Let's Talk about Suffering

Gerard and I have been having a conversation about the Four Noble Truths. I don't want it to get buried in comments because I'm enjoying the conversation and I hope others will chime in with their thoughts. Check out the original thread here.

Gerard brings up some interesting points:

• The heart of Buddhist practice is seeing things as they really are.
• The mind is cunning, and often in the attempt to see things as they really are, we are really just trading one set of unquestioned ideas, notions or beliefs for new ones.

Then paraphrases them nicely:

1. We are suffering.
2. We have a mind full of ideas/beliefs which inhibit us from seeing clearly and is the cause of suffering.
3. Any effort to find a way out of our suffering will only lead to a strengthening of our ideas/beliefs which will continue our suffering.
4. Our lack of clear seeing is causing an unprecedented destruction of the planet.

And closes with a question:

So what are we to do?

The house is burning around us, yet we don't see the flames licking at our feet. We believe the flames are normal. We are so used to the flames that they have become part of us, and we hold on to them.

So what can we do?

It's interesting. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the Four Noble Truths. If my friend hadn't e-mailed the question, I wouldn't have spent the time trying to articulate what I think they mean. But through this process, I think we may be uncovering another type of craving that leads to suffering.

When I came to the end of Gerard's last post I smiled, because he's asking for something that I've so often asked for in the past. Something that I cannot give--The Answer (with a capital T and a capital A). What is it? What's the answer? There are so many questions, so many pitfalls, so many reasons to doubt the worth or efficacy of our efforts. How do we know we are "getting it right"? Is it possible to "get it right"? And considering the state that my mind is in, even if I am "getting it right" how do I know?

Isn't this something we all crave? Understanding? Answers? And when they don't come easily, we suffer. We tie our minds in a million knots trying to work it all out, trying to find the "Aha!".

Zen encourages us to approach practice with three attitudes--Great Faith, Great Courage, and Great Questioning. Maybe a solution lies in moving away from finding the answer and instead embracing the question... in moving away from an intellectual inquiry using the tools we grow up with in school (rhetoric, logic, and debate) and moving toward an experiential inquiry.

Comments

[Gerard]

Hello Chalip,

The question I asked previously, was asked for a reason. In putting this question forward it leaves the intellect with no where to "run". It is an impossible question... that is, it is impossible to find the answer.
I have been to dialogue/inquiry groups in the past, and it is interesting that when a question like this, an 'impossible" question, is put forward it can leave the group in silence... it stops the intellectual mind from grasping.

As you said, to hold the question without trying to answer it... this might lead us out of an intellectual inquiry and into a "different" kind of inquiry where we can go beyond the words.

It's like if I ask the question, "Does God exist?" The intellect might try to cover this question with ideas or beliefs, but this is not the truth.
The hardest thing is to stay in the position of not knowing... to hold that question, not letting it go. It might be true that there are other questions that need to be asked which will wipe away the original question.

Maybe there is one question that will wipe away all other questions... what if it were that simple?

[Zen]

Interesting post...

[jessica]

mmmmmmmmmmm...

[Kobutsu]

We are not suffering..... suffering is something extra that ego adds onto the all pervasive dissatisfactioriness of existence.

[Zen of Writing]

It's because the mind is cunning that we need to find a teacher and sangha.

Joko Beck said, this life is paradise, if we could only see it.

[Tom]

chalip,

I hope you pick up this thread, again. Or the blogging bug bites you again, soon.

An interesting recent post on the 4 Noble Truths in Monkey Mind has me busy thinking about the topic of your post.

http://monkeymindonline.blogspot.com/2007/04/my-arguemtn-with-four-noble-truths.html

[CJ]

The mind loves security. It wants to be able to say "this is the truth, and this is the fail-safe path to happiness". The problem is, happiness only exists in the present moment. We can be happy right now. Yet what most of us want is the security of being happy not only now, but for all time to come. No sooner do we gain some thing that makes us happy, then we are immediately thinking about how to get more of it, or how to secure and grasp this happiness and guarantee that it will not go away. But this kind of security does not exist. There is only the present. And so there is no path as such - there is no set of rules to follow. The only rule is to be have an open heart and an open mind and to do what is right in the current moment.

[chalip]

Tom, thanks for the link... I'll check it out.

I think I will be blogging regularly again soon. I've missed it, and I've missed the community.

And CJ... well said. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

bows,
chalip

[chalip]

Oh, and Kobutsu...

Forgot to say, excellent point...

"You're not suffering, you just think you are."

We do get wrapped up in what ever it is that we perceive to be "our suffering." It does become a very "real" thing that sits in front of us, and looking through it we don't see ourselves or the world clearly.