the four noble truths

The classic formulation (in italics) of the Four Noble Truths is given like a doctor's prognosis

(1) Suffering exists - in all realms of cyclic existence, from the most heavenly on down to the most hellish
(2) It has a cause - bewilderment, and its manifestation as clinging attachment, both positive (liking) and negative (dislike)
(3) Removal of this cause will bring about removal of the effect - effects are the effects of causes and conditions: these may be modified and purified in such a way that the "illness" - suffering for yourself and others - disappears
(4) There are techniques that do indeed lead to this end - there is a path - The so-called noble eight-fold path

The first point to note is that this does NOT mean that "all life is suffering" as is sometimes propounded as the basis of Buddhism, but that suffering - unsatisfactoriness - is the feeling-tone of everything that is confusion. If your gruntle has gone missing, you may be sure you are confused.

The classic formulation of the eightfold path (following Nagarjuna) is:

right view - what is realised on the path through intelligent investigation
right livelihood - clothing and feeding oneself in accord with the possibilities of reality rather than one's greed
right effort - to practice the path with close attention
right mindfulness - not to lose track of the view
right concentration - one-pointed concentration upon the object of meditation
right speech - to communicate to others the view and to speak in such a way as to be pleasantand helpful towards them
right conduct - comporting oneself in body and mind in such a way as to accord with the view
right thought - the motivation to use one's realisation only for the benefit of others

To be precise, then:

* The five psycho-physical aggregates that make up the idea of a self - that is to say one's form, feelings, perceptions, mental reactions and conscious awareness - and the suffering of change, of not getting what one wants, getting what one doesn't want and of pain and frustration them selves are what is meant by 'suffering'
* and craving and clinging attachment to the delights which seem to make one happy and to the negative experiences which make one uncomfortable or sad are the 'cause'

The whole point of the path is to come to see the reality of the Four Truths - to see why and how it is that they are true.
Once you have, there is something you can do about it. After all, as the Hevajra Tantra says, to the unconfused mind, "... the universe is bliss, and pervaded by bliss which is itself pervaded, and so on, ad infinitum"

This is the state beyond confusion!

dukha 2

Recently a lama who had spent some 40 years in the Chinese camps in Tibet managed to make his way to India. This was someone who had experienced all the horrors of torture - being sewn up in a bag and then beaten with iron rods and left for days to lie in his own blood and shit, you name it - When the Dalai Lama asked him if he'd ever been scared, he said that yes, he had - He'd sometimes been terrified he might lose his compassion for his captors, that he might come to see them as his enemy.
I'm not talking about cause and effect as a "written" - some sort of "given" - Suzanne.
Of course that can be - and still is being - used to excuse anything... and not only in India.
I'm talking about the fact that we live in an ever-changing nexus of cause and condition which - like tides - becomes this and that as the day may determine but to which we are intimately related by its being our experience. It is not someone else's experience, and it is just this fact that shows this relationship.
Of course there's a difference between a hangnail and having your nails torn out with a pair of pliers, between hitting your thumb with a hammer, even, and having all your knuckles smashed for you with same, that's not the point.
The point is that - to the person who's suffering - suffering is all-consuming if they want it to be. Even a small splinter, even a five minute delay in traffic, even the fact that dinner is not to their liking...
That these things are just nonsense and easily curable whereas the others are anything but is not the point as far as suffering goes - They can become enough to ruin a day, start a war, destroy a people, if we like... And, in their time, they have too...
What I'm saying is not that anyone is "responsible for their suffering" because of some karmic decree. Karma means 'doing', anyway, not 'fate'... it means you can change things, modify things, not that they are ordained for you.
What makes a Tutsi child responsible for being bludgeoned to death is the entire situation surrounding it, including you and me, not anything the child itself has immediately done. The mere fact that it's been born the wrong colour, tribe, race, religion, class, caste, political persuasion, sex or language group is a karmic problem well beyond the individual.
Any "wisdom", however, that does not manifest forthwith as compassion is not 'wisdom' at all, it's just bullshit.
This has nothing to do with sitting on one's lotus throne and listening to the world weep. One the contrary, it's exactly what you are doing... Finding ways (albeit imaginary) to ease the pain (albeit delusional) of sentient beings (albeit symbolic)... They neither "exist' nor "don't exist", which may seem - to ordianry mind - a duality, but, in fact, is only one thing - one gesture, one hand clapping. In the same breath, they neither "exist' nor "don't exist", and that is the whole point - beyond all thinking, beyond all expression, beyond all ideas of compassion or knowing or of their opposites... Beyond all conception, the ultimate compassion - unsolicited - strives for the well-being of all sentient and even insentient (if such there be) beings.
This is not in the least to minimize pity, fellow-feeling and empathy, kindliness, gentleness and what is ordinarily referred to as 'compassion', but - as the Buddha said - 'I use your terms - your language - but what I am speaking of is far beyond what you generally understand by such terms'.
I don't mean to make you feel uncomfortable, my friend - Quite the contrary... I love you from the depths of my soul.

