Hi Mjaviem, thanks for your remarks that are very welcomed.
mjaviem wrote: ↑Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:40 am
The quality of dukkha that means Unsatisfactory, unreliable, undependable, uncertain, not guaranteed. is indeed inherent to everything conditioned. When something arises, it arises with this quality of dukkha inherent to it.
Here for example we have two things (in SN 42:11) that looks like the same, but are different for only one thing in particular, the presence of desire or not.
“Those people in Uruvelakappa whose murder, imprisonment, fining, or censure would cause me sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, or despair are those for whom I feel desire-passion.
Those people in Uruvelakappa whose murder, imprisonment, fining, or censure would cause me no sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, or despair are those for whom I feel no desire-passion.”
“Now, headman, from what you have realized, fathomed, attained right now in the present, without regard to time, you may draw an inference with regard to the past and future: ‘Whatever stress, in arising, arose for me in the past, all of it had desire as its root, had desire as its cause—for desire is the cause of stress. And whatever stress, in arising, will arise for me in the future, all of it will have desire as the root, will have desire as its cause—for desire is the cause of stress.’”
In this sense, it is dangerous to say that Dukkha is inherent in all things since there clearly is a mode of perception with Dukkha and one without Dukkha. The same things perceived can be with Dukkha and without Dukkha (The same can be said for acquisitions, there's a mode of perception with acquisition or without acquisition for anatta that is the appropriation of an aggregate as self). So this is the phrase that actually I've found dangerous:
These are inherent fundamentally to the object. It's not something we impose on reality with our perception.
This is part of the very fabric of reality. It's not a value judgment, it's not a moral judgment, it's just a statement of the way things are.
But Dukkha is not inherent in reality, it is a dependantly arisen experience and a value judgement for us, for the being that have craving and sensual pleasures that is called "the carrier of the burden" in the Samyutta Nikaya. At the same time the sabbe of the Arahant is without suffering (apart from the modicum of stress of the body/mind I would add) so there's a reality without suffering that is so empty of suffering that is worth to be called "Nibbana right here in this very life", the reality of disjoinment/dispassion but with the six senses and the aggregates (without clinging and to be without clinging chandaraga/tanha are gone) working. Desire is the root of suffering, being the root, it can be uprooted, being uprooted, the suffering is not there anymore in the sabbe and it is certainly not there as a quality of the external objects like mountains or any form and you don't even need that perception when you are dispassionate. There's no single form
with attachment that will not bring Dukkha, but forms that will not bring Dukkha? Yes, forms without attachment with no desire for them.
After all, this is simply Thanissaro approach (hoping not to misinterpret and disrespect):
So remember: We’re not here to arrive at the true nature of things in and of themselves,
aside from seeing how their behavior makes them inadequate as sources for true happiness. The emphasis always points back to using the perceptions to counteract unskillful tendencies in the mind, because the issues of the mind are paramount.
https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Wri ... ptions.pdf
That is the difference between the phrase "the way the things are" and "the way the things as they have come to be" (what supports that coming into being?). Dukkha is not inherent in things since it is a feeling+perception+intention based on our strategy to find happiness and our wishes and willingness to delight in what is not perfectly
made for us. There's a point of the practice in which everything, compared to Nibbana, needs to be perceived as pain, as unbearable, a tumor, a dart and that is the moment in which hopefully we see the full value of dispassion and Sankharas can cease because no intention can bring that result. Those perceptions are here to guide us to that dispassion, but when we come back the experience of the aggregates reality is not a tumor anymore, because if desire is the root, we have uprooted it and the reason of that Dukkha was the intention of delight and the ignorance of the happiness of dispassion.
It works even on small doses, if you uproot your desire or identification for something, pejorative change doesn't make any difference for you (hence the example of the branches and leaves that burns, it points to an
experience of absence as Sucitto would say). But for a thing to be inherent/necessary this Dukkha have always to be there no matter how you perceive. Which is not the case since there are clearly examples of the same perception with or without Dukkha and we can move in the world fabricating/intending that Dukkha or not.
How so? The Buddha didn't "have" a body or mind considered to be "his". How is this experience of physical pain, strong hunger and headaches only "resolved" at death? What's not been "solved" yet? How is this suffering related to the Buddha?
The Buddha doesn't acquire a body and it doesn't consider the body/mind of the sabbe to be himself (apart from convention to indicate the location of that particular body or mind which is useful), there's no attachment to it and so there's total dispassion for the fate of that body, for aging, death, but the body in the experience of the Buddha it is still there right? It doesn't disappear. It needs to be carefully mantained so that he can perform at his best. So being still in experience and being the body prone to injury and illness there have to be the possibility to experience physical pain somewhere, this is reported in the canon I think, the Buddha said that he had backache. But the acquisition, the selfing, the attachment, the desire to delight in the body and the desire for the unavoidable pain to not be there is gone. This is the experience of being disjoined. This is the disparity between a worlding and a noble one. The only possible dart is the physical pain dart, all the rest is an inaccessible island. With the body cold and gone, physical pain or hunger as we know it is impossible.
Do you think that that there's no contact with pain for that peculiar body/mind that conventionally is called "Buddha" at all? Do you think that without desire even the dukkha-dukkha disappears here and know? I can't see how it will be possibile and how it would not contradict the backache of the Buddha.