SN 15:3 - Where is my suffering in past lives?

All the tears your Kandhas cried in past existences (Dickens included) make up the oceans of the world. Time to do something about it? Great Expectations indeed.

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Exactly, there is no indication that the Buddha is addressing stream-enterers, otherwise I suspect the content of the discourse would be different.

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OK, I see your point now. Sorry I didn’t fully get it earlier. :melting_face:

Let me ask in return: Why do you eat? It’s all just hungry aggregates, after all, no hungry self
 :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Suffering matters even if there is no self who suffers. That’s also why even enlightened ones still have compassion. It’s not compassion for some individual self but for suffering itself. Or for mere aggregates, you could say.

And if someone would reply that they eat because suffering of this life does matters, but not that of future lives, then I’d say they are missing exactly the point the Buddha is making in such suttas on the length of samsara: that we have to consider rebirth to matter. :slightly_smiling_face:

The fact that “it’s all just aggregates” is exactly why samsara is all just suffering. These are not separate concepts. Seeing that there is only suffering, no self, and hence nothing worth holding on to, the aggregates will get “disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed regarding” themselves—if you want to put it like that.

That’s why many suttas indicate that right view leads to disillusionment. For example AN11.2:

If you know and see things in line with reality, you do not have to intend to become disillusioned. It is natural to become disillusioned if you know and see things in line with reality. If you are disillusioned, you do not have to intend to become dispassionate. It is natural to lose become dispassionate if you are disillusioned. If you become dispassionate, you do not have to intend to know and see liberation. It is natural to get to know and see liberation if you lose desire.

Note that here we have the three terms: disillusioned, dispassionate, and liberation/freedom. They are natural results of right view.

Likewise, SN15.3 says that the knowledge that samsara has no discernible beginning “is quite enough for you to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed regarding all conditions.” This knowledge about samsara is not something noble ones take on faith from the Buddha. It is a direct understanding they have (see also SN48.50).

So I agree that suttas like SN15.3 are still addressing sotapannas; however, the insight of sotapannas is different from (to paraphrase) “it’s all just aggregates, so suffering in past and future lives doesn’t matter”. :face_in_clouds:

That’s how I understand these suttas. Maybe that helps you as well.

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In other suttas, the Buddha also uses some expressions to describe suffering in samsara


Perhaps those who have little dust in their eyes can see


Do you want me to draw it for you to understand better? it has this expression

A Fingernail

Nakhasikhāsutta

SN 13.1

For someone who has seen the truth, the suffering eliminated is like the great earth; what remains is like the dirt under a fingernail.

SuttaCentral

A Heap of Bones

Aáč­áč­hipuñjasutta

Iti 24

In this course of transmigrating, one person would leave behind a heap of bones as large as a mountain—if there were someone to collect the bones and the collection were not destroyed

SuttaCentral

“If the bones of a single individual
for a single eon were gathered up,
they’d make a pile the size of a mountain:
so said the great seer.

And this is declared to be
as huge as Mount Vepulla,
higher than the Vulture’s Peak
near the Mountainfold of the Magadhans.

SuttaCentral

Of course, these suttas contain many other insights; we may be missing something.

:anjal:

Let me just share my reflections when I reflect on SN 15 as a whole.

If I want to do something to experience certain kinds of happiness in the world, I can reflect that over countless past lives, I had already experienced those types of happiness, is it helping me now? No. Did it end my suffering forever? No. No worth pursuing then. Let it go.

If I want to marry a certain person: “Oh, that person is so beautiful, and she proposes to me! What a rare chance!” Then I reflect that over countless past lives, I already married all the beautiful ladies in the world of all sorts of appearance, even differing by just an atom. There’s no lasting happiness from marrying such people. Enough. Let it go.

If I want a certain person to be my family, parents, siblings, I just reflect that over many past lives, I already was related to that person in some way or another, why repeat the same pattern again and again, pointless. Let it go.

If a certain family member died, and I wish to reunite with them in the next life, I can just look at some random person I have no emotional connection with and I reflect that that person was my parents/ sibling/ partner etc in a past life, now I have no emotional connection or memory of that person, why be attached to this life’s family member? They will also be forgotten.

If I think that I don’t suffer enough, I want to experience more suffering, then I just reflect that over countless past lives, I have suffered all sorts of suffering, it’s enough to let go and be disappasionate over this. Enough is enough, no point in doing anything other than walking the path to liberation.

This is how SN15 is to be reflected upon to motivate one to walk the path.

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Outstanding post—very down to earth, very accessible. This ^^ is another thing I like about Buddhism. It’s not giving up pleasure/attachment because someone in a big chair mandates it, instead it’s recognizing the actual drawbacks with clear vision.


I started a reply to the OP yesterday, but discarded because I suspect most will not follow my reasoning. Here it is anyway


There was a post a while back which asks a seemingly different question. @Ravi was asking why bother about the fruits of good karma as he won’t know future lives. @levelquest is asking why bother about suffering in past lives. To me they’re somewhat the same question because both can be reformatted as “Why bother about non-equanimity in the non-present life?”.

One more.

I am a virgin in this life. Maybe the pull of sexual curiousity is very strong. Like some people doesn’t want to die a virgin. Or some people doesn’t want to ordain as a virgin. Then I just need to reflect that over countless past lives, I already had all sorts of sex in all sorts of manner with all sorts of partners or even non-partners, in any number.

If I want to re-experience that, then just meditate to get the ability to recall past lives, then recall those sexual episodes. That’s better than obsessing over sex in this life, so much trouble from sex, having to get married, cannot be a celibate monastic etc.

This is a variant of Buddha using heavenly nymphs to motivate Ven. Nanda.

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I’d suggest two things that may help in finding what’s missing.

  1. Reflect and meditate on dependent origination. “This being, that becomes. With the arising of this, that arises. This not being, that does not become. With the cessation of this, that ceases.” As well as the standard formula. Train the mind to see all phenomena in terms of dependent origination instead of in terms of I/me/mine/myself.

  2. Cultivate the brahmaviharas along the lines the suttas instruct. As they develop in this way, the barriers between self and other begin to break down.

They meditate spreading a heart full of love to one direction, and to the second, and to the third, and to the fourth. In the same way above, below, across, everywhere, all around, they spread a heart full of love to the whole world—abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.

-AN 3.65