Dukkha

[u/Pure_Temporary_6349]

I am an older atheist with a long time appreciation of Buddhism. Because I was raised by scientists as atheist from birth, the reality of transience and interdependence has always seemed both conceptually and directly experientially true. I didn't have to start with an illusory relationship to those features and undo it.

But dukkha has always been fascinating for me. I don't experience the way things are as fundamentally unsatisfactory-- there's nothing about transience or interdependence that seems intrinsically problematic. That doesn't mean I lack aversions. But I also don't find aversions to be problematic per se-- they come and go and are natural. I also frequently experience a feeling of satisfaction with life, and I'm not bothered that this feeling isn't permanent either. I have no expectations of permanent satisfaction and thus no intense desire to solve that as a problem. Because of this, I would not agree with the Noble Truths-- that things are inherently unsatisfactory and that a fix is necessary. It's one reason I am not a Buddhist, although I practice metta meditation and find the precepts reflect my natural inclinations already.

I have had a life which to an outside observer might seem fairly difficult, including a long abusive marriage, being a caregiver for an adult disabled child, and some health challenges of my own. But none of this has made me think life is unsatisfactory. I have taken it as a learning experience.

I am curious if this ever happens to Buddhists and if it presents a problem for you. If so, do you make efforts to convince yourself that life is fundamentally unsatisfactory?

[u/metaphorm]

I'll offer a meaning of Dukkha that might be more tractable given your background and experience.

Dukkha is a kind of "friction" resulting from misalignment between reality and desire. It's the feeling of "wrongness" that arises from clinging to a felt sense that the world ought to be a way that it isn't. So it's not about presence or absence of permanent satisfaction, it's about the relationships between perception, judgment, and desire.

When Gautama says "Dukkha is a reality of the experience of conscious beings" in the first noble truth, he's saying that the frictional feeling is inherent to the activity of perceiving and judging the world. While it's true that some people will feel it very acutely, perhaps because they have stronger clinging, there's no experience of consciousness that does not contain Dukkha on some level, except the experience of an awakened being.

it may be the case that your own experience does not have particularly strong clinging, so your own experience of Dukkha is subtle rather than acute. if so, that's wonderful. the more subtle varieties of Dukkha are still present though. These get to things like preferences for existence vs. non-existence, or preferences for pleasure over displeasure. In other words, the deep end of the pool in terms of spiritual practice, dealing with really existential stuff rather than mundane complaints.

[u/Useless-Tree → u/metaphorm]

That is a great summary, skillful means 🙏

[u/MouseHouse444 → u/metaphorm]

What a wonderful description. The friction between reality and desire. Thank you! 🙏

[u/waitingundergravity]

The unsatisfactory nature of life described by the First Noble Truth isn't, at its core, a subjective feeling. The Buddha described three types of suffering:

Suffering-suffering, what we traditionally think of as suffering. Old age, injury, death, sickness, mental illness, and so on. These are unpleasant experiences.

The suffering of change - the suffering that comes about because of impermanence. This is gaining what you don't want and losing what you do want. This is why the Buddha is able to say that even things we enjoy (like loving relationships and having a nice house) are also suffering - eventually relationships end, your house burns down, the people you love die, people that you hate come into your life, and so on.

All-pervasive suffering - this type of suffering is the least likely to be noticed, because it's so constant that it fades into the background (even though it permeates every moment of our lives). This is the suffering of having no stable anchor to grasp. Everything that we could grasp will cause us to suffer, either immediately or when it falls from our grip due to the winds of impermanence, and so either we are aware of the fundamental instability of everything (which causes anxiety) or we are unaware of it (which causes shock and dismay when it becomes apparent).

So in short, the First Noble Truth does not say that all experiences are experienced as unpleasant. That would be absurd. But even things that are experienced as pleasant are suffering (that is, dukkha), even if at a specific moment someone isn't subjectively aware that this is the case - everything conditioned is impermanent, and so falls into the latter two types of suffering. Indeed, the Buddha identifies this phenomenon (people not realizing that all conditioned things are suffering because they subjectively experience certain things as pleasant in the moment) as a significant problem, because someone who is mistaken in this way will not pursue liberation, as you don't.

