Things don't really get solved.

"We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. ...The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy." -Pema Chodron

Wowza. Pema drops some major truth in this statement.

Just felt like sharing.

(pulled the quote from Ethan Nichtern's Facebook wall.)

i believe this is true

I know it's true.

My wife expects or believes that my practice is not working because I am not becoming a perfected man. Things rise and fall. Encounter is life, good or bad, ugly, fat or slim. There is no place else to go. How do i explain that the end of suffering is not the eradication of suffering?
Paul

I know-- it's really sad how many practitioners don't see this. These funny assumptions about suffering and freedom are probably some of the most disempowering aspects of mushroom culture.... Freedom from suffering is nowhere other than suffering, if that's what's happening now

...How do i explain that the end of suffering is not the eradication of suffering?...

That 's probably the most profound sentence I have read in a long, LONG, time.

Thanks for the reminder.

The problem of suffering is solved, not the fact of suffering.

"Freedom from suffering is nowhere other than suffering, if that's what's happening now." -jhsaintonge

Perfect.

"The problem of suffering is solved, not the fact of suffering." -OwenBecker

Perfect.

Good to read this from those who know, so guys like me can set realistic goals and avoid noting a lot of "confusion" and "disappointment".

suffering is completely relative.

"Things don't really get solved."

also, "There is no need for things to get [permanently] solved."

-- imagine a world without weather, without surprises, without challenges, without changes. Imagine the postmortem state.

Perhaps this is somewhat 'off topic' but I've noted that things are largely a problem only due to the application of considerable energy to maintaining any further ongoing arising of things. As effort to put things together is reduced to any necessary minimums, things decreasingly come together and increasingly fall apart until you just run out of things and problems altogether. It is quite effective, so long as you are cool with that.

"The problem of suffering is solved, not the fact of suffering."

Sounds a lot how the Buddha put it: "I teach only (the fact of) suffering and the (solution to the problem/the end) of suffering".

First and third noble truth: The Truth/fact of suffering is to be *understood*; The end of suffering/fading of thirst/solution of the problem of suffering is to be *realized*

The four noble truths really are an amazing, teaching; my appreciation of their clear simplicity keeps increasing in bounds and leaps.

Cheers,
Florian

"Perhaps this is somewhat 'off topic' but I've noted that things are largely a problem only due to the application of considerable energy to maintaining any further ongoing arising of things. As effort to put things together is reduced to any necessary minimums, things decreasingly come together and increasingly fall apart until you just run out of things and problems altogether. It is quite effective, so long as you are cool with that."

Nathan, thanks for your post.

Could you please elaborate a bit more? I find your post very interesting but a bit cryptic.

The particular part I am interested in is: "things decreasingly come together and increasingly fall apart until you just run out of things and problems altogether. It is quite effective, so long as you are cool with that."

Not to speak for Nathan but I think I know what he's saying -- mind build models of reality all the time. It can be very busy at this. It tries to be thorough so it puts lots and lots of energy into the building process, it checks for validity all the time, then re-jiggers the models thinking, thinking, thinking it can make them more accurate. Drop that! There is no real need for all that building, the model is not the reality, and so on. If you can stop building your reality that way you can be more at peace.

Nathan? You can slap me in a virtual way if you meant something different.

"Nathan, thanks for your post.

Could you please elaborate a bit more? I find your post very interesting but a bit cryptic.

The particular part I am interested in is: "things decreasingly come together and increasingly fall apart until you just run out of things and problems altogether. It is quite effective, so long as you are cool with that."
"

I've attempted a more expansive and comprehensive presentation of my related reflections on this topic in my posts to the related discussions here:

tiny.cc/enhdd

Hopefully those reflections will shed more light on what I had attempted to express here.

"Freedom from suffering is nowhere other than suffering, if that's what's happening now.

[quoted from Jake, in post #4}"


Yeah, this reminds me of something Ajahn Sumedho said in a talk I heard a while back, which struck me as very profound and stuck with me ever since.

Loosely paraphrasing, he said something like:

"Dukkha is to be welcomed."

"
Yeah, this reminds me of something Ajahn Sumedho said in a talk I heard a while back, which struck me as very profound and stuck with me ever since.

Loosely paraphrasing, he said something like:

"Dukkha is to be welcomed."
"

unwelcomed dukkha is dukkha magnified.

