Why is samsara bad?

Why is clinging bad? As I understand it, because it leads to dukkha. Why is dukkha bad?

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Because it leads to unease and what I would term unnecessary suffering. Or just complicating things, in a psychological sense. Your unease is because you haven't looked at the world in a deeper sense, or perhaps a part of your perspective needs to change, even slightly. It's a process of realization.

I don't think I've been clear enough in my question, so you might have gotten the wrong impression.

I admit that clinging is a futile and harmful endeavour. I'm not saying that I disagree with the first or second truth. I just want to know why I should follow them. There's no deontological drive (it seems to me), no God saying 'do it because I say to do it' or moral imperative. There's just a couple of observations about life and a method to get rid of it, if you want. But for a person who doesn't see the point in clinging or not clinging, what then?

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You should follow them because it benefits your psyche, if you will. You follow them because they work well in adjusting your life to the circumstances that assault you every day, the uncertainty, the anguish, even the things that seem great. The realization that they will pass away and that they will be replaced in some sense is something that can change one's life for the better. But it is also difficult.

The motivation comes from within, so it is difficult for people to find Buddhism morally compelling if you work from a perspective that somehow needs a source outside oneself to compel you to action. Even Kant called for the categorical imperative in motivating one to action. But it seems to me that one's own basic observations of life and understanding that is drawn from that is sufficient for an ethics that is neither too complex nor too simplistic.

I've got to go right now, but I'll be shortly back. Sorry for the hurried response.

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I'll be here. I don't have any pressing things until next Friday, far as I can tell. I can answer your questions to the best of my practice and study, which I admit only started about a year ago, but in a sense, had already started in some sense as early as my sophomore or junior year of high school.

Nooj said:

in this sutta, the Buddhist says that everything we experience is dukkha:

And so nibbana would mean that the cravings for all our experiences would be dropped. That's definitely weird. Nibbana wouldn't be a superhuman state but a suprahuman state. Totally indescribable because we wouldn't even be human anymore. In which case, it seems to me that it'd be better if we as sentient beings never existed at all

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This train of thought is not entirely alien to Christianity, as it's expressed in the Bible. While the 2 perspectives are different, there's a lot of overlap and that seems to strengthen those points IMHO. And in those areas that differ, not much contradicts. What Christianity does add is the Incarnation, "redeeming" essentially everything, so it at least has the potential to be good. (As long as we don't get carried away with that, and into hurting others) And the end goal is to no longer be human; at least not as we know it anyway.

I'm trying to be super skeptical here. You said that dukkha is bad because there's unnecessary suffering.

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A difficulty many inquire about my qualification therein is what constitutes unnecessary suffering. You don't inquire about this, either because you don't think it relevant or you potentially agree in some sense that there's a difference between suffering in a basic sense and suffering unnecessarily.

I want to know if there is a reason why suffering is bad beyond 'because it hurts'. That's obvious. But try as I might, I can't find another reason beyond that it hurts and we don't like getting hurt. Do all our philosophies and religions exist merely because our body says 'ouch' to some things and 'that feels good' to others? And is Buddhism merely a religion about increasing one and decreasing the other?

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I would say it's a religion and philosophy that seeks to properly orient our perspective towards both happiness and sadness, among other dichotomies and see that they are both necessary. We shouldn't be absolutely averse to pain and shouldn't cling in attachment to the good things that happen to us. Suffering in itself isn't bad; it seems to me it's our reactions to suffering that could be said to be bad. It's not just that we don't like getting hurt, it's also that we can accept that it is a natural part of life and that our shared experience of that can enable us to better ourselves.

I'm not sure this is really the case. The more I study about Buddhism, the weirder it gets.

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That tends to happen with virtually any system that starts with more general considerations about the world instead of more radical assertions about an entity that exists beyond our understanding and yet we can get revelations about it. Buddhism is more basic and simple in what it approaches, one might say and that can throw us off.

From what I've read of Buddhism, the Buddha doesn't seem to be saying that we can get rid of dukkha and then we can be happy and do whatever we want in a peaceful state of mind. That implies there is something to experience that is not dukkha. But in this sutta, the Buddhist says that everything we experience is dukkha:
And so nibbana would mean that the cravings for all our experiences would be dropped. That's definitely weird. Nibbana wouldn't be a superhuman state but a suprahuman state. Totally indescribable because we wouldn't even be human anymore. In which case, it seems to me that it'd be better if we as sentient beings never existed at all, or were rocks. Rocks never experience dukkha.

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Getting rid of dukkha is more getting rid of our perception of the world as such instead of becoming severed from the world entirely. There's no reason to be completely separate from the world, but only to not let its temptations affect you. Dropping cravings is not the same thing as dropping desires. Dropping desires wouldbe suprahuman, but dropping cravings is only getting closer to a sort of completion as a human. When you're free from attachments, you are more fulfilled as a human, since you aren't bound by those things.

