What Is The Solution To Human Suffering?

[Loreena]

Post your solutions 

[Prabhaker]

1 hour ago, Loreena said:

What Is The Solution To Human Suffering?

 For centuries and centuries teachers have been teaching that you are the creator of your own suffering and no one else is responsible. You have heard these things, you have read these things. But this is not your feeling, this is not your realization.

I know that if I put my hand in the fire it is going to be painful. If I know, I cannot put my hand in. But if somebody else has told me, if I have heard through the tradition, if I have read in the scriptures that fire burns, and I have not known fire, and I have not known any similar experience, only then can I put my hand into fire - and that too only once. Can you conceive it? That you have put your hand into fire and you have been burned and you have suffered, and again you go and ask, ′I know that fire burns, but in spite of it I go on putting my hand into the fire. What to do about it?′ Who will believe that you know? And what type of knowledge is this? If your own experience of suffering and burning cannot stop you, nothing is going to stop you. Now there is no possibility, because the last possibility has been missed. But no one can miss it; that is impossible. 

Once you know.... But remember - the knowledge must be yours. A borrowed knowledge won′t do; borrowed knowledge is useless. Unless it is your own experience, it is not going to change you. Others′ experiences are of no help. You have heard that you are the creator of your own suffering, but this is just in the mind. It has not entered your being, it is not your own knowledge. So when you are discussing, you can discuss about it cerebrally, but when the actual phenomenon happens, you will forget, and you will behave in the way you know, not in the way others know. 

When you are at ease, cool, collected, silently discussing anger, you can say it is poison, it is a disease, evil. But when someone makes you angry then a complete change occurs. Now it is not an intellectual discussion, now you are involved. And the moment you are involved, you become angry. Later on again, retrospectively, when you again get cool, the memory will come back, your mind will again start functioning, and you will say, ′That was wrong. It was not good of me to do that. I know anger is wrong.′ 

You have to make a clearcut distinction between what you know and what you have gathered as knowledge. Don′t rely on information. From the greatest source - even if you collect from the greatest source - information is information. Even if a Buddha says it to you, it is not your own, and it is not going to help you in any way. But you can remain thinking that it is your knowledge, and this misunderstanding will waste your energy, time and life. 

The basic thing is not to ask what to do so that suffering is not created. The basic thing is to know that you are the creator of your suffering. Next time whenever a real situation arises and you are in suffering, remember to find out whether you are the cause of it. And if you can find out that you are the cause of it, the suffering will disappear, and the same suffering will not appear again - impossible.

When you are suffering you can say, ′Yes, I know I have created this suffering,′ but deep down you know that someone else has created it. Your wife has created it, your husband has created it, someone else has created it, and this is simply a consolation because you cannot do anything. You console yourself: ′No one has created it, I have created it myself, and by and by I will stop it.′ 

Only spirituality can lead humanity towards non-suffering. Nothing else can lead, because everyone else believes that the suffering is caused by others; only spirituality says that suffering is caused by you. So spirituality makes you the master of your destiny. You are the cause of your suffering, hence you can be the cause of your bliss.

[Franz]

Suicide.

Why end suffering? It is the greatest thing ever, it literally enables life (look at a newborn child and see the suffering in its eyes as it screams - welcome to life).

This game of humanness is all about polarity. without suffering, there would be no pleasure or joy either. Spirituality reduces suffering, but this comes with a cost: You gotta give up your human pleasures and needs aswell. All the "Wanting" the Buddha was talking about. For ultimate enlightenment, give up breathing aswell (half-serious).

But there is a middle way: Radical detachment. Do stuff, get stuff, and pay the price for it (suffering). It just wont be "your" suffering anymore, but you sure as hell gonna notice it. Also, simple human pleasures might suck now, because they are only fun with full attachment.

Please take this with a grain of salt. Ultimately, everything is wrong, I am just trying to express myself.

 

Cheers

[abrakamowse]

Four Noble Truths

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism are stated in simple terms as:

Suffering exists

Suffering arises from attachment to desires

Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases

Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

[Toby]

There is no solution.