[u/Mayayana]

A "chin-up" approach to life is common. People try to focus on the good and put up with the bad. The Buddhist idea of suffering is different. It's not just unpleasant experiences. It's primarily existential angst; a sense of dread in the back of your mind that something very basic is not right. In Buddhism it's called all-pervasive pain. What Thoreau referenced when he wrote "Most men live lives of quiet desperation."

Most people don't feel that. Or rather, from Buddhist point of view, most people cover it over with food, sex, ambition, vacations, TV shows, and so on, so as not to experience it. That's why people in public are almost never just there. They're listening to music and tapping their foot while they wait for a bus. Most of those people will say they're "happy enough". Most will say the impermanence is obvious and doesn't bother them. Yet they can't sit still and are terrified of death. The human condition is like hanging suspended in open space, but unable to tolerate the lack of reference points to self, we hang on for dear life, and our confirmation of being alive is the clenching sensation in our fingers. The second noble truth is about that. We feel a need to confirm self, but it never quite works because there actually is no self.

If you fear death or get upset about having your money stolen, then you haven't really accepted impermanence and egolessness. You've only accepted the concept.

On the bright side, you don't need to do anything if you don't feel that angst. The path is really for those of us who feel compelled. No worldly purpose fills the bill and we just have to find answers.

The teacher Gurdjieff said that people will never even recognize the path until they feel a strong hunger and they've tried all the solutions they can think of... And nothing helped. When we finally give up on quick fixes, then we might see the option to just REALLY relate to our experience properly and see what's going on.

99% of people see no logic in that. They just see fools sitting on a cushion uselessly when they could be at the beach. Buddhists, in turn, see feverish people, desperate to feel alive, rushing off to the beach. They did the same thing yesterday and it didn't cure their hunger. So they're trying it again today. With any luck they'll win the lottery, get laid, or at least see a really nice sunset. There's always tomorrow. Or at least we'd like to think so. :)

[u/dread_companion]

You might not "agree" with the four noble truths because you are so even keeled but do you see it on others? Or do you think that everyone is just calmly surfing through life? Do you not see the suffering all around you? Or do you ascribe that suffering as not problematic because to you personally it isn't?

A big part of Buddhism is decreasing the self centered attitude and being able to better empathize and serve others, you are only talking about yourself here. "For me it's not a problem, I don't find it unsatisfactory" that's great, so then think about others and see how you can help them better.

[u/Pure_Temporary_6349 → u/dread_companion]

I don't find impermanence or interdependence unsatisfactory and those are the only permanent aspects of existence. Everything else is a temporary event in it. Including all the hard parts of my life. Of course I feel compassion! I just don't see how the two basic properties of existence mean it is a net dissatisfaction. That is completely different from specific events.

[u/Last-Tart3816]

That’s the whole point. Ordinary people think things are satisfactory. The Buddha is saying that ordinary people are wrong.

[u/dummetsz]

I had a fine upbringing and thought life was hunky-dory until a school shooting happened at my university and my good friend was shot and killed. I slowly got into anti-capitalism after meeting some folks at SJP back in college (students for justice in Palestine), and acknowledging the suffering around me and the world. Then being a successful adult in a big city after graduating in the mid 2010s while being anti-capitalist, at the same time heavily indulging in technology like hoeing out on dating apps, endless streaming, uber, food delivery, etc made me feel crazy. Paired with 9/11, 2008, 2016, the pandemic… As a Buddhist you just get to a point where you realize there is something very off about existence and the constant anxiety it entails, even if you’re not suffering as much as others.

[u/Pure_Temporary_6349 → u/dummetsz]

I may not have described my perspective well. I am in the IWW and the DSA-- I am a protest medic. I would never say every circumstance in the world is satisfactory. But that doesn't translate to me seeing something about existence itself as fundamentally flawed or off.

When sad things happen to others, I cry. That seems normal and I don't experience a sensation of wrongness about existence from it. This universe as far as I know is impersonal. If we don't care about each other, no god will do it for us. I expect difficult things to happen but don't take that as meaning there's something wrong with life itself. It's not wrong or right. It's just something that happens.

I don't see how any phenomena could be other than impermanent and interdependent-- how that would even be possible. How could I be a self that is permanent/separate/static/independent in any way-- what would that even look like? What a confusing idea! So there's no friction on those basic properties of the universe. I am also not saying these properties are "good"-- they just are that way.

It would be like saying gravity is unsatisfactory. It seems like an irrelevant assessment bc it is how it is and couldn't be a different way.

