Upāsaka Cattasallā (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cattasalla) wrote2019-03-18 12:40 pm
cattasalla) wrote2019-03-18 12:40 pm
The Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
In my last post I talked about the first so-called "noble truth", of the existence of so-called "suffering" including about how "noble truth" is not really the best rendering of ariyasacca and "suffering" is not at all a good word for dukkha. But we still use those words because of the same reason banks still use COBOL. Legacy.
Anyway, once you've established for yourself that dukkha exists, then you're ready for the second practice with perspective that will bring you to a dignified life: The origin of dukkha. The cause of dukkha.
Buddhism is short on metaphysical or ontological ideas, but there's one that is pretty fundamental: Conditionality or causality. When certain conditions exist, certain things come to be. When those conditions cease, those things cease. This applies to all conditioned things, which in Theravāda Buddhism means literally everything but nirvana itself (and Mahāyāna Buddhists will say even nirvana is conditioned). So, naturally, this can be applied to dukkha: Like anything else, there are conditions and causes that cause dukkha.
One of the main things that causes dukkha is called vedanā, and it means something like feeling-tone or hedonic tone. It's whether or not whatever is happening in your experience is pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. Then, comes a response: You like the pleasant thing, or you dislike the pleasant thing. Then you either want more of the pleasant thing, or you want to hold on to it, or you try to get away from the unpleasant thing (often by trying to find a pleasant thing). The response is referred to as "craving" (taṇhā), the mental motion it initiates, towards or away from, is "clinging" (upādāna, which also means "feeding" or "fueling"). And this is what causes dukkha.
It's very important here to understand that the thing you're responding to is almost never inherently pleasant or unpleasant, desirable or undesirable. That is your response. Even things that are generally considered pleasurable or painful in an absolute sense are not necessarily so: A person with a great deal of trauma surrounding sex or food may not feel sexual stimulation or extravagant meals to be pleasurable experiences, and a masochist finds pleasure in what others would regard as painful and thus undesirable.
So it's not just the sensation that creates your response, your reaction. A whole lot of things go into it. A lot of those are underlying tendencies, a disposition you have, that becomes activated. A disposition that you have largely created yourself, through your own actions. It's really simple classical and operant conditioning, as from mid-20th century Western psychology: If you make certain associations, they become established as automatic responses. If every time you get the urge to munch on chips, you go ahead and do it, then it's all the more likely that you'll do that again the next time you have the urge to murch on chips. This is karma. When you encounter a sensory experience, it's your past karma that activates and shapes the rest of your experience, including your reactions.
That, then, is the cause of dukkha. And that's where mindfulness can be brought to bear. When you watch your mind, watch how it reacts to things. Watch the feeling-tone as it arises. Ask yourself, is this pleasant, unpleasant, or neither? And separate it out from the response, from the craving and clinging. Note that there's a difference between them. That if you have an unpleasant feeling, that triggers a set of reactions, but the reactions themselves are not the feeling.
Then you can see the origin of dukkha.
Anyway, once you've established for yourself that dukkha exists, then you're ready for the second practice with perspective that will bring you to a dignified life: The origin of dukkha. The cause of dukkha.
Buddhism is short on metaphysical or ontological ideas, but there's one that is pretty fundamental: Conditionality or causality. When certain conditions exist, certain things come to be. When those conditions cease, those things cease. This applies to all conditioned things, which in Theravāda Buddhism means literally everything but nirvana itself (and Mahāyāna Buddhists will say even nirvana is conditioned). So, naturally, this can be applied to dukkha: Like anything else, there are conditions and causes that cause dukkha.
One of the main things that causes dukkha is called vedanā, and it means something like feeling-tone or hedonic tone. It's whether or not whatever is happening in your experience is pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. Then, comes a response: You like the pleasant thing, or you dislike the pleasant thing. Then you either want more of the pleasant thing, or you want to hold on to it, or you try to get away from the unpleasant thing (often by trying to find a pleasant thing). The response is referred to as "craving" (taṇhā), the mental motion it initiates, towards or away from, is "clinging" (upādāna, which also means "feeding" or "fueling"). And this is what causes dukkha.
It's very important here to understand that the thing you're responding to is almost never inherently pleasant or unpleasant, desirable or undesirable. That is your response. Even things that are generally considered pleasurable or painful in an absolute sense are not necessarily so: A person with a great deal of trauma surrounding sex or food may not feel sexual stimulation or extravagant meals to be pleasurable experiences, and a masochist finds pleasure in what others would regard as painful and thus undesirable.
So it's not just the sensation that creates your response, your reaction. A whole lot of things go into it. A lot of those are underlying tendencies, a disposition you have, that becomes activated. A disposition that you have largely created yourself, through your own actions. It's really simple classical and operant conditioning, as from mid-20th century Western psychology: If you make certain associations, they become established as automatic responses. If every time you get the urge to munch on chips, you go ahead and do it, then it's all the more likely that you'll do that again the next time you have the urge to murch on chips. This is karma. When you encounter a sensory experience, it's your past karma that activates and shapes the rest of your experience, including your reactions.
That, then, is the cause of dukkha. And that's where mindfulness can be brought to bear. When you watch your mind, watch how it reacts to things. Watch the feeling-tone as it arises. Ask yourself, is this pleasant, unpleasant, or neither? And separate it out from the response, from the craving and clinging. Note that there's a difference between them. That if you have an unpleasant feeling, that triggers a set of reactions, but the reactions themselves are not the feeling.
Then you can see the origin of dukkha.