We are just going to start a Buddhist Practice - Jainism and Buddhism introduction, which will give you an understanding of the same.
I got a little while ago from Brian Matthews, and he says that he likes a bit of psychology a lot, but he says often there's a lot of talk about the nature of suffering but a lack of an antidote.
He says I can listen to teachers talk for 90 minutes about why we suffer and then spend two minutes talking about overcoming it. Still, it's always vague and unhelpful, and Brian says that he finds himself in a cycle of bad decisions wrong mindsets, and he's trying to find a way out of it and trying to find some solutions here.
Wondering how this is all supposed to work now many courses, to begin with, there are many many ways that the Buddhist practice can work for you, so I'm going to discuss out of my own experience as well as some knowledge of the early Buddhist texts. Still, as in all these cases, your mileage may vary.
Buddhist Practice - Jainism and Buddhism introduction
So take this as one option or one way of understanding things, and I think what Brian points to is a genuine concern that some of us may have an ax deed that some of us do have about the way that things are sometimes portrayed in Buddhism that there seems to be this emphasis on suffering on dukka dukka.
So as a nod word within poly and the language that's translated, but as early Buddhism was brought from, I would prefer a translation more like unsatisfactoriness. It's just the way that that life isn't entirely satisfactory for us. Still, as Brian says, you know we have our problems in our own lives, let's say poor decisions and difficulties.
So it can seem kind of a downer or an added downer to spend time thinking about those things when we're face to face with them all the time, so it looks like there are two questions here the first question is why is there all this emphasis on suffering and the second question is what do we do about the pain.
The suffering that we do feel in our lives what happened what the real way we're supposed to take forward how does that thing to work and what are we supposed to do is and what I'm going to suggest in this article is that maybe paradoxically interestingly the answer to both questions is the same now.
If we indeed begin with one of the deepest parts of the Buddha's teaching the Four Noble Truths the first of these Noble Truths some of us will have heard that translated as life is suffering it's the truth of suffering or the reality of the unsatisfactory nature of the world there's another way to understand these truths is to understand them as tasks as things that we that must be done.
Indeed the Buddha describes them as tasks in his first sermon, in the beginning, opposed the first sermon and in that first sermon what he says is that suffering is to be fully understood, so that is our first task along the path is to try to understand painfully or if you like to fully understand the unsatisfactory nature of reality to come to know that directly all aspects of our life and the second one of these tasks involves knowing where that suffering or that unsatisfactoriness comes from.
To know that it comes from craving, we have satisfied needs that cannot be wholly fulfilled. That impossibility of fulfilling desire makes life unsatisfactory no because we're always striving for things that can't be attained.
Buddhist Practice - Jainism and Buddhism That What People Do The Task
So the second one of these tasks is to give up that craving to relax around that craving we might say to release need, and the question is how to release longing and, once again, paradoxically.
I don't believe that craving is something that we can release that we can decide to give up. I think if you try that, you'll see that it doesn't work that craving comes back craving is a sort of thing that you cannot give up.
If we could, we would all be awakened already so there's a problem here in my experience the only way to release craving indeed is to practice in such a way that the need releases itself and that may seem a surprise to you. The question then becomes how do we practice such that craving releases itself well the way that we do that is by coming to a higher more incisive knowledge and awareness of the objects of desire to begin to understand that those objects are not all they're cracked up to be that they're not as crave-worthy as we initially thought.
As we ordinarily think and when we come to see that the objects of craving aren't so hot after all then the need dries up on its own when we see that the purposes of our desire are craving for themselves unsatisfactory then we begin to the craving itself begins to dry up that is to say.
If we practice by getting to know unsatisfactoriness by getting to know to suffer directly, paradoxically suffering dries up. Still, we have to do it in a particular way because there's the right way if you like the right direction in the wrong way to approach suffering to approach unsatisfactoriness in particular.
The way that we ordinarily approach suffering or unsatisfactoriness is to feel sorry for ourselves is to sort of wallow in pain and that approach is an approach of really clinging to it in the way of identifying with the suffering of thinking of the suffering as mine as who I am as part of my being and we bridle against that.
Buddhist Practice - Jainism and Buddhism Thought
So we struggle with it that of course again that usually's how we approach suffering and when we're told within a Buddhist context to get to know to the experience we're thinking oh so I have to do that I got to sort of wallow in it and that is not a helpful approach rather we have to come to see suffering not as Who I am not as something that's mine and not as feeling sorry for ourselves but rather only part of the furniture of the world.
As something that is part of the way things are when the mind works in a certain way in particular in formal meditation, we can see unsatisfactoriness or suffering arise within our experiences within our senses are our feeling is hearing seeing.
If you like if you're doing meditation with your eyes open all of our senses we can see it arise we can see it decay in certain circumstances when we release around craving when craving goes away we can see this appear rising and falling as again as part of the furniture of the world and as we see this will generally find that craving begins to decline somewhat because we're the objects of desire are seen for what they are which is something that's not which are things that are not worth craving.
As we see that we also begin to see the route towards the extinction of craving because we're starting to understand and see directly the way that the process of Buddhist practice works we begin to see that route towards the destruction of suffering which is, of course, a distant goal it's not something that most of us will expect to achieve anytime soon if at all but even small differences can make a big difference in time.
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