Hello class!
I found
tonight’s reading about Buddhism to be very interesting in regards to the ideas
of suffering, otherwise referred to as “Dukkha.” The reading spoke a lot about
how there were three types of suffering: “suffering as pain, as change, and as
conditions”(61). What I began to think about is how everyone suffers one way or
another throughout their lives, and these three types of suffering are able to
cover every condition. For example, most people will experience suffering as
pain, either mentally or physically. Others will also experience suffering as
change, because as Gethin says, everything is constantly changing. Finally,
suffering as conditions occurs because we live in a world that is full of
unstable conditions. So, it’s pretty clear that everyone suffers. When I was
reading this, it seemed a bit depressing to think about how everyone inevitably
suffers at some point in their lives. A question struck me while thinking about
dukkha: Will we ever not suffer?
While
trying to answer this question, I had to think about why we do suffer. All in
all, suffering makes someone a stronger person. The quote “What doesn’t kill
you makes you stronger” comes to mind because it’s something my parents always
tell me when I’m struggling through something. In Buddhism, suffering is the
way to reach nirvana, “the highest happiness,” which is ultimately the goal of
the Buddha’s teachings. For me, this
makes me think about how suffering will help me reach my goal of attaining my
own sense of happiness and success. I will fulfill my “cravings” as Gethin
says, which will then bring me to my own kind of Nirvana. Clearly suffering is
necessary to reach a goal, but what happens once you reach that goal? Are you
forever done with suffering? Or do you have a limited time that is pain-free
and once that time is over, you go through this cycle again?
Please feel free to send me some feedback with what you think!
Nirvana doesn't happen when you fulfill your cravings. All cravings lead to suffering.
ReplyDeleteSuffering doesn't necessarily make you stronger in Buddhist thought. We need to get into the whole theory of karma for me to explain more on this, so we'll continue this discussion in class. Briefly, karma is about how actions and behaviors reinforce themselves and establish patterns. For example, if you smoke, every cigarette you have makes it more likely that you'll have another one because you're training your body and mind to crave cigarettes. The kind of suffering caused by having cigarettes doesn't make you stronger; it makes you weaker because it makes it more difficult to break out of destructive patterns.
That said, there are some interesting ways in which suffering can be seen as 'burning away' the negative impact of previous actions. Karmically, every action has a consequence. If you (and we'll talk about who this 'you' is) do something that has negative consequences, sooner or later (sometimes A LOT later), these consequences will come to pass. In this sense, every time you get through a certain bout of suffering without falling into more negative actions, you've burnt out the seeds of those past negative deeds. So if you manage to quit smoking, you've dealt with the negative consequences of being addicted to cigarettes, and so relative to when you were a smoker, getting through that suffering has made you stronger. But you were only able to get stronger because suffering made you weaker to begin with.