"unwelcoming" as a cognitive disposition always seems correlated with dukkha as an affective quality. "welcoming" or solicitude as a cognitive disposition seems correlated with an affective quality of "intimate distance" or real disembedding (as opposed to dissaccociation, ala the distinction on Nathan's Dho referenced thread above).

the interesting thing is that it seems to me that there is a natural solicitude built in to our natural state which is inalienable and conversely the unwelcoming disposition is always an effortfully contrived and maintained dualistic strategy, based on and perpetuating of a root cognitive distortion; i.e., they are not of the same phenomenological order, which is why we can become non-reactively aware of our reactivity but the converse isn't really true (since reactive awareness only has imaginary objects, being itself an imaginary "observor").
In other words, we can welcome (indeed, natural awareness always already is welcoming) our own rejecting tendencies and reactions in real time but we can never really reject our capacity for simple awareness, as any momentary experience is a direct expression of this basic awareness.

buddhas are greatly enlightened about delusion, sentient beings are greatly deluded about enlightenment.--
dogen

Absolutely, Jake! It is quite possible to see this happening in real time, too, The arising of a phenomenon such as fear or anxiety creates the causes and conditions for the aversion to fear or anxiety, which is the cause of the suffering of the second arrow, The fear, if observed and allowed to just be, plays out quickly and another object arises. If not observed and if the aversion arises and is likewise not observed then the typical mental content spiral plays out and we end up reinforcing our conditioning at how to be afraid of being afraid

Totally, totally! It's that elaborative running off with it which just isn't neccessary. It can happen too, and becomes the next thing to welcome, but we can catch it at the root and just welcome the raw texture of fear, anxiety, pleasure, joy-- whatever.

It also seems on a related note that the energy which gets bound up in the defensive level elaborations, when such are less and less engaged in, returns to experience as an intensification of the basic vividness of these raw unelaborated primal experiences.

So it's a funny paradox, cause when we don't waste energy trying to defend ourselves from the first arrow-- and this defensiveness *is* the second arrow, right?-- then, that energy actually seems to feed the vividness of the momentary flashing of those raw untamed experiences-- or so it seems to me.

I've recently had experience of this with panic attacks at school. I'm returning to complete a batchelors degree, and have in the past experienced profoundly disturbing panic and anxiety reactions in that context. This time I was amazed to see full blown panic attacks, which would previously have taken hours to "run their course", flash through my bodymind in mere seconds, with all the intensity they used to have-- while I'm carrying on what seemed to me a completely normal conversation!

Here's to practice I was really concerned that these feelings would be debilitating as they have been in the past-- but sans resistance, not so much.

Somewhere-- I'm not sure where-- Chogyam Trungpa said, 'A true Tantrika panics every second'.

And Ngak'chang Rinpoche has pointed out that, from the sheer physiological phenomena standpoint, there is little difference between 'falling in love' and 'panic attack'-- the same revved-up neurotransmitters are read, and responded to, differently, is all.

I find both of these statements completely plausible-- and that being an interested, curious onlooker changes the experience, and the result, immensely.

Ah, great point Kate! So much of what we tell ourselves is "really happening" is a spin we put on these basic experiences. It's truly humbling-- and yet so empowering-- to look back on the suffering I have gone through and see just how much-- all of it, in some sense-- was this imaginary suffering, storytime, just characters and events that were totally fictional. But seemed so important at the time!

You're doing great, Jake. Things are really opening up. Just don't plant the flag. Know what I mean?

I like to think of Bill Hamilton. Every time I would report to him that I had it figured out, he would say, "Three possibilities: could get better, could get worse, could stay the same."

It used to drive me nuts, because I felt like he was taking the air out of my sails. But implicit in the comment is such important advice: don't plant the flag just yet... (don't plant the flag ever...)

Even this generic instruction to "not plant the flag" will get me into trouble if it becomes just another idea for me to live in.

excellent point, Kenneth!
""Three possibilities: could get better, could get worse, could stay the same.""

Truly helpful. Short-circuits the tendency to translate openness and freedom back into a fixed notion of "getting it"!

There's this fascinating dynamic between the tendency to want to tie it all together, and the wisdom that comes from letting it all fall apart (again and again). Could get better... and if it does, that'll change; could get worse, and if it does... and so on.

It seems like pinning our hopes on anything within phenomena is just looking for refuge in all the wrong places. Since that ship is going nowhere anyway, take the wind out of its sails all you want-- it's truly appreciated.