Paradox of Contentment

[convivium]

i have semantics; i'm not talking mere syntax like a robot or computer is limited to. i don't think i have a qualitative or experiential correlate behind my talking about nibbana, but i think i know what contentment means.

[ground]

Whatever you have or do not have or know or do not know, you may be content or discontent.

[convivium]

Whatever you have or do not have or know or do not know, you may be content or discontent.

by "have" i take you to mean material possessions and external circumstances. by "know" i take you to mean ordinary intellectual knowledge. not having the wrong things/external circumstances and not knowing the wrong things, as it were, makes it a lot easier to be content (which is why people live in monasteries). having so-called needs met (not necessary for personal survival e.g. sex) and pleasant things/external circumstances in one's life makes it easier to feel content in a mundane way or at a mundane level; but theravada is looking for a more autonomous ground for contentment (in transcendental right view). so, means to achieving mundane contentment and means to achieving transcendental contentment can be (at least at a more refined level of scrutiny) mutually exclusive. i'd like to spell this out more.

[Bakmoon]

It is difficult to be content because one cannot gain contentment by willpower. It is only through developing wisdom that one can be content.

[Dan74]

so we have to deny or pacify the self-interested will to be content. then what about acting so as to have health insurance, good health, shelter, food, or time to sleep? can we act to self-interested ends, in line with the personal will, in a detached way so as to feel content in doing so? or would we just be fooling ourselves?

Contentment is in a sense a natural state but the greed and the worry lead away from it. Once we relinquish these, contentment naturally arises.

[Mr Man]

I think that we have to be careful about getting different kinds of "contentment" muddled up.

Prior to the Buddha's enlightenment he remembered and reflected upon the experience of "contentment" as a child. Something was remembered that was quite simple and that had been forgotten.

[convivium]

It is difficult to be content because one cannot gain contentment by willpower. It is only through developing wisdom that one can be content.

the will has to have some role in developing wisdom (namely, turning itself against itself, as it were); can we say more about the limits of this role (e.g. it should not be driven by a gaining idea or spiritual materialism, etc) and how exactly it should be used (e.g. in developing wholesome qualities, abandoning unwholesome qualities, keeping sila, daily discipline in practice, etc)? what about subduing the will by taking in great art (i experience this most often with music)? it's this theravada theme of using fabrications of the personal will to get beyond its fabrications.

Contentment is in a sense a natural state but the greed and the worry lead away from it. Once we relinquish these, contentment naturally arises.

do you mean according with natural law, i.e. dhamma, brings forth contentment? Otherwise, I don't know what's natural and not natural.

I think that we have to be careful about getting different kinds of "contentment" muddled up.
Prior to the Buddha's enlightenment he remembered and reflected upon the experience of "contentment" as a child. Something was remembered that was quite simple and that had been forgotten.

this is interesting with regard to my last post. i think you're referring to when he spontaneously entered jhana, upon seeing the suffering of animals and insects while sitting under a tree (as the story goes).

[Mr Man]

this is interesting with regard to my last post. i think you're referring to when he spontaneously entered jhana, upon seeing the suffering of animals and insects while sitting under a tree (as the story goes).

The story is in the Maha-Saccaka Sutta MN 36 http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.036.than.html. Not sure if it is also related elsewhere. I was considering it in a rather loose and abstract way. The idea that contentment is possibly quite close and not that alian but we pass over it or do not remain with it.

[Dan74]

Contentment is in a sense a natural state but the greed and the worry lead away from it. Once we relinquish these, contentment naturally arises.

do you mean according with natural law, i.e. dhamma, brings forth contentment? Otherwise, I don't know what's natural and not natural.

I mean that contentment shines forth when the grasping and aversion are let gone of, even temporarily.

I don't even mean nibbana, just the letting up of the greed and the fears.