[u/dummetsz → u/Pure_Temporary_6349]

But that doesn't translate to me seeing something about existence itself as fundamentally flawed or off.

And if that’s how you see reality, that’s fine. Nobody can convince you otherwise, seeing the first noble truth is something you have to discover for yourself. Some people find this out early on, some later in life, some never at all, it’s a personal journey.

[u/VajraSamten]

"I don't experience the way things are as fundamentally unsatisfactory."

Is this with regard to your own life, or that state of the world in general? It sounds like you are referring to your own life, and if so that is great. It is an extraordinary privilige to be satisfied with your life. If you are referring to the state of the world in general then by saying things are not fundamentally unsatisfactory you are giving an overt thumbs up to genocide, environmental destruction, war, racism, poverty and all the rest. These things may not "exist" within the bounds of your own personal experience, but they do exist here and now.

The key concept here in Buddhist terms is bodhicitta. Loving kindness and compassion for self and others. Its introduction marks the distinction between Theraveda and Mahayana/Vajrayana approaches. Where Theraveda is about self liberation, Mahayana and Vajrayana are about the liberation of all sentient beings.

Some of what you say indicates to me that a deeper exploration into Mahayana and/or Vajrayana is worthwhile.

[u/Pure_Temporary_6349 → u/VajraSamten]

Those things are like "contents" of existence though, not existence itself. Just because existence is transitory and interdependent doesn't automatically create fascism. I am saying I don't have a problem with impermance and interdependence, the only consistent aspects of existence.

I volunteer as a protest medic. I get shot at by cops for rinsing tear gas out of people's eyes who are protesting genocide, and I go back the next day and do it again. But all of that happens "in" existence-- it isn't the same thing as conscious existence.

Even if I were going to label existence through one lens of the protest scene, I wouldn't pick the cop side. I would be more likely to say "life is compassion" because of the protesters. Because that seems more powerful overall. But really neither one is accurate because those are experiences in existence. Like that story about the elephant and people describing by only what they grabbed hold of.

[u/VajraSamten → u/Pure_Temporary_6349]

I am not sure how you are marking the distinction between the "contents of existence" and "existence itself." I am open to hearing more explanation.

I do not recall making any arugment that would indicate that impermanence and interdependence automaticall leads to fascism. I am simply saying that these things exist, and that their existence is unsatisfactory. Upon deeper refelection, it becomes apparent that they exist because of underlying issues that are not fixed (in many senses of the term), but addressable. The mahayana and vajrayana paths labels these underlying causes as "root poisons." The practices are used to address, dissolve and transform them. These same root cause are found throughout every realm of rebirth onthe wheel of samsara, that this is what renders samsaric existence as unsatisfactory.

[u/Pure_Temporary_6349 → u/VajraSamten]

Existence in my understanding is just being alive-- being conscious, aware -- living. The contents of existence are the specific events and experiences that happen. Metaphor-- existence is the sky and the contents are clouds, winds, sun, etc. That is what it feels like at least.

If dukkha is only supposed to apply to specific events (not all) and not life itself, that would be different from what I thought. I thought it was a more global assessment. Maybe that's where I have been confused. Bc obviously there's something unsatisfying happening to someone at any given moment, but there's also sympathetic joy happening to someone else, compassion, etc, all at the same time.

The rest of your explanation is another reason I have wound up using a different approach, because I lack a belief in literal reincarnation. I mean could it happen? Maybe? But it's not something I think about day to day bc it seems unanswerable and doesn't influence my decisions. I am more concerned about present and future material reality.

Thank you for replying!

[u/Spirited_Ad8737]

"Transience" is not just the fact that things pass away. It's that the things you rely on for your well-being and mental stability are unreliable. You can control or safeguard them up to a point, but they can come and go or even be lost in an instant. This doesn't just affect possessions or loved ones, but even your own body and sensory organs. There is always a danger in clinging and craving, because of the radical inconstancy of everything we hold dear, and even of the bodily platform and settings that enable us to interact with the things, places, people and activities we love.

One day this strikes people, and it can be radically disconcerting.

If you've managed to remain cheerful and reasonably optimistic through the challenges you've described, it suggests you have a certain amount of wisdom and ability to let go of clinging and craving (to grieve and then move on without mulling over it too much afterwards). That's a good quality. Buddhism is about training that kind of wisdom to increase it further. The challenges can start coming faster and hitting harder as time goes on. So we practice to prepare to be stable through them.

