emptiness and suffering

This is a continuation of a discussion that began in Owen's Practice Journal, Part II.

I asked Chris:

"The thing I'm curious about is, why do you think it's enough [in terms of alleviating suffering] to understand that experience is empty? If I could sum up what I've learned (in a way that's tailored to this context) it would be: "Everything is what it is, everything is as sh*tty or awesome as it is, no imagined perspective on it changes what it is." To me that seems like it leads to the opposite of what you're saying."

Perhaps I misunderstood you, but it seems like you have some kind of perplexity about why people would try to add or remove things from their experience. And from my point of view, that's like wondering why someone would try to keep from hitting themselves in the hand with a hammer.

"Good" and "bad" are labels and they either refer to opinions about objects (beliefs, which are just more objects) or to some feature of objects themselves. By analogy, "red" is a label that either refers to an opinion about a visual percept, or some feature of a visual percept itself. When I say that experience can be good or bad, I intend the latter kind of reference. "Bad" is a quality of what it feels like to hit yourself with a hammer. It isn't an opinion. It isn't a perspective on experience. It's nothing more than the experience itself. (This may be an idiosyncratic way of using terminology, so bear with me if it doesn't match yours.)

I don't know if you had me or beoman in mind when you asked whether it could be expected that one day it wouldn't be painful / bad to be hit with a hammer. I have no idea. I don't have that as a goal. Neither do I fully understand what the AF goal is. My next step is not "make being hit with a hammer not hurt." It's simpler.

""Neither do I fully understand what the AF goal is. My next step is not "make being hit with a hammer not hurt." It's simpler.""

EndInSight & Chris - awesome conversation. Thank you.

An undercurrent seems to be around explicitness with goals. When goals are explained clearly, others can look at the goal and see if the goal itself is born of ignorance.

For example, I previously had the goal of "Eradicate ignorance so that I can experience the truth of reality moment by moment."

This sounds nice on the surface, but seems deluded. We are limited beings, not omniscient, so there will always be ignorance. It seems a better goal is simply to work to reduce ignorance, but be fundamentally OK with it in this moment.

I'm curious about worthwhile undeluded goals to get an idea of how I could possibly live my life. Some worthy goals I can think of:

"Simply surrendering to whatever arises"
"Recognizing the purity and perfection of this moment while committing to a practice or intention that may produce results in future moments"
...

I was asking bemoan about hitting himself with the hammer. He's replied to me in a PM but not publicly so I hope he replies here, too.

Anyway, I perceive "good" and "bad" as just labels (or opinions), period. There is no good or bad other than in our minds. As I said before stuff, all stuff, just IS. We may be averse to it and want it gone or we may like it and want more of it, but that's not the same thing as labeling it. And, if you've ever just been with physical pain, accepted it and examined it for a long time you might discover that it's the aversion to the pain that causes the problem with pain, not the sensation itself. Weird, maybe, but true in my experience. Mind always wants to classify and judge. It's what mind does best. But those judgments are nothing but labels.

I'll see your example and raise you this counterpoint:

Suffering is highly controllable by the cognitive machinery of the brain. It is possible to feel something physically painful and not have it constitute suffering, with the right intention / attitude towards it; this is because those cognitive processes actually alter the sensation through neurophysiological mechanisms. Using acceptance in the way you're describing seems to me to be a way to substitute a non- or less-suffering experience for a suffering one.

Do you like eating spicy food? I do. When I eat something that's *really* hot, the first ~10 seconds of the burning sensation genuinely hurts. Afterwards, due to some combination of resolve and endorphins kicking in, the burning sensation does not hurt. But the later sensation is absolutely not like the earlier sensation! It's just not true that equanimity made the earlier sensation tolerable. Equanimity *replaced* one sensation with another one, similar in certain ways, different in others.

The mechanism here is physiological, and extremely unsubtle. If someone takes a drug that blocks the effect of endorphins, the sensation that comes from spicy food will not hurt less over time; it will be excruciating at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end, until the sensation goes away. People who eat hot peppers for fun can't tolerate the same levels of heat when they've been tested while taking that kind of drug. The drug's effect is just to prevent the nicer sensation from switching places with the nastier one.

So, I'll stand by this: some sensations have the quality "bad". If you face sensations with this quality in the right way, they can mutate into similar sensations that have less of that quality, or none of it, if the normal brain mechanisms are functioning. But that is not a case of seeing the old sensations differently. Just sleight-of-hand.

My overall thought is that practicing acceptance is a good strategy to transmute sensations from types that are bad to similar types that aren't. It sounds like it works for you, which is good to hear. A person trying to do away with suffering by a different route just seems to be aiming at a different kind of transmutation.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I have to insist that the qualities of "good" and "bad" are always just labels and judgments. There is really a difference between the judgment and the sensation.

Here's another one from way out in 3rd Gear land -- time and space are also concepts. They allow the mind which creates them to compare things, like this here to that over there, and this now to this then. They are not part of what I'll call here the primal nature of mind that one can access in very deep meditation and at certain other times.

So there!

OK.

Glad we were able to talk about this issue. I certainly did benefit from the discussion. Hopefully you feel the same way.

I did! I always enjoy comparing experiences. Even if Yadid poops on my beliefs.

Sometimes I just can't help it !