[Prabhaker]

16 minutes ago, Toby said:

There is no solution.

There may be no solution for sufferings of whole humanity right now, but you can certainly get rid of your own sufferings.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Prabhaker

[eputkonen]

8 hours ago, Loreena said:

Post your solutions 

Realize/see that suffering is mentally self-created.  We do it to ourselves...but we don't know it - otherwise we would not do it.

For example, worry is one of the ways we make ourselves suffer.  The Tibetan Buddhists have an interesting saying - if a problem can be solved there is no use worrying about it. If it can't be solved, worrying will do no good.  Now, if you were to delve into worry...and you clearly saw the futility of worry, the harm it causes, and its total lack of positive benefits...then you would not worry.  You would understand there is no point - no gain, only suffering - and so you would not put yourself through that.  Instead, you would do what you could to solve the issue and if nothing could be done you would accept it (hopefully the situation changes so that something can be done later).  As I write this, I guess it does involved accepting uncertainty and the lack of control.

All suffering is like this.  We create it ourselves in our minds.  Suffering is any hurt beyond the pain perceived by the nerves of the body.  Suffering is a translation of the work dukkha in Buddhism, and the term could also mean discontent or dissatisfaction.  We are never satisfied...because of the mental illusions we are believing.  We believe them because of ignorance (being uninvestigated and unseen).

This was the whole focus of the Four Noble Truths of Gautama (the Buddha).  Dukkha exists.  Dukkha can cease.

It can cease because it has no reality outside of our own imaginations.

Edited June 14, 2017 by eputkonen

[harisankartj]

The way i see it,suffering is a story that the mind creates and holds onto...so that it can feel like a somebody.What the mind refuses to admit to itself is the emptiness of the story,and therefore the non existence of an ego to hold onto the story ..and maintain the illusion.

 

The mind creates a cage , puts itself inside it and asks "where is my freedom"  .

So the solution must be that humans must be made to realise in their direct experience how they are unconsciously attached to their own stories...when in reality the story had no substance and also existence itself has no substance ...which will then ease them for eternity.

This can be done through various "spiritual" practices.Among  the most practical ones i find are Leos meditation techniques.

[Dodo]

Welp my comment didnt go through,  so I will reiterate :

Humanity living in union, as one, not as separate competing countries,  should bring about much less suffering on a collective scale.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Dodo

[Guest Annetta]

No idea.
No one actually really knows the answer to this, people come up with various solutions to end human suffering and they have been doing this since the dawn of civilization.  If people really knew the answer, there would be no more suffering.  But there is.  Suffering is a part of the human condition.  It's what makes us human.

[Prabhaker]

2 hours ago, Annetta said:

 If people really knew the answer, there would be no more suffering. 

People don't know the answer, enlightened masters know the answer, only few people listen to them, they might have millions of followers but few try to understand them, trust them.

When Jesus says , "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Do you trust him ? Even poor people don't trust him. Once in a while a rich person can think that what he is saying can be true, but vast majority can't believe him.

We have tried all things. We have created ladies and gentlemen, and they didn't prove to be much. We have changed societies, we have tried utopias -- they have all failed. Reform has failed, revolution has failed.

Spiritual rebellion has never been tried on a large scale. And whenever it has been tried on a small scale, it has always succeeded. With Buddha it succeeded: thousands of people went through transformation, became new. With Jesus it succeeded, with Lao Tzu it succeeded, with Krishna it succeeded. success has always been with spiritual rebellion, but very few people... It has never been on a large scale. It has never gripped the soul of humanity. And that is where work is needed now.

[Deep]

@Loreena The Loreena God has spoken. 

I am going through an awakening right now. It will take a few years to complete. All of the resistance in my body is fading away. I no longer feel like I have to survive. I don't take life seriously, but I still work hard. It's disturbing for people who don't about it, but I know, so I love the way it feels. My mind is slowly being destroyed.