Perceptions

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samabudhi

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I've been trying to come up with a good metaphor for this pain issue. Pain/suffering/dissatifaction/dukkha, whatever you want to call it. But really, it's just so simple, we don't see it.

Why does pain have to be painful? Why can't it just be what it is...pain. Painful is not pain, painful is your reaction to it.

Consider a flower. To you or I, it is usually beautiful, something aesthetically pleasing yet expendable.
To a bee on the other hand, a flower is it's life. It couldn't survive without it. It sees the flower in a totally different way. If the flower is destroyed - that is really painful for it. For us, it's a trivial concern, and to the awaiting fungal spores and bacteria which live off dead organic matter, it's a cause for celebration.

So the Buddhist approach is not to destroy pain, or try and avoid it. It is to see the true nature of pain. Our perception of pain as painful is not the true nature of pain, it is an illusion which we have created.
To see the true nature of pain is also not to deny one's perception, or anyone else's about it. One of the fundamental understandings in Buddhism is that of the two truths. There is ultimate truth and conventional truth.

Conventional truthes are the way things appear to us...as painful, as beautiful. Ultimate truth is the way things really are, beyond the intellect, beyond our perceptions and any form of sophistry. There is no dichotomy here, it is perfectly acceptable that the bee sees the flower differently to us. This is because what is observed is dependent on the observer, always and without fail. In this way, all phenomena are dependent on each other.

So bringing the argument full circle, whether something is painful or not is dependent on our seeing it as such. But the Buddha sees pain as it is, and is freed from self-caused suffering.

Sarva Mangalam!
 
Namaste Samabudhi,

Except in the real world, one cannot negate the fact that if you lose an arm or a leg, it hurts.
 
Namo Ciel

The real world you say. If a sentient being dreams of losing a leg, they suffer so. When they wake, they realise the illusion of their suffering.
But the awakened one looks back on the dream of samsara, and realises the Mara's illusion of suffering.

One's corporeality is the most convincing illusion of them all, but it is really just as empty as everything else.
 
Is not pain and painful a result of the fact that we have nerves? I think you are implying that the flower feels no pain as it loses petals or gets cut why should we. (I'll currently ignore the studies with plants and feeling and pain...) But we have this nervous system....aren't we truly discussing not the pain and painful but our reaction to same our living with/expressing with same?

Yes I've lost a leg or arm. But do I have to live the woe is me lifestyle.....enter me in the entitlement programs as I am so injured....which is my choice...or rise above it, which is my choice? That is eliminating the outward effect of the pain, v. putting life to the pain....
 
hey

i'v touched on this topic a few times, but i'v never spent a lot of time studying it. but isnt this also to do with eptiness? i once read that when a being fully realises emptiness, and with it the true nature of pain, even if he is beaten he feels no pain, becasue it does not exist...only in a conventional way.

..you can see that pain is a mental thing when two people are hurt in the same way and they react and deal with it in differently. if pain was pain, just pain, then we would all react in the same way because it could not be altered by different people.

good topic!
 
michaellangelo said:
hey

i'v touched on this topic a few times, but i'v never spent a lot of time studying it. but isnt this also to do with eptiness? i once read that when a being fully realises emptiness, and with it the true nature of pain, even if he is beaten he feels no pain, becasue it does not exist...only in a conventional way.

..you can see that pain is a mental thing when two people are hurt in the same way and they react and deal with it in differently. if pain was pain, just pain, then we would all react in the same way because it could not be altered by different people.

good topic!
Click to expand...

Corporial Pain is a physical thing as pointed out above. How we deal with it is very mental (and I suspect emotional).

The human body does not know the difference between burning flesh, or freezing flesh, for example. All it knows is that ambient temperature has drastically changed, and nerve impulses notify the brain. In most cases the gut reaction is to remove the appendege from the offensive temperature difference. Second, when a limb is severed (quickly), the body does not immediately feel "pain". That is due to the survival mechanism that kicks in, that constricts ateries, and culls nerve endings. Often times gunshot or stab wound victims will perish quicker than one who has lost a limb...When one breaks their vertebrae, the surrounding muscle tissue tends to automatically stiffen (constrict/retract), in order to provide support to the damaged bone (s).

Now shock can set in with an amputee quicker than with an impaled victim. But that can be in and of itself a life saving mechanism.

My point is all of these reactions have nothing to do with perceiving pain. The body reacts of its own accord, before we even register the problem.

How we deal with "pain" afterwards, depends a great deal on our personality, and upbrining, as well as our individual survival instincts.

For example, when I break a bone, my reaction is interesting (to say the least). My first reaction (as history shows), is to get defensive (get away from me), and get angry. The "pain" I perceive is overridden by the anger I generate (usually at myself for being so stupid and clumsy).

But when I get sick (high fever of 103 or better), then my family knows to keep me unclad in bed with light blankets. Because 1. I'll throw them off, and 2. I invariably head for the shower, several times during the fever, and douse myself in freezing cold water (to break the fever). I can't tell you that I'm consciously thinking of that, it is only a reaction to the "pain" of the fever. It is a survival mechanism.

