"Life is suffering"

[Dillinger4]

Pain exists because pain receptors exist.

I don't mean pain, I mean suffering. You don't necessarily have to be in pain to suffer.

And I mean that question in a broadly philosophical sense, and aimed at Buddhists. I have never had that one answered properly.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I don't mean pain, I mean suffering. You don't necessarily have to be in pain to suffer.

And I mean that question in a broadly philosophical sense, and aimed at Buddhists. I have never had that one answered properly.

It's the same thing. Suffering exists because we have the facility for always wanting more.

As a result, when we don't always get it, we suffer. It's the dichotomy
between where we are, and where we want to be. It is a fiction of the brain.

 

[Dillinger4]

So your answer would be that suffering is itself an illusion created by desire?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

So your answer would be that suffering is itself an illusion created by desire?

I don't know that it's an illusion exactly. It's an artifact of our survival mechanism: a brain structure that continuously makes us dissatisfied, always wanting more.

 

[bluestreak]

Supposed to be the 1st noble truth in Buddhism.

This I don't agree with. It's too negative and it isn't the way that life is supposed to be.

To follow a Buddhist philosophy I'll "keep what is useful and discard that is not" and I'd prefer to reject this "noble truth".

Who says aye?

So we can add Buddhism to the list of things that you think you know about but don't.

It might be easier to write a list of things you do understand.

1. How to post on internet forums.


Any more for any more?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

So we can add Buddhism to the list of things that you think you know about but don't.

It might be easier to write a list of things you do understand.

1. How to post on internet forums.


Any more for any more?

Bluestreak gives instruction to NoEgo:

 

[toblerone3]

i get what you mean. a couple of my students here say sort of similar things about western medicine. like it views the body as a machine and you can just reduce it to chemical reactions so if you put the right chemicals in the right place it will fix everything. it works to some degree but there are some illnesses tht you just can't fix like you would fix a car, that kind of thinking is a lot more dependent on some religious ideas of part of ourselves existing outside of science than the chinese approach to medicine which treats the whole body as one thing and not lots of different parts because there is a lot about people that reason will need another 2000 years to work out and we don't have that much time.

Try acupunture. Never tried it myself but I had an amazing acupressure massage (Tuina) in Kunming.

 

[inflatable jesus]

A more interesting question would be to ask why suffering exists.

I thought suffering in that sense was aimed at the transitory nature of things (We live, we grow old and die, we eat and we get hungry again, that kind of thing) and specifically at the problem of death and rebirth.

To me the former just seems like whinging and the latter is aimed at a problem that doesn't exist.

I like the tendencies towards compassion and the lack of dogma in Buddhism, but I feel like it sometimes gets an easy ride from skeptics because it's not an Abrahamic religion. Can anyone really give a credible defence of Nirvana, Samsara and all that?

 

[isitme]

suffering and unhappiness exist for the sake of balance...

it's like yin and yang, you can't have joy without suffering. if your life was what you wanted you would still have things that make you suffer because it's impossible and undesirable to just have life with no ups and downs

 

[revol68]

suffering and unhappiness exist for the sake of balance...

it's like yin and yang, you can't have joy without suffering. if your life was what you wanted you would still have things that make you suffer because it's impossible and undesirable to just have life with no ups and downs

woah man you are getting really deep out there in the far east.

 

[isitme]

woah man you are getting really deep out there in the far east.

i've always been interested in buddhism. i don't like the religious version with all the different gods and dharmas and shit, but some of it is fascinating. it's a good antidote to the so much stuff about 'the meaning of life' which is really confrontational and opaque

 

[revol68]

buddhism is bollox.

 

[isitme]

yeah revol

i can't fathom why people still like reading the thoughts of buddhist scholars and not mouthy little irish pricks

 

[revol68]

yeah revol

i can't fathom why people still like reading the thoughts of buddhist scholars and not mouthy little irish pricks

I wasn't suggesting my posts on Urban as an alternative

ps I might be little and irish but atleast I don't look like someone who has to pay for sex.

 

[isitme]

yeah you do

 

[revol68]

yeah you do

Those who would pay for kisses deserve none.

 

[isitme]

the bucket with the least water will shake the most

 

[revol68]

the bucket with the least water will shake the most

and probably make stupid inane pronouncements about yin and yang and class analysis being a load of shit.

 

[isitme]

yes dear

 

[paimei01]

Read "The Continuum Concept". Buddha was just a civilized man in search for his tribe. There are people living like zen masters, happy as they can be.

Of course "life is suffering" for the separated ones.

The Moken, also known as the "sea gypsies", are a nomadic people living off the coasts of Burma and Thailand.

In their language, there is no word for " want."

Think about it.

http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter1-4.php

In a personalized version of the Technological Program, we identify happiness with the maximum possible insulation from danger, dirt, and discomfort. But of course, this insulation cuts us off even further from the world and, so, exacerbates the separation that is the actual source of the pain.

A saying goes, "Seek not to cover the world in leather—just wear shoes." It is a spiritual cliché that happiness is not to be found by engineering the world so that everything goes your way: such happiness is transient, doomed. But that's the way we act, culturally and individually, much of the time. Someday, everything will be perfect and we'll be able to relax and be happy forever.

When we separate ourselves from nature as we have done with technology, when we replace interdependency with "security" and trust with control, we separate ourselves as well from part of ourselves. Nature, internal and external, is not a gratuitous though practically necessary other, but an inseparable part of ourselves. To attempt its separation creates a wound no less severe than to rip off an arm or a leg. Indeed, more severe. Under the delusion of the discrete and separate self, we see our relationships as extrinsic to who we are on the deepest level; we see relationships as associations of discrete individuals.

 

[Jazzz]

suffering and unhappiness exist for the sake of balance...

it's like yin and yang, you can't have joy without suffering. if your life was what you wanted you would still have things that make you suffer because it's impossible and undesirable to just have life with no ups and downs

I don't think that's quite right. You can have your house painted white. You will know that it is white throughout, all the time. You don't need any of it to be painted black to know that it is white. On some level you must know of the existence of black in order to appreciate your white, but that's all that is necessary.

 

[NoEgo]

A more interesting question would be to ask why suffering exists.

Lack of consciousness, or awareness, if you prefer.

 

[Dillinger4]

So it goes away when you are asleep?

 

[DotCommunist]

I didn't buy 'life isn't fair' when I was 10, and I'm not buying 'life is suffering'.

It's a lay down and bite the pillow attitude.

Life is for the struggle against suffering and inequality. No Pasaran

 

[Pickman's model]

I didn't buy 'life isn't fair' when I was 10, and I'm not buying 'life is suffering'.

you don't have to 'buy' 'life isn't fair'. it isn't fair, and that's it. if it was fair then bad things wouldn't happen to good people.

 

[Dillinger4]

.

 

[DotCommunist]

you don't have to 'buy' 'life isn't fair'. it isn't fair, and that's it. if it was fair then bad things wouldn't happen to good people.

of course it isn't, but phrased as some deep universal truth or told to a child as an explanation for why he has no free milk-fuck that.

It may be true now but that doesn't elevate it to the status of incontrovertible truths of the Pythagorus kind (square on the hypoteny-thing).

It's like looking at a red painted wall and saying 'this wall is red'. Get down to B&Q for some Dulux and sort it out. ffs.

 

[Dillinger4]

.

 

[Pickman's model]

.

 

[Dillinger4]

That is the Buddhist in me.