And rocks can be said to be susceptible to anicca, impermanence, but not dukkha, since that necessarily requires a consciousness.

Namaste Nooj,

thank you for the post and interesting question.

Nooj said:

Samsara, the cycle of rebirth. Why is this something to escape from? Many people seek eternal life, what would you say to them?

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i would suggest that this view arises mainly from a poor transliteration of Buddhist concepts and terms coupled with the Theosophists that initially introduced the Buddhadharma to the West.

Samsara isn't simply the cycle of rebirth, though it is certainly that, it is the cycle of Dukkha and it is Dukkha which a being puts an end to.

i have an exceeding dislike for this whole "escape from samsara" idea and how it's been promulgated in the West by certain groups that, honestly, cannot disguise their monotheistic worldview.

the Buddha *never* teaches the idea of escape from anything, quite the opposite in fact, the Buddha teaches radical engagement with unadorned reality and makes it quite plain in the Suttas that though a being can withdraw and Awaken effecting an "escape" that practice is, in the end, a practice which does not Liberate a being. Awakening and Liberation are very, very different things.

i cannot see how wishing for eternal life would be of any value for even if a being were to remain alive for the duration of this universe, much like MahaBrahma, when the universe ends so do all the beings therein and the next universe arises and so on and so forth without end or beginning.

so.. the Buddhas teaching isn't to "escape samsara" it's to "put an end to Dukkha" and dukkha, though often given a terrible transliteration in English as "suffering" would be more aptly transliterated as several terms: stress, unsatisfactoriness, mental anguish, physical pain, joy, love, happiness, sorrow.. in short, Dukkha is the whole range of physical, emotional and mental states that a being can experience both positive and negative. it seems a peculiar habit of beings with a Semetic history to view it via negativa.

the "end of Dukkha" so to speak, is the state of being known as Nibbana/Nirvana which is, in and of itself, a vastly misunderstood and mysterious concept even though the Buddha proclaims that his teachings are clear, unambigious and nothing was withheld so one can only wonder at the confusion of this term. i have a feeling that it is mostly due to laziness on the part of a great many Buddhists in the West and from casual studies of the tradition. i say this since it is fairly easy to find in the Suttas the Buddhas own explanation for what Nibbana is and is not and i would expect that any being that had a serious interest in the tradition would certainly bother to look up the Buddhas own words on the subject.

whilst i greatly admire Thay and His Holiness the Dalai Lama i never accept their explanations of the Buddhas teachings... which seems a bit presumptuous till i recall the Buddhas own teachings on the subject and look it up for myself... of course i see that they were spot on but that's not the point!

metta,

~v

Not to bring back a dead-but-not-quite-rotting thread, but...

Nooj said:

Why is clinging bad? As I understand it, because it leads to dukkha. Why is dukkha bad?

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Why is pain bad? It's not bad, it simply... is. And yet we have all these painkillers, from asprin to fentanyl, to rid ourselves of pain.

I admit that clinging is a futile and harmful endeavour. I'm not saying that I disagree with the first or second truth. I just want to know why I should follow them. There's no deontological drive (it seems to me), no God saying 'do it because I say to do it' or moral imperative. There's just a couple of observations about life and a method to get rid of it, if you want. But for a person who doesn't see the point in clinging or not clinging, what then?

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If you don't see the point, then don't be a buddhist. Be something else. =D
If you don't want to get rid of the pain, you don't need a painkiller.

One could argue there are degrees of pain that we can accept. Emotional or mental anguish from the death of a loved one or a beloved animal, for instance, or even the loss of a material heirloom. There is the obvious pain we are familiar with, bodily/physiological pain, that, while a necessary evil, in some cases, becomes such that it would cause death or something of a crippling nature. If you want to function well, sometimes it is necessary to have painkillers. Not to mention their invaluability in surgery.

If I were running in a marathon, I would accept the pain I felt as a kind of noble suffering. Granted that not all pain is alike, but pain is not an unqualified evil.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Nooj said:

But if you don't want to function well...?

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namaste nooj,

that is one of the main pillars of the Buddhas teachings. *most* beings that are currently arisen aren't even aware of what is happening to have any other view.

the Buddha uses a...parable (i don't like that term given it's connotations but it shall suffice) to convey this idea in the Suttas. he says that a he, and beings like him (Stream Enterers), see the nature of reality like a husband and father would see his home aflame from outside while the children and wife and family were inside asleep, completely oblivious to the danger. the Buddha then explains that one of the qualities of a Buddha is to enter the burning building to rouse everyone to effect their escape.

in any case, the Buddha makes it very clear that even if a Buddha were to appear in front of a being, that being may simply not be ready to put the Doctrine and Discipline (which is what the Buddha referred to his Dharma as) into practice....it may take hundreds of thousands of arisings before such time arises.

metta,

~jae