September 29, 2009
- Naked Kassapa -
A wandering ascetic named Naked Kassapa came to the Buddha and asked: “Is suffering/stress/anxiety caused by oneself? Can it be said, if one is suffering, that this suffering was brought about through one’s own actions?”
Buddha: “No, it cannot.” For to speak of it thus makes one responsible for all the suffering that befalls them, and clearly this cannot be true.
NK: “Then can it be said that that one’s suffering is brought about through the actions of another?”
B: “No, it cannot.” For to speak of it thus removes all responsibility for one’s suffering from oneself, and inclines one towards lethargy and complaint.
NK: “Then can it be said that one’s suffering is brought about both through the actions of oneself and of others?”
B: “No, it cannot.” For to speak of it thus is to create a false dichotomy where in one falls into either one or the other of the two prior traps.
NK: “Then since one’s suffering is not brought about by either one’s own actions or the actions of others, can it be said that it is brought about by the whims of chance?”
B: “No, it cannot.” For to speak of it thus means the suffering will be entirely ignored, as if it carried no message within it.
NK: “Well then, can suffering be said to be nonexistant?”
B: “No, it cannot.” For clearly suffering does exist.
NK: “Then, good Gotama, clearly you do not know suffering, nor do you see suffering.”
B: “This is not true. I have knowledge of suffering; I see suffering.”
NK: “Well my lord, can you please help to clarify the nature of suffering for me, and explain to me this knowledge that you have?”
B: “To say that suffering comes from within is to become a solipsist, as if the world depended entirely on oneself. Yet to say that suffering comes from without leads to either depression or madness, as we then have no control over the fact that we suffer. Instead, the Tathaagata teaches the middle way. The cause of our suffering is our ignorance of the nature and dependent origin of that information which we perceive as causing our suffering. If we could truly understand the actions that both brought this information into existence, and our own beliefs that cause us to label it as suffering, then we would be able to cut out the suffering at its root, and it would cease to exist entirely.”
An interpretation of the Acela Sutta (trans: here and here), come to after reading H. W. Schumann’s “The Historical Buddha”.
Ever feel like these Buddhists talk too much about suffering?
I mean I’m 38, divorced, pretty much homeless and unemployed…but I don’t really feel like my life is characterized by suffering. I guess I can’t really relate to this idea that my life is so full of suffering that I must go on a quest to over come it.
I feel like I am motivated in my spiritual quest more by curiosity than anything else, but its stronger than that.
I am in good health though, so maybe that’s why. Of course many people ruin their health with drugs and alcahol and unsafe sex etc. desiring to end suffering.
I dunno, really. Maybe Americans don’t suffer as much due to hope of upward mobility. Myabe in a strict class society people suffer more.
Comment by Ted — October 1, 2009 @ 9:01 am
Suffering’s kind of a bad translation of the word “dukkha”. Chogyam Trungpa translated it as Anxiety, in the psychological sense of the term. I’ve also seen it translated as stress (in one of the translations of this, I think).
One of my Zen teachers one said that there is a difference between neurotic practice and practicing your neurosis…
As much mediation is not psychotherapy, I think this all kind of points to something. There is in many people nowadays the sense of “something” being not right. Modernism, existentialism, post modernism, they’re all different ways of trying to make sense of this.
It’s not suffering as in shitty things happening, but a sense of there being something out of place, something that has to be addressed, but not knowing what that something is. And looking into THAT with full curiosity is what the spiritual path is all about, I think.
Comment by Ian — October 1, 2009 @ 9:38 am
Yeah, that sounds about right!
Comment by Ted — October 1, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
Isn’t there something about a squeaky wheel?
Lots in ‘Zen and the Art of…’ about this. There’s this passage where Pirsig goes into this guy’s house and slowly begins to realise that all the ‘suffering’ in this guy’s life can be traced back to this leaky faucet in the kitchen which he’s been denying he’s been unable to fix…
Pirsig offers no simple answers, but (as someone with a bit of an engineering bent) I can relate to this as an approach to the problem.
Comment by speedbird — October 2, 2009 @ 10:02 am
I think I no longer feel like there is something out of place, though. I feel like I am on the right track, at least, anyway.
The thing I am cognizant of though, is other people’s lower vibrations. Being dragged down. I need a spiritual community. I am not suffering, but I need to be around people with a baseline of spirituality.
Comment by Ted — October 2, 2009 @ 10:13 am
@ speedbird: Yeah, a wheel that doesn’t turn properly. A lack of agreements between different moving parts that ends up making noise. And the Pirsig thing, although I think it could be certainly a true story, works so much better as a metaphor. That’s “the stone which the builder rejected” becoming the corner stone, right there. We think we can’t fix something that we actually can fix, so we arrange our lives around it. But that makes our lives arranged around a lie, an untruth. And this kind of thing builds and builds until we can go back in and uproot that basic untruth.
@ Ted: Yeah, community’s important. Buddha’s 3 Treasures are the Buddha (who is symbolized by a teacher but actually represents our true self), the dharma (which is the way to that) and the sangha (which is the community, cause you are never truly without some group around you). All three are needed, like three legs on a stool…
Thanks guys, this is a strangely appropriate conversation. At my Zen temple (sangha) we’re studying the Chain of Dependent Origination, which comes right after the part in the book about Naked Kasapa, and is an explanation of that basic untruth and how things build on it. Weird blurring of the lines going on here.
Anyway, I’m hoping to wrote up something on that this weekend.
Comment by Ian — October 2, 2009 @ 11:25 am