Jake Yeager wrote:
I respectfully disagree. I think it is possible to eradicate one's suffering completely while one is still alive. The Four Noble Truths seem to agree. Where is the misunderstanding?
Hi Jake,
This is one of my favorite discussions, because it cuts to the core of Buddhism. What's more, understanding it has huge implications for pragmatic dharma. In other words, we can reasonably ask what the early Buddhists were trying to say, and whether they were right. If they were right, how can we benefit from their ideas and instructions in our own lives? If they were wrong, how can we improve upon their ideas and instructions?
Here is one interpretation of the Four Noble Truths:
1. There is
dukkha.
For the purposes of this discussion, let's translate dukkha as "unsatisfactoriness, stress, suffering."
2. The cause of dukkha is
tanha.
Let's define tanha as any sense whatsoever that you'd like this present experience to be other than it is.
3. There is an end to dukkha, namely
nibbana.
My working definition of nibbana is absence of experience.
4. The recipe for nibbana is the Eightfold Path.
The Eightfold Path is a fairly comprehensive set of instructions for both getting off the "wheel of death and rebirth" and for mitigating unecessary suffering while one remains living.
I like this simple formulation because it all hangs together. It assumes that the early Buddhists knew what they were talking about, because by these definitions they are not asking me to believe anything I cannot verify in my own experience. My observation is that tanha is an essential component of a living organism. We move toward things that tend toward individual and species survival, and away from things that tend toward individual death and species extinction. We can see this behavior even in bacteria, and we can see a kind of proto-tanha in plants as they move toward the light of the sun. In humans, tanha can be said to be unsatisfactory, stressful, and even suffering. Hence, dukkha. Since this constant reactivity to our environment is baked into us at the very deepest levels, it is implausible to expect it to stop while we continue to draw breath.
When I put all this together, it seems straightforward enough; dukkha and experience are inseparable. So the only way to be free of dukkha is to have no experience. Absence of experience is called nibbana.
This, however, does not leave open the possibility of eradicating dukkha while still living, and this can seem harsh, even offensive to modern sensibilities. Still, I appreciate the elegance of a conceptual framework that is internally consistent.
Finally, there is the fact that I've never met anyone who did not experience unsatisfactoriness, stress, and suffering, even though I've spent a reasonable amount of time in the company of advanced practitioners of Buddhism and other contemplative practices. Contemplative adepts often experience profound changes in the way they experience their lives over time, but they don't eradicate tanha or dukkha. In the rare cases where people have claimed such a thing, further exposure to them has led me to the conclusion that they were mistaken, and perhaps pathologically delusional.
Taken together, this leads me to a very down-to-earth view; awakening is possible and almost unimaginably beneficial for individual humans. There may also be societal benefits. Eradication of dukkha, however, where dukkha means unsatisfactoriness, stress, and sufffering while still alive, was never on the table and could not be, given the basic biology of the human organism. And that is fine with me... or at least I am willing to acknowledge that it is this way, even though I may wish it were otherwise. I would even go so far as to say that the more I am able to acknowledge that things are not the way I wish them to be, the more enlightened I feel, with a nod to the irony that what I used to think of as enlightenment seems a bit cartoonish from my current perspective, and that from that former perspective my current views seem a giant step backwards.
What are your thoughts?