Listen now | Maybe some people don’t suffer. I don’t know anybody like that.Spiritual suffering is unnecessary, though. I have the recipe for eliminating it, and it works.
I feel like this discussion would benefit from distinguishing between pain and suffering. My personal experience as well as my interpretation of the branches of Buddhism that claim to eradicate suffering, is that pain is the original negative-valenced stimulus, whereas suffering is the combination of pain and some desire to not feel the pain. You can't really get rid of the pain, but you can have less resistance and then suffer less because of that. Or as Shinzen Young famously put it, "suffering = pain * resistance". (I think Buddhist teachings that talk about "the first and the second arrow" might also be referencing pain (first arrow) vs. resistance/suffering (second arrow).)
When you say "just feeling whatever the sadness or pain or horror is, as straightforwardly as possible, can change the way you relate with the negativity in a positive way", it sounds to me like you're talking about dropping the resistance so that you only feel the pain. And in your description of what it was like for the teachers whose children died... well, I obviously can't look at their internal experience and your description also isn't very detailed. But I'd be inclined to guess that they also experienced immense pain while experiencing, if not _zero_ suffering, then at least significantly _reduced_ suffering?
Which would lead me to suspect that you don't actually disagree with the "you can eliminate suffering" Buddhisms as much as this is suggesting; rather you are just using somewhat different terms. What they'd call "eliminating suffering", you'd call something like "changing the relationship to suffering" (whereas they would say that it was changing your relationship to _pain_, which then had an effect on your suffering).
I question even valence. I cannot meaningfully distinguish between resistance to sensation and negative valence, or clinging to sensation and positive valence. In empty awareness, where objects of perception have no apparent substance, preferential reactions seem increasingly optional.
Shinzen once said that his ultimate (hypothetical) test of a person’s enlightenment would be to give them up to the mercy of an Inquisitor’s torture chamber. He felt confident that he could (eventually) hack it, but didn’t want to have to “work that hard.”
Yeah, if I work at it, I can be fine with even fairly intense and persistent pain and not suffer; it's just sensation without valence. But I do have to work at it, and continuously; it stops working if I stop working. I presume more meditation means less work and maybe more persistence of effect.
Funny about the Shinzen story; I've had the same thought, as a hypothetical.
New subscriber here. And it would seem, a natural Charnel Ground practitioner.. :-\
For you both:
Meaningness-wise, does enlightenment have testability or ought-to-be-testable, or ok-to-testness in its meaning? On the Shinzen story, are physical torture and Marpa's and your teachers' pain comparable for testing? Gotta wonder about that story. If Shinzen was reputably enlightened, and perhaps a funny fellow, might that tale be about testing enlightenment itself as a questionable activity? Not familiar with the literature.
Skipped an Inquisition joke in the interest of brevity.
> it would seem, a natural Charnel Ground practitioner
Congratulations! Don't omit the god realm/pure land practice as well. They go together better!
> does enlightenment have testability?
Yeah, this has been a problem for a couple thousand years. Lots of people claim to be enlightened who other people disparage as not enlightened. It's highly contested and political in Buddhist cultures. There's no generally-accepted criteria or testing method.
It's hard to know how to test enlightenment because it's not clear what the word even means. It seems that different groups mean very different things by it. If it were possible to test for "enlightenment" at all, the different concepts of it would probably need different tests. I wrote about that in a series of essays that start here: https://vividness.live/what-is-enlightenment
For what it's worth, I think it's mostly better to abandon the idea, because it's so ambiguous and dubious.
Thank you, David, for questioning the myth of the end of suffering. I've seen this idea sold over and over again in spirituality and I've always wondered about it, feeling as if I wasn't practicing correctly. Lessening and changing my relationship to suffering seem like much more realistic and human(e) goals. This was really helpful, and I love the Charnel Ground and God Realm practices.
