You can choose not to engage if you like, but it was you stating that almost no-one reading “will accept any refutation of karma and rebirth”, yet you don’t even consider it possible that there is rebirth. You tell us confidently that the scientist referred to (Sabine Hossenfelder) wouldn’t accept rebirth either, then I posted a video of her explaining that it is theoretically plausible to say that people who have deceased “do in some sense still exist”!
I was referring to this post and seeking clarification:
…in particular what I have bolded here:
“But there is always more to it that this!”
and
"the relation between action and consequence in Buddhism always involves supernatural forces and mythical realms (devaloka, niraya).
If you are backtracking from this absolute statement that the relation between action and consequences is not limited to consequences in subsequent lives then thats good. If you are sticking with your original argument we can engage (or not) on that specific claim.
Whether you engage or not (and the civility with which you do that) is up to you, but it is perfectly reasonable to question absolutist statements of x or y, particularly when you are making them of statements of fact rather than just your personal opinion.
Would you like to start the thread making your points or objections? Personally I think that would be the easiest way to proceed. I think a lot of it boils down to what “are” and “dukkha” mean here. Dukkha is primarily an aesthetic word commenting on Buddhist axiology, I’d say. It’s not a substance, and I don’t think it operates via the LEM; rather, it’s primarily a negation of sukha that extends its limbs to encompass several other issues.
The fact that they are all named dukkha. Do tell me what’s the choice I have to put in types of dukkha, the 3 dukkha is already one way to separate dukkha into types. The other is physical and mental.
What I mean is this. There are many languages: Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc. They are all different: Japanese has this vocabulary, Korean that one and so forth. However, there is also a similarity between them i.e. that they are all languages, that is a way of communication between people by using writing or speech that are structured according to various rules etc.
So, my question is about this similarity between these 3 types of suffering (or 2, if we are talking about physical and mental suffering) - what do they have in common?
Dukkha is an experience of consciousness. A body cannot experience dukkha. Do you think a corpse experience dukkha?.
sukha is happiness until it changes. Sukha and dukkha cannot exist both at the same moment. This can be checked and understood by any person.
Sukha and dukkha are inconstant. If we equate both, we would fall in what the sources name “a perversion of the mind and views” (AN 4.49)
"Perceiving constancy in the inconstant, pleasure in the stressful… […] When those with discernment listen, they regain their senses, seeing the inconstant as inconstant, the stressful as stressful"
The Buddha classified the type of experiences in pleasurable, unpleasurable and neutral.
Dukkha is not a constant experience but a mark of the existence.
In example, yesterday was raining from 08:00 until 11:00. At 12:00 the sun was shining, although at 13:00 was raining again until the end of the day. Today everybody says that yesterday the weather was bad. The bad weather was the mark of that day. And the short shinning sun was marked by the bad weather of the day.
In a similar way, one should understand the existence marked by dukkha. Our existence is like a permanent bad weather, in where the sun shines only in short times. It doesn’t mean the sun is rain or the inverse. We should recognize when there is sun or there is rain. Sukha is not dukkha.
it doesn’t have relation with the point, about knowing when there is sukha or there is dukkha.
Sukha is wordly happiness. Nibbana/Parinibbana are trascendental happiness. Are different hapiness although both sukha and nibbana, are happiness.
“There are, mendicants, these two kinds of happiness. What two? The happiness of attachments, and the happiness of no attachments. These are the two kinds of happiness. The better of these two kinds of happiness is the happiness of no attachments.” SuttaCentral
Moderators: as discussed with @Vaddha and others can we please move all the comments above ^^^ about dukkha and suffering to this new thread so as not to continue hijacking this one where the topic is not germane? Thanks!
It is not seeing this, to think that there can be true happiness (that lasts forever) in the world it is referred to in the sutta quoted as seeing pleasure in the stressful. That’s the meaning.
There’s no denying that there’s happiness (temporary) in the world. But because they are temporary, that’s why they are dukkha of change and dukkha of conditionality. Don’t just limit dukkha to unpleasant feelings, like you do with the post above. Or else you’re just ignoring Sn45.165.
Of course, to beginners who cannot see dukkha also includes unsatisfactoriness, we have to be careful to not lead them to become depressed. But you’re no longer a beginner. And the post I made about the 3 types of suffering is very clear and based on SN45.165. One has to go deeper into the teaching to understand the dhamma well.
Yes, as mentioned by others above, any experience is dukkha, at least for the dukkha of change and conditionality. Just think of unsatisfactoriness, not unpleasant feelings suffering.
Only true for sukha is not dukkha dukkha, or unpleasant feeling suffering. But sukha is dukkha of change and dukkha of conditionality. It is unsatisfactory because it is impermanent and conditioned. One has to see this deeply to be able to let go of even all happiness in the world. (Or see impermanence or no-self)
Suffering. Unsatisfactoriness perhaps is the better translation.
I suggest that Hamilton’s paradigm should be attractive to Western practitioners since it tends away from seeing bodhi in metaphysical, mystical or magical terms without devaluing or diminishing the achievement or its significance for humanity. Bodhi seen in this way is not only comprehensible, but it is clearly a realistic and rational goal for people to aspire to. It also cedes to science the study and description of the physical universe, and thus avoids one of the main pitfalls for religions in the modern era. But it clearly offers a pivotal role for Buddhist practice in how we relate to the world of the senses, and offers a potential revolution in perception and in well-being.
Indeed, while reviewing your paper I kept saying to myself, Why of course, yes – certainly.
Perhaps it makes sense because I’m a convert Buddhist in Western culture. In particular, as I keep evolving in how I explain Buddhist practice to people who have no idea whatsoever, I’m landing on Paṭicca-Samuppāda as the simplest explanation. I reduce the phrasing into something like “all experience is conditioned by one thing or another…we get caught up in it and suffer as a result.”
Then, if someone is curious, I’ll continue into the liberating practice of meditation…to learn how to relate to experience without clinging… and so forth.
Then I might wrap it up with something like: “This is what I understand Buddhism is. It’s nothing more than that. That’s all it is.”
I hardly find anyone who is ever curious about Buddhism or, in particular, meditation because they are trying to solve ontological questions (much less metaphysical ones). The closest we might get to an ontological question is “Why is there suffering in the world.” Even there I think most people are leaning into soteriology, especially given the prevalent Judeo-Christian influences.
Certainly no one I have conversations with is trying to solve karma. But I realize you’re talking about lay people in cultures where Buddhism is familiar.
To be clear, I’m not trying to win converts in these conversations I’m describing. I’m simply trying to introduce Buddhist practice to people who have no idea otherwise. (And there have been several who take to it easily, once we start with basic meditation and the five precepts.)
Because, on the face of it, it seems a quite obtuse and impenetrable “thing” (or religion, or whatever) to people who only know Judeo-Christian themes, ethics, and so forth. There’s no way to “get in” the door and monastics are not around.
As an aside – I’m not commenting on my own views on rebirth here because I don’t find it relevant to my post.
That’s not really how it works. In Special Relativity what is called the “proper time” is an invariant quantity that does not depend on reference frames. There is a spacetime distance between your future and your past and this spacetime distance will be timelike. In any other reference frame it is also going to be timelike and to unambiguously agree that your future occured after your past.
Somebody observing your future and then your past would violate causality, but causality still holds in Special Relativity.
