Dukha and Escape from It

[chownah]

HumbleThinker,
I thought this goes well with your original post:
AN10.91
These, householder, are the ten kinds of persons who enjoy sensual pleasures found existing in the world. Of these ten, the foremost, the best, the preeminent, the supreme, and the finest is the one enjoying sensual pleasures who seeks wealth righteously, without violence, and having obtained it, makes himself happy and pleased; and shares the wealth and does meritorious deeds; and uses that wealth without being tied to it, infatuated with it, and blindly absorbed in it, seeing the danger in it and understanding the escape.
chownah

[dagon]

One of the problems with life is that towards the end all that was “good and pleasurable” in life comes back as a source of grief. Usually the more you have had the more you grieve.

Lets say you have had a particular pleasurable experience early in life you will spend most of you life trying to recapture that moment and then grieve for it all over again when you realize that life has past you by and you will never live that moment again. There is a saying in the east that “real pleasure is the absence of pain”

metta
paul

Hmmm interesting. The cliche at least is that your life flashes before your eyes and all that jazz, so it would be very conceivable that some pleasures may reap bad kamma at the time of death in the form of this kind of regret.

Most people do not have a quick death (personally I would think that would be good karma). There is death and there is dying; death is merely the end point of the process of dying. The dying process (which can take many years) is where most have an “opportunity” to see their lives according to their intelligence, spiritually and morality. Not knowing what happens at the very point of death and beyond that apart from rebirth – I still think that death constitutes a release from the experiences (but not karma) of this life. At the time of death you see a change in the face where the indicate suffer ceases; but the ageing and suffering of dying remains etched in the face. The point is that death is cessation of a phoneme we call life rather that “an event” in its self.

Where there is real suffering is in the dying process; a process that is both physical and mental. In most cases it is relatively easy to manage physical pain, but the mental and emotional torment is harder for the person or others to manage. If you think of what has brought you joy and happiness throughout your life and reflect on what it would mean to you never to experience that again you can start to experience grief. We all experience grief at some level through our lives but in the dying process it is more profound, more real and impossible to escape.

During the dying process most experience regret for things they have done or not done, but unlike our situation there is no real future to change anything. Dying as the ending of life causes people to reflect on the past – most of us know from our practice that this is a source of suffering and stress. The dying also reflect on the future and in particular the sadness that those they love will suffer – they know this because of the suffering that they have personally experienced from similar events.

Death and dying cause every happiness in life to become an emotional negative unless you manage to live in the present; have metta, compassion, joy and equanimity. However to achieve that you will need to be very advanced in you practice and may not have a rebirth and life to “look forward’ to.

One of the problems we face is that we have a belief that happiness is something to be chased. For us in this body, with this mind happiness is associated with activity – the joy experienced in mediation is the closest that we get to experiencing passive happiness. Anything that requires activity whether be that of the mind or the body requires energy/effort; and effort pushes against something else – which at the same time is pushing against you. This is why there is always change in our lives and changes cause suffering. So I return to my statement that real happiness is the absence of pain, suffering or stress.

[pegembara]

If one is truly freed from dukkha, there is no need to escape. Without craving there is no dukkha. All that is needed is to be absolutely sure that craving is permanently uprooted.

"Now this, monks, is the Noble Truth of dukkha: Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha."

— SN 56.11

"Monks, any desire & passion with regard to craving for forms is a defilement of the mind. Any desire & passion with regard to craving for sounds... craving for aromas... craving for flavors... craving for tactile sensations... craving for ideas is a defilement of the mind. When, with regard to these six bases, the defilements of awareness are abandoned, then the mind is inclined to renunciation. The mind fostered by renunciation feels malleable for the direct knowing of those qualities worth realizing."

— SN 27.8

[HumbleThinker]

There is a difference between knowing about something and knowing it. A teacher once described it like this: A scientist can know all about a tarantula, it's classification, physiology, habits, etc. But the person who awakens to find a tarantula crawling up her arm knows "tarantula."
So, right now it sounds like you know about suffering, and find it merely undesirable, no big deal. Perhaps your understanding of the truly terrible nature of samsara will change when you have experienced it more thoroughly.

Indeed. When I was reading the introduction to a translation of the Bhagavad Gita, it was put something like this: you can know that fire is hot, but you will never understand that it is hot unless it burns you. Experience is more informative than bare knowledge in this respect.

[sphairos]

Nibbana is complete disenchantment. Until you realize Nibbana, you will suffer. "Theravada" and Nibbana are for those who seek Ultimate Peace (of course Ultimate Peace for everyone and everything - you can't reach it "for yourself")