.-_-.

dukha — the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary experience

This article came from a friend's comment that "atrocities need to be spoken and heard; the emotions acknowledged and integrated before people can get over it and move on with their lives".

This too, but without revelling in it... without 'out-suffering', so to speak, everyone else... Toothache hurts, but my toothache hurts much, much more than your toothache...
All suffering is suffering, Suzanne. On the level of sheer frustration if not on that of the actual pain experienced. Sure one must be open to listening to and allowing the expression of the suffering of those who have passed through extreme trauma, but ultimately what it boils down to is that all suffering is suffering - the suffering of not getting what one wants, of getting what one does not want, of change and upset, and of suffering itself, be that pain or frustration - these are the four basic facets of suffering which, as the Buddha said, 'should be experienced - in one's own body and one's own mind' so as to be understood.
But it's also taught that suffering stems from a cause: that the cause is not knowing how to comport oneself in the world as it is - not knowing how or what to want... in a word: bewilderment or ignorance - unawareness - witlessness (all these words are linked to the Sanskrit... vidya = awareness, wit in the ancient sense; avidya = iggerance, literally unwit)...
Interestingly, for causes to fructify the entire ensemble of the contributary causes and the supporting conditions have to fructify at the same time, and these, too, are intimately related to our total misunderstanding of what it is that's going on here - our total misreading of being.
However, it is true that if something is an effect it has to have a cause, and, if you remove the cause then the effect will, of itself, disappear.
Removing ignorance may seem impossible, or, at the very least, so daunting as to be utterly unapproachable, but it is said that if one examines reality carefully and thoroughly, one develops what is known as the correct view. If one then lives in accord with this, carefully keeping to it and not slipping back into unawareness, if one is mindful and concentrated, keeps one's speech, conduct and thought in line with it, then the path to the dissolution of suffering opens up of itself and one may follow it to its end.
In other words, it's not the situation you try to dissolve, but the positive-negative grasping to the situation that ignorance entails - i want this; i don't want this... When these dissolve, the situation itself is subtly transformed; it actually becomes an opportunity for learning. As long as you continue to project on others and on the situation itself - to cling to it positively or negatively - you are simply moving the chess pieces round on the board.
I don't know if you know the Buddhist diagram of the so-called Wheel of Life? A fearsome-looking red man holds in his hands and is devouring a disc containing illustrations of the six possible realms of becoming, surrounding which are twelve illustrations of the process of becoming and the centre of which is marked with a pig, a cock and a snake symbolising the cause: ignorance, desire and aversion? - To the left of this diagram, there is generally a picture of a buddha pointing across the diagram to the right, where the above-mentioned 'eightfold noble path' is listed as another way of going about things.
There's quite a good description of the details of this here , for all the fact that Yama - the Lord of Death or first person ever to die - is shown not as red but black and that the noble path is represented as the paradise of Buddha Amitabha which has more to do with other-power (the saving power of faith) than with self-power as explained above.
As long as we wallow in our suffering, we only compound it... NO-ONE else is responsible for it, ultimately. They may be the contributary cause or the condition, but the ultimate fact of suffering is ours alone to assume responsibility for. As long as we're blaming 'it' or 'them', we are definitely looking in the wrong direction.
This is the very root of the Buddhist teachings, this is what Siddhartha Gautama realised under the Bodhi Tree: It's our own mind that's playing tricks with us - our own hopes and fears - our own bewildered grasping at meaningfulness in and projection of meaning onto the fleeting and ill-recognised experiences of our minds - that is the cause of our suffering. Did he not say: 'I see you, O builder of houses. No longer shall you build your mansions here,' at which point all hell broke loose as his various yearnings tried to keep him within their pernicious hold... That's how the story goes...


He persisted, and asked the earth itself to bear witness. Symbolising the end of anger and grasping, mara's weapons (mara=the demon of limiting concepts: that the body-mind is the self, that death is the end, that one is too sinful and weak to ever understand and self-sufficient pride) turn to flowers as they touch him and his beautiful daughters turn to old women before his eyes (he could, of course, have turned them into flowers too, but saw a need - think - regarding the prevalence of carnal desire). He is unshakeable in his knowledge that the builder of houses has lost, and the goddess of the earth rears up out of it before him to bear witness that he has, indeed, woken up from his eternal dream.

To this end, one needs to assume responsibility. That's what I'm saying.
I'm not negating the horror people suffer because of what they believe is real; they do, indeed, suffer terribly, and it really is terrifying and scarring and debilitating... But it's also a waste of time - a waste of this precious human incarnation which is so brief and so subtle and so beautiful.
In the Lankavatara Sutra it says, Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise. What this means is that we have to understand where the fault lies. It lies here; not there.

This is NOT a path for everybody. For the most part, dinner should be served well before there's any talk of 'philosphy' let alone 'liberation', I know. I grew up in Africa and have seen India and Nepal.

Then again, anybody can enter it at any given instant...

Let me now shut my mouth before I choke on this foot.


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