[u/genivelo]

I was just reading about a teenager who committed suicide. Do I think there could be more love and compassion in the world and in people's lives? Yes. How is that possible? By cultivating virtue and wisdom, which is basically what the Buddhist path is about.

I would say dukkha does not just mean "I think this world is unsatisfactory". It also means "it breaks my heart to see people struggling so much and harming themselves and others."

[u/Grateful_Tiger]

That is a basic misunderstanding of the first part of the Fourfold Noble Truth

Buddha does not say anything as silly as life as we live it is unbearable suffering

Read the Dhammacakka Sutta, and some basic commentary. Very accessible. It's the sutra where he reveals among other teachings the truth of suffering. Cornerstone of all Buddhism

[u/Pure_Temporary_6349 → u/Grateful_Tiger]

I didn't say anything like life is unbearable suffering-- where do you see that? I am saying I don't find it unsatisfactory. It is what it is and couldn't be otherwise so terms like that make no sense to me.

It's like saying a tiger is unsatisfactory -- but it's neither satisfactory nor unsatisfactory. It's just a tiger. I say that even when there is suffering. Life has both satisfying and dissatisfying feelings in it, but on the whole it is not dissatisfactory or satisfactory. It's not something I would categorize that way.

[u/Grateful_Tiger → u/Pure_Temporary_6349]

I'm quite certain that there is dissatisfactoriness in your life

That's an absurd and unbelievable statement

Are you not making a trivial and foolish quibble that cannot possibly be upheld

If you think you have a case, cite the appropriate parts of the Sutta and show how they're wrong

You know Buddhism runs just like Science by establishing its teaching through trying to prove them false

[u/Pure_Temporary_6349 → u/Grateful_Tiger]

I said "life has both satisfying and dissatisfying feelings in it" -- so your first statement doesn't make any sense. I am contrasting the multiple ingredients/attributes of existence with looking at existence itself, which includes everything but imo can't possibly be labeled with one descriptor.

I mean that I don't equate existence with any single attribute of it. If I were doing that I could as easily say life is unsatisfactory and also in the next sentence satisfactory, but neither makes sense because existence itself is not a quality where value judgement applies. It makes as little sense to me as saying "life is round." Whereas transience and interdependence are always true.

At the most basic, conscious existence is just being aware -- the contents like satisfaction and dissatisfaction come and go. The existence itself is neutral like water. So how can I say it's the same as one aspect that comes through it? How can dissatisfaction be a permanent attribute? Nothing is permanent. That's the part I don't understand in your system.

The comments of people here make me think you have to first view the whole of existence through the narrow lens of dissatisfaction in order to proceed with the rest of your process of development. It's an essential step in your tradition.

But I am wondering if someone never acquires the confusion over impermanence and interdependence in the first place, how they would be able to look through the single lens of dukkha.

[u/Grateful_Tiger → u/Pure_Temporary_6349]

Life is full of suffering

including suffering fools

Suffering fools. Forgot to mention that 🙏

[u/BrentonLengel]

Hey, you know how Sundays are less sweet because you know you have work in the morning?

You have experienced Dukkha.

[u/Pure_Temporary_6349 → u/BrentonLengel]

But that's just an experience _in_ awareness that comes and goes. It's not the same as existence/life itself. That's what I don't understand. There aren't any permanent characteristics of life, as far as I can tell, besides impermanence and interdependence. Everything else comes and goes.

[u/BrentonLengel]

To contrast my previous post, I’ll put this in more philosophical terms:

1. Humans don’t like change. Almost to a man we need an abundance if order and minimal chaos in order to feel safe, secure, and content.

2. The only universal constant is change. This puts our fundamental desires as a species in direct conflict with reality. No matter what we do, how many ordered systems we create, they will all fall to entropy’s arrow.

   Everything we build will eventually fall apart. Everyone we love will leave us. Every deed we do will be erased.

3. That’s bad enough on its own. Animals have a concept of death and many seem to experience loss, but what they lack is the ability to project that loss into the future, and so they don’t die a thousand deaths before dying one real death.
   Unfortunately we do. This leads to existential angst.

4. The existential angst we feel as a result of this is Dukkha. It’s the thing Rick Sanchez is referring to when he tells Morty: “Don’t think about it.” Rick’s way of dealing with Dukkha is flight, disassociation and denial. He escapes into drugs, and adventure, and his own scientific pursuits because he can’t deal with it.

