carr[ying] connotations of fully existing within the moment, of non-attachment, of equanimity amid changing conditions. ...The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject. This poignancy or aesthetic of existence has been known in Japan as mono no aware, a compassionate sensitivity, or perhaps identification with, [things] outside oneself.

— Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics

Materials and types of joinery: There are a few major styles or types of kintsugi:

• "Crack" (ひび), the use of gold dust and resin or lacquer to attach broken pieces with minimal overlap or fill-in from missing pieces
• "Piece method" (欠けの金継ぎ例), if a replacement ceramic fragment is not available and the entirety of the addition is gold or gold/lacquer compound
• "Joint call" (呼び継ぎ), the use of a similarly shaped but non-matching fragment to replace a missing piece from the original vessel creating a patchwork effect [13]. More: kintsugi
• CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit