Dhammanando wrote:Well, that's a novel claim. But nothing in the rest of your post supports it.
Dhammanando
I trust MN 37 & 38 support it and many more suttas:
On seeing a form with the eye, he is not passionate for it if it is pleasing; he is not angry at it if it is displeasing. He lives with attention to body established, with an immeasurable mind and he understands realistically the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom wherein those evil unwholesome states cease without remainder. Having abandoned favouring and opposing, whatever feeling he feels - whether pleasant or painful or neither-pleasant-nor-painful - he does not delight in that feeling, welcome it, or remain holding to it. As he does not do so, delight in feelings ceases in him. From the cessation of his delight comes cessation of clinging; from the cessation of clinging, the cessation of becoming; from the cessation of becoming, the cessation of birth; from the cessation of birth, ageing-&-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair cease. Thus is the cessation of this entire mass of suffering.
Mahàtanhàsankhaya Sutta
Dhammanando wrote:But the passage you cite doesn't show that "dukkha-dukkhatā is dukkha for puthujjanas."
Dhammanando
My post is merely word play, a play with words.
Are you saying the Lord Buddha was not free from dukkha even though his mind experienced dukkha vedana (painful feelings)?
Are you saying the Buddha did not quench the entire mass of suffering?
Are you saying the world requires a Sammasambuddha to advise it dukkha vedana is dukkha?
Dhammanando wrote:- Now at that time Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī became ill. Monks who were elders approached Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī, and having approached they spoke thus to Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī:
“Gotamī, we hope you are bearing up, we hope you are getting better.”
“Venerable sirs, I am not bearing up, I am not getting better. Please, venerable sirs, teach me the Dhamma.”
(Vin. iv. 56)
For me, the above quote is irrelevent. Indeed, Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī was getting sicker and sicker, more pained and more pained. However, I trust her mind was liberated from
psychological dukkha.
Dhammanando wrote:But the passage you cite doesn't show that "saṅkhāra-dukkhatā is dukkha for puthujjanas." Quite the contrary, it states that "all conditioned things are dukkha," with no qualification. I would guess you have been misled by the translation "one turns away from suffering," which might be taken as implying that one no longer has any relationship at all to the thing in question.
All things are indeed dukkha. A motor car is an example. For one with wisdom, a motor car is dukkha because it is impermanent and subject to breaking down and decay. This dukkha is the car is unsatisfactory, it is imperfect. It cannot be relied on. These qualities are dukkha.
Thus the more a wise person realises the dukkha of a motor car, the more their mind is liberated from suffering. The motor car is dukkha but the mind of the wise being is not dukkha.
However, for a putajana, the dukkha motor car is dukkha. The putujana becomes aggreived when the car falls apart and spends their time craving for a better car that will never fall apart.
For the putujana, the characteristic of dukkha manifests as dukkha. Whereas for the wise person, the characteristic of dukkha manifests as freedom from dukkha.
Dhammanando wrote:The verb 'nibbindati' (the source of the noun 'nibbidā') means "to turn away" in the sense of becoming disgusted or disillusioned with something.
Yes. When dukkha is fully comprehended the mind becomes free from dukkha due to 'nibbindati'.
Dhammanando wrote:All saṅkhāras are dukkha in the sense of being oppressed by rise and fall (udayavaya-ppaṭipīḷana) and they continue to be so whether they arise for a puthujjana, a sekha or an asekha.
A rock or block of cement is a saṅkhāras. It is subject to dukkha but does not experience dukkha because a block of cement has no mind. Thus a block of cement does not experience "oppression". Only a mind can experience oppression.
Dhammanando wrote:Hence the saying: "Whatsoever is felt, all that is included in dukkha."
Clearly, the many suttas contradict this, as I have quoted. Whatever the intention if these words, the translation appears misinterpreted. The Lord Buddha felt experiences but was free from all dukkha.
Dhammanando wrote:Only upadana dukkha is real dukkha.
Indeed. Only upadana is real dukkha. Buddha said this in the First Noble Truth, when he said: "In brief, attachment to the five aggregates is dukkha".
The words "in brief" or "in essence" means the subject is addressed in its fullness and completion in merely a few words.
Dhammanando wrote:But for those readers who take saṃsāra seriously, here's how nirodha is understood in the classical Theravāda:
This is a Modern Theravada forum.
Dhammanando wrote:- Nirodha (cessation): the word ni denotes absence, and the word rodha a prison. Now the third truth is empty of all [post-mortem] destinies and so there is no constraint (rodha) of suffering here reckoned as prison of the round of rebirths.
The word Nirodha means the quenching or extinguishing of the fires of greed, hatred and delusion. Buddha has explained nirodha in the Third Noble Truth and elsewhere. It is the cessation of craving.
Dhammanando wrote:To assert otherwise is to ignore the fact that the first truth includes aging, sickness and death, to which an arahant is still subject. The first noble truth doesn't say "Aging, sickness and death are only dukkha if you're a puthujjana.
A Sammasambuddha is not required to reveal to the world that birth, old age, disease, death, pain, grief, separation, etc, are dukkha. Most ordinary people understand these things. The First Noble Truth is a gradual teaching. The Buddha listed conventional or putujana dukkha then the dukkha of ultimate truth. In ultimate truth, only attachment is dukkha. Birth, old age, disease, death, pain & separation are what ordinary people mistaken for dukkha.
Best wishes,
Element