Life Is Suffering

[Guided]

21 hours ago, Pramit said:

I came to the same conclusion as well at some point, that the best approach is to cause mass extinctions. Then life is just a cancer on the universe. 

 

But the problem here is that you are rationalizing too much. It is like Thanos in the new avengers movie deciding that the only way to save life is to kill half of it.  It is a lack of imagination.

Yeah, I get what you mean. It is very easy to see life as some sort of plague on the face of the earth. I know I'm guilty of believing that, and it reflects.

The thing about it is that it's just theories that spiral out of control. They are do not have real basis on direct experience.

The 'all life is suffering' theory I posted above is just a strange interpretation of what I experienced during meditation - that everything must pass, and then the brain just went to town with it!

[Guided]

12 minutes ago, TheAvatarState said:

That's good lol

I mean, what do you think? I guess I do believe what you have written there - that life is one big struggle against suffering. I was largely basing this off Buddha's teaching, especially the words he said after attaining Buddhahood.

Quote

Thereupon he spoke these words of victory:

"Seeking but not finding the house builder,
I hurried through the round of many births:
Painful is birth ever and again.

O house builder, you have been seen;
You shall not build the house again.
Your rafters have been broken up,
Your ridgepole is demolished too.

My mind has now attained the unformed Nibbâna
And reached the end of every sort of craving."

Of course we could go for hours on trying to figure out what he meant by that. 

At the same time, I do believe that liberating yourself from craving will allow one to enjoy life without clinging to it.

Also I should say that my opinions regarding this are largely based off what I heard in S. N. Goenka's lectures - those who sat a 10-day Vipassana course will know.

It is difficult to break the beliefs I gained during those 10 days, as sometimes the ideas he presents in the lectures get tangled up with the direct experience gained during deep meditation.

Edited February 17, 2019 by Guided

[Preetom]

@Guided

''life is suffering'' is 100% true if you mean,

life= a separate embodied being

Every single movement of this separate being is to relieve it's suffering, from birth to birth, from start to finish.

'suffering', ''search for happiness", "ego" are different names for the same thing : overlooking what one really is.

So it turns out that suffering is really an optical illusion of one consciousness just like ego/separation is.

The house builder quote signifies the permanent destruction of the ego/subject, the full import of self-realization or Enlightenment. It can never arise again as a subject to experience other, distinct 'objects'. So there is no one left on whose behalf cravings can manifest.

 

Edited February 17, 2019 by Preetom

[Jkris]

@Preetom First of all i don't understand the word or meaning of ego. 

My theoretical understanding is cessation of the seperate identity i feeling sense of me or sense of seperation and the realisation i am not the body mind but self. 

But the mind is going to function as usual in the same manner. All the worldly bodily problems are going to remain as usual. 

So how it is said self realisation is the end of suffering as long as the "self+body +mind" complex remains ?

Also leo says self realisation or enlightenment is not self mastery? ?

Can you pls explain how SR is end of suffering? 

[Preetom]

32 minutes ago, Jkris said:

@Preetom First of all i don't understand the word or meaning of ego. 

When I use the word 'ego', I never mean it in a degrading or pejorative term. That's the conventional notion of ego.

The ego I mention is a technical term which is synonymous to a distinct subject/experiencer/perceiver that knows or experiences other objects. This object knowing consciousness is called ego. In other words, ego is what we take ourselves to be.

Ramana Maharshi called this ego as the primal I-thought. Nisatgadatta Maharaj called it the sense of I AM. 

This ego's very mechanism is to know objects other than itself. Thus it is objective knowledge. It can't afford to know itself. It can only survive by knowing other things but itself.

So the very instruction of self-inquiry or any direct path instruction is to make this ego shine it's attention on itself, rather than letting it shine attention on other objects which it is doing 24/7 in waking and dream states. In deep sleep, this ego shuts down temporarily and thus all the objects it knows subsides along with it as well for a while. Then again after some time, this ego springs back up due to it's latent tendencies to know/experience other objects which is waking or dream states. And so this cycle continues. What is called conventional 'physical' death is only just another round of deep sleep for ego to rest for a while and then spring back up again with a new body to start experiencing objects again(just like the ego takes on new bodies in every dream. Even our waking body is new every single day, never exactly the same).

What I am saying is that this very object knowing consciousness aka ego IS suffering. It is an optical illusion. The pure Consciousness we are, never knows anything other than it's own presence/being. It has no subject-object duality. So whenever this optical illusion of object knowing ego arises out of pure Consciousness, it carries this chronic inherent suffering in itself so that it can merge into it's original source again. Just like an extended rubber band carries inherent reflex to revert back to it's original form if it is given a chance.

This suffering/search for happiness/dis-satisfaction is the constant call that the the ego feels within itself to sink into the source of God. This is why ego=suffering.

32 minutes ago, Jkris said:

 

My theoretical understanding is cessation of the seperate identity i feeling sense of me or sense of seperation and the realisation i am not the body mind but self. 

Yes the cessation of all subject-object duality. In other words, cessation of all objective knowledge once and for all.

32 minutes ago, Jkris said:

But the mind is going to function as usual in the same manner. All the worldly bodily problems are going to remain as usual. 

So how it is said self realisation is the end of suffering as long as the "self+body +mind" complex remains ?

Also leo says self realisation or enlightenment is not self mastery? ?

Can you pls explain how SR is end of suffering? 

All the 'buts' put after this cessation of ego are thoughts. We have no way of knowing how it is gonna turn out, except for going to that placeless place ourselves. So better not have such notions if you are serious about self-realization. Let's not put the cart before the horse.

Just remind yourself the power of re-contexualization. The ''self+body+mind'' complex you talk about is a way of seeing. It cannot remain the same if it is re-contexualized. Notice how all your body, life, world experiences get re-contextualized into a 'blank state' in deep sleep. Does that shift happen instantaneously or does it go through a step by step process that you are aware of? 

Edited February 17, 2019 by Preetom

[Jkris]

@Preetom @Preetom

Thank you.