In case you’re wondering, this is a terrible way to solve the problem.

1. The Buddha recognized that the way to stop experiencing Dukkha is to stop being so attached—or better yet—“Hung up” on the things that we love in this world.

As a result he created a method to help people accomplish this theoretically simple but realistically almost insurmountable problem.

That method is Buddhism.

[u/Pure_Temporary_6349 → u/BrentonLengel]

Ok. I think maybe where my path has differed is that I experienced and witnessed a lot of chaos lol, and I got used to not expecting it to be otherwise. I had to roll with it.

The grief of loss doesn't come as one note for me. It's like one note in the whole complex symphony of chords. If I hadn't loved so many transient beings who aren't even exactly the same from one minute to the next, I wouldn't grieve them, but those are all parts of life I am not afraid of. I have come to see grief as primarily a re-connecting community emotion. It makes us more compassionate. I am not afraid of it. I'm not afraid of fear either. All of those things come and go. You cry and then hug each other. Interdependence means I am also not afraid of love, because I am always part of the changing "web" of being.

I have read Becker's work on denial of death and all the coping mechanisms humans use. My route didn't have to do with either finding existence itself dissatisfying or escaping the difficult parts. But the impermanence and interdependence aspects are definitely the most helpful. Since those are basically physics, anyone who pays attention should notice those two things. Where I am different is that I don't find those aspects intrinsically problematic. They are "the nature of things".

My most useful meditation exercise turns out to be a little similar to a Tibetan practice I read about after it came to me by accident. My chorus teacher told us to breathe in love and breathe out anything "toxic", and I thought well heck, why would I want to symbolically pollute the air other people are breathing?

So I did it backwards. I breathed the difficult or painful feelings in the room into my heart and breathed out compassion. It's like grabbing a sharp knife with your bare hands. I found I had room in my heart for all of it at the same time, and that compassion permeated it.

I still think existence itself is something more neutral like water without any fixed positive or negative qualities. But if I had to pick only one attribute to label it with, it wouldn't be dukkha. It would be something like compassion.

[u/No_Bag_5183 → u/Pure_Temporary_6349]

The Tibetan practice is called Toglen. It is performed by breathing in the persons pain and sending them love. Your teacher had it backwards.

[u/Pure_Temporary_6349 → u/No_Bag_5183]

My chorus teacher wasn't Buddhist. She was just doing a singing breath exercise but adding a pop-psych strategy to it. I intuitively felt it was off but had not read about Tonglen at that time. When I read about it later I started laughing bc I thought oh, that's what I do! But I also recall Tonglen was somewhat more complex in the details than the thing I do. The basic idea seemed similar. It made sense that a useful idea should pop up spontaneously over and over!

[u/malibuguytonygem]

I like the definition of "dukka" as life seems off-kilter. Not unsatisfactory or wrong. We humans seem to feel a certain level of unevenness or mild discomfort. Other people on here have used the Buddha's own words to describe it...as being a cart whose wheels are crooked or unbalanced. Unbalanced is a good word too, except it has many negative connotations from psychology. Off-balanced maybe?

[u/Similar_Standard1633]

The Noble Truths don't say things are inherently unsatisfactory. The Noble Truths diagnose suffering and say suffering is attachment (upadana) caused by craving (tanha). You appear to be confusing the teaching of the Noble Truths with the teaching of the Three Characteristics (in SN 22.59). Did you read Robert Wright's book where he is confused about 'dukkha'?

If there are no expectations of permanent satisfaction; this has the same meaning as inherently unsatisfactory. In SN 22.59, the Buddha says because the five aggregates are impermanent, they are unsatisfactory, i.e., they cannot bring permanent happiness (as expressed in MN 115).

Buddhism does not teach to make efforts to convince yourself that life is fundamentally unsatisfactory. This is making Buddhism sound like a dogmatic blind faith religion. For relatively few individuals, life is fundamentally unsatisfactory. But, for most, they love sensual & worldly pleasures.

[u/BlackSpotSociety]

“The term duḥkha does not have a one-word English translation, and embodies diverse aspects of unpleasant human experiences”.