Emotional pain...different story.;)

v/r

Q
 
A paraphrase (and restatement;) ) of the First Noble Truth: pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Have a good one, Earl
 
Samabudhi,

Acceptance is that we are looking at this from two different levels. On one level I agree with all you say, and have been witness to this as a life issue, though thank God this body is still complete, so I would rather compare this to realms of the mind. Moveing beyond mind there is no further sense of illusion. For a while there is indeed emptiness, and then the emptiness grows into incredible fullness as the flower of compassion opens and one wishes that no life on this earth should suffer, and would wish no thing to be in a state of pain. mental or physical.
Now this may not fit with non dual awareness as percieved by the scholar, but if one is formed to be in the world through elevated consciousness and takes an active part as a real world participant there is no denying things such as right and wrong, and good and bad exist. I can work with and instruct adults in meditation groups on a non dual level, but when I work with and teach children the issue is different, for this is reality. I would not tell them to go walk through the wall, because it would hurt!
And yes even when one attains the non dual there are still emotions, but they are provided by a different source than the inner emotions riseing to the surface fueled by the passions.


Wil,
Yes whatever it is we are here to rise above it.
 
Namaste Ciel,


Thank you for the post.

just an aside, if i may.

the Buddhist view of emptiness isn't what it seems.. our view isn't that there is, in fact, "nothingness". emptiness, in Buddhist parlance, is a term which is used to express our teaching of Interdependent Co-Arising.

essentially, the term means that phenomena are "empty" of any eternally existing, self sufficient, self nature... they are empty of this nature and exist only in mutual dependence upon the arising of other things.

don't know if that changes your response or not, though i thought i'd toss it out there :)

metta,

~v
 
Namaste Vajradhara,

Thank you for your response. Perhaps we can bridge the language matter. My path as you may have gathered has not been traditional Buddhist. My teachers came from domains earthly and otherwise. The mind journey was formulative in understanding cause and effect of transitional mind frequency as it plays through this life and all. Speaking of emptiness of mind, I speak of the silence, in this there is a seperation from outward existing phenomena. One moves through whatever and it is as though nothing has happened, to travel being at the constant point of arrival where ever. There is memory recall if so desired, but it is as though the experience itself is diffused. One example shown to me of this state of play, for often I have been witness to the extreme before new conception settled, was walking one day through the forest and the nature of the forest appeared frozen in it's own sense of time.
Hopeing this is relative to understanding, I do feel we are talking of the same in this instance, even if a different approach.
 
On one level I agree with all you say
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but when I work with and teach children the issue is different
Click to expand...

The different schools of Madhamika thought do not dispute the Nagarjuna's view on emptiness. They are in complete agreement. They dispute how this view is best conveyed to the novice.
Prasanghikas hold that one should not affirm or deny anything, since this would hypocritically contradict the view. The Svatantrikas hold that in order to 'raise one's game' so to speak, one needs to offer alternatives of a higher view to a novice's present view. Once the novice has grasped the higher teaching, the position is changed, and a further higher view is put forward, until the novice realises the highest view, the emptiness of all phenomena.

What you are saying is exactly the same. You cannot speak of the emptiness of pain to a child, who is limited by his view. You cannot speak of the ocean to a well-frog who is limited by his abode, or a pedagogue who is limited by his knowledge.

Arya astanghika marga is Buddha's 8-fold noble path. It is a path, which needs to be followed in order for the highest teaching to be understood.
 
Namaste Samabudhi,

Beyond the world of many words, names and concepts we understand each other well. And if we were ever to sit together in the peace and silence of being, our lotus blooms open and recieving, immeasurable joy and wisdom in the all and nothingness of it all.

Peace
 
samabudhi said:
The different schools of Madhamika thought do not dispute the Nagarjuna's view on emptiness. They are in complete agreement. They dispute how this view is best conveyed to the novice.
Prasanghikas hold that one should not affirm or deny anything, since this would hypocritically contradict the view. The Svatantrikas hold that in order to 'raise one's game' so to speak, one needs to offer alternatives of a higher view to a novice's present view. Once the novice has grasped the higher teaching, the position is changed, and a further higher view is put forward, until the novice realises the highest view, the emptiness of all phenomena.

What you are saying is exactly the same. You cannot speak of the emptiness of pain to a child, who is limited by his view. You cannot speak of the ocean to a well-frog who is limited by his abode, or a pedagogue who is limited by his knowledge.

Arya astanghika marga is Buddha's 8-fold noble path. It is a path, which needs to be followed in order for the highest teaching to be understood.
Click to expand...

Namaste Samabudhi,

excellent post and very good summation of the differences in Madhyamika thought!

generally speaking, i tend to the Prasangkia view, though.. hopefully, i am mindful enough to use upaya when necessary :)

metta,

~v
 
Hmmmm....
I feel like I've let down my friends with my Prasanghika view on things. Girlfriends in particular.

Isolation is a common concern of mine, which I attribute to my insistence on the perfect view of things. But if the Madhamika is essentially saying it nothing really matters, nothing is really what it appears, then surely it wouldn't matter if it mattered :&.... - so whether one holds to the perfect view and does not contradict oneself in metaphysical debates, it does not matter.

To myself, my internal dialog is saying Prasanghika, this is easy. It is my endeavour, however difficult, to manifest the Svatantrika.

I've heard it said in the discussion of Prasanghika, that 'to be beyond extremes, is an extreme.'
Delicious! :D
 
Indeed Samabudhi, no matter, yet with gratitude I find these Buddhist terms quite beautiful in there sensitivities. :)
 
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