I feel like this discussion would benefit from distinguishing between pain and suffering. My personal experience as well as my interpretation of the branches of Buddhism that claim to eradicate suffering, is that pain is the original negative-valenced stimulus, whereas suffering is the combination of pain and some desire to not feel the pain. You can't really get rid of the pain, but you can have less resistance and then suffer less because of that. Or as Shinzen Young famously put it, "suffering = pain * resistance". (I think Buddhist teachings that talk about "the first and the second arrow" might also be referencing pain (first arrow) vs. resistance/suffering (second arrow).)
When you say "just feeling whatever the sadness or pain or horror is, as straightforwardly as possible, can change the way you relate with the negativity in a positive way", it sounds to me like you're talking about dropping the resistance so that you only feel the pain. And in your description of what it was like for the teachers whose children died... well, I obviously can't look at their internal experience and your description also isn't very detailed. But I'd be inclined to guess that they also experienced immense pain while experiencing, if not _zero_ suffering, then at least significantly _reduced_ suffering?
Which would lead me to suspect that you don't actually disagree with the "you can eliminate suffering" Buddhisms as much as this is suggesting; rather you are just using somewhat different terms. What they'd call "eliminating suffering", you'd call something like "changing the relationship to suffering" (whereas they would say that it was changing your relationship to _pain_, which then had an effect on your suffering).
I question even valence. I cannot meaningfully distinguish between resistance to sensation and negative valence, or clinging to sensation and positive valence. In empty awareness, where objects of perception have no apparent substance, preferential reactions seem increasingly optional.
Shinzen once said that his ultimate (hypothetical) test of a person’s enlightenment would be to give them up to the mercy of an Inquisitor’s torture chamber. He felt confident that he could (eventually) hack it, but didn’t want to have to “work that hard.”
Yeah, if I work at it, I can be fine with even fairly intense and persistent pain and not suffer; it's just sensation without valence. But I do have to work at it, and continuously; it stops working if I stop working. I presume more meditation means less work and maybe more persistence of effect.
Funny about the Shinzen story; I've had the same thought, as a hypothetical.
New subscriber here. And it would seem, a natural Charnel Ground practitioner.. :-\
For you both:
Meaningness-wise, does enlightenment have testability or ought-to-be-testable, or ok-to-testness in its meaning? On the Shinzen story, are physical torture and Marpa's and your teachers' pain comparable for testing? Gotta wonder about that story. If Shinzen was reputably enlightened, and perhaps a funny fellow, might that tale be about testing enlightenment itself as a questionable activity? Not familiar with the literature.
Skipped an Inquisition joke in the interest of brevity.
Thanks in advance for your attention.
> it would seem, a natural Charnel Ground practitioner
Congratulations! Don't omit the god realm/pure land practice as well. They go together better!
> does enlightenment have testability?
Yeah, this has been a problem for a couple thousand years. Lots of people claim to be enlightened who other people disparage as not enlightened. It's highly contested and political in Buddhist cultures. There's no generally-accepted criteria or testing method.
The Dalai Lama has advocated the piss test as reliable. I wrote about that here: https://meaningness.substack.com/p/the-piss-test
Empirically, it doesn't seem so reliable to me.
It's hard to know how to test enlightenment because it's not clear what the word even means. It seems that different groups mean very different things by it. If it were possible to test for "enlightenment" at all, the different concepts of it would probably need different tests. I wrote about that in a series of essays that start here: https://vividness.live/what-is-enlightenment
For what it's worth, I think it's mostly better to abandon the idea, because it's so ambiguous and dubious.
I’m noticing that I’m not vibing with the term „spiritual suffering“ but I also don’t know a better one.
Cool new format by the way!
Yes, "spiritual" is an awful word, but sometimes I can't find a better one that fits the context. "Existential" often works.
Yeah, I translated it to „existential“ in my mind.
I guess I also don’t vibe with the „suffering“ part, I’m noticing.
Thank you, David, for questioning the myth of the end of suffering. I've seen this idea sold over and over again in spirituality and I've always wondered about it, feeling as if I wasn't practicing correctly. Lessening and changing my relationship to suffering seem like much more realistic and human(e) goals. This was really helpful, and I love the Charnel Ground and God Realm practices.