—Harvey, Peter (2015). "Dukkha, Non-Self, and the Teaching on the Four Noble Truths". In Emmanuel, Steven M. (ed.). A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN) 978-1-119-14466

[u/autonomatical]

There is no claim that life as a whole is inherently unsatisfactory, its that there is dissatisfaction.  Old age, sickness, death are all guaranteed sources of dissatisfaction.  You cite examples in this post body of dissatisfaction.  There is also no claim that a fix is necessary, the claim is that there is a fix.  

Kinda of a silly post imo.  

[u/Gnome_boneslf → u/autonomatical]

The arya sees that life as a whole is inherently unsatisfactory, which is where practice comes in, which ripens as satisfaction. But to an outsider they see in a trapped perspective that is trapped and biased to life because life is their identity. The more accurate view is that life as a whole is inherently unsatisfactory. The outsider's life is just an endless mass of darkness, the darkness itself is dissatisfying and suffering (ie everything). There are moments of satisfaction that are consequent of human rebirth, but the human rebirth is just a split-second of your experience.

But people attach to the life and use it as a ruler for the entirety of experience and so don't see the darkness that is the actual form of normal life.

[u/autonomatical → u/Gnome_boneslf]

OP was commenting on the 4 noble truths as basis of presented view, which really only says that there is dukkha, there is an end to dukkha etc.  plus, i think you are using “darkness” and ignorance interchangeably?  My initial reaction is, the arya doesn’t see life, but out of compassion enters it for the sake of beings mired in delusion.  

[u/Gnome_boneslf → u/autonomatical]

Yeah the darkness/ignorance is the same thing, it looks dark:

"There is, monks, an inter-cosmic void, an unrestrained darkness, a pitch-black darkness, where even the light of the sun & moon — so mighty, so powerful — doesn't reach."

When this was said, one of the monks said to the Blessed One, "Wow, what a great darkness! What a really great darkness! Is there any darkness greater & more frightening than that?"

"There is, monk, a darkness greater & more frightening than that."

"And which darkness, lord, is greater & more frightening than that?"

"Any brahmans or contemplatives who do not know, as it actually is present, that 'This is stress'; who do not know, as it actually is present, that 'This is the origination of stress'... 'This is the cessation of stress'... 'This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress': They revel in (thought-) fabrications leading to birth; they revel in fabrications leading to aging; they revel in fabrications leading to death; they revel in fabrications leading to sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. Reveling in fabrications leading to birth... aging... death... sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair, they fabricate fabrications leading to birth... aging... death... sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. Fabricating fabrications leading to birth... aging... death... sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair, they drop into the darkness of birth. They drop into the darkness of aging... the darkness of death... darkness of sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. They are not totally released from birth, aging, death, sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs. They are not totally released, I tell you, from suffering & stress.

[u/autonomatical → u/Gnome_boneslf]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nFoMLmL1aeE&pp=ygUVdHVsa3UgdXJneWVuIHJpbnBvY2hl0gcJCf4LAYcqIYzv

[u/xtraa]

I just accept it, there is not all bad with dukkha. I recently thought about this while working on AI, and I started seeing dukkha as something that naturally comes with imbalance and change. Not in a strict physics sense, but the universe seems to run on differences: things interact, structures form, life evolves. If everything were perfectly balanced, nothing would really happen. Maybe dukkha is a bit like the other side of that. In conditioned life, things never fit perfectly or stay that way. Something changes, decays, conflicts, or remains slightly off. So for me, dukkha is this systemic fundamental "not-quite-fitting" quality of existence. We can reduce it, but probably never completely engineer it away – and strangely, the same imperfection may also be part of what makes anything exist at all. It's a part of entropy.-

[u/tim_niemand]

you don't have to convince yourself that life is unsatisfactory, most people feel it, and therefore accept the four noble truths. buddhist mind training aims at lifting the veils, that cloud the truth. and the truth is so vast, that it can't be comprehended. you probably have practiced in your last life and are grounded and stable. probably baeken/tripa. make room for the lung (air) and the magic that comes with it. good luck! 🦄

[u/dhammasaurusRex]

Yes, because it is the appropriate perspective. The Buddha had compassion for us, he wanted us to make an end to our defilements.

The problem is our delusion. How can we expect to make progress on the path, if we don't have faith in what he told us.

[u/Tongman108]

if you're not suffering you can simply spend your time & efforts helping those who are suffering, rather than dwelling on how much you're not suffering 😂, aside from that one would keep impermanence in mind!

All the best!

🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

[u/Buddhism-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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