It’s clear that arahants while still alive is subject to change and conditionality. but has no corresponding mental suffering due to these.
So to be consistent, I will have to say the following.
Suffering suffering, due to unpleasant feeling.
Arahants eliminated the mental unpleasant, but is still subject to physical unpleasant due to having a body.
Suffering due to change. Arahants is still subject to change as the 5 aggregates, but have no mental suffering due to it, but maybe physical suffering due to old age and sickness and death are all changes.
Suffering due to conditionality, the 5 aggregates of the arahant again are also subject to conditionality, but they do not lament, or have any complains about this mentally, just that they need to eat to survive, in that sense, hunger is a physical suffering for the arahant.
In short, analysing in terms of the 3 sufferings is not really illuminating to see which ones the arahant while alive had eliminated but far easier is to use the sutta on the 2 arrows. Arahants still got the physical arrow, but not mental one.
After parinibbāna, being without body and mind, there is no bodily unpleasant feeling nor mental unpleasant feeling, no suffering suffering.
Being without body and mind, there is nothing to change, and nothing to condition. Thus also no corresponding suffering of the other two.
I decided to respond here. It isn’t so much that I disagree with your post about suffering as much as I think you’re taking this breakdown as a categorical and substantial definition of dukkha that cannot be further reductively broken down. Dukkha for me is empty of essence and the result of reductive analysis towards dukkha comes up empty. I can attempt to explain my method of reductive analysis towards dukkha if you like and how I come about it. Sound good?
You can break down impermanence and not-self as empty too?
I haven’t given much thought to this, but it seems that you’re applying emptiness to the wrong “thing”.
PS. Ok thinking now. Let’s say you’re going to break down dukkha, and say there’s no dukkha.
Next I would challenge you to break down impermanence, and then make sure that we all live forever, because you dispelled impermanence with emptiness analysis. I am afraid suffering doesn’t go away like that too.
Of course! Emptiness itself breaks down under reductive analysis. Try it!
No, no, no You’re mistaking the lack of substantial existence with lack of any kind of existence. It isn’t that dukkha does not exist; it is that dukkha does not exist substantially. In just the same way as the Teacher said the aggregates do not exist substantially, but did not say that the aggregates do not exist at all. You are coming at this as an affirming negation by applying the law of the excluded middle. It isn’t necessary and it is an assumption you’re using to come to the conclusion of an affirming negation.
The same as the aggregates and the person and so on. They exist, but when we apply reductive analysis to them we come up empty. Every time. Nothing can stand up to reductive analysis; at least nothing I can find.
It is very confusing and bewildering for most that nothing can stand up to reductive analysis. We expect - deep deep ingrained expectation - that something, surely something, can stand up to reductive analysis. Rather than boggle that nothing can stand up and yet the world still exist, maybe we should ponder why we have the expectation that something can?
Same as the Teacher’s. The cessation of suffering. Suffering ceases when the conditions for its arising are not present. The conditions for the arising of suffering include desire, hatred, greed.
I have no doubt that you can understand this. Formally an affirming negation is the same as a proof by contradiction or indirect proof. It is justified by the Law of the Excluded Middle which is an assumption and not - as many thought and many continue to think - necessary for doing logic.
Look at that link above.
An ‘affirming negation’ is similar to:
The proposition to be proved is P.
Assume ¬P.
Derive falsehood.
Conclude P.
While a ‘non-affirming negation’ is similar to:
The proposition to be proved is ¬P.
Assume P.
Derive falsehood.
Conclude ¬P.
The difference between the two is the former makes use of double negation elimination which is an application of the Law of the Excluded Middle.
For every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true
When we conduct a reductive analysis and find an empty result, that empty result should be understood as a non-affirming negation; at least that is my hypothesis.
Sorry can you link explicitly, step by step how this logic class is related to how I reason and the difference with how you reason? I think it involves I use LEM somewhere and you don’t and what is the difference in the outcome based on that and what importance does it mean to coming to the conclusion of the views we have.
Sure. The case in question is whether dukkha is substantially existent and what it means or what we can conclude if it is not.
The logic goes like this:
Proposition ~P is: dukkha is not substantially existent
Assume P: dukkha is substantially existent
Derive falsehood: by applying reductive analysis and coming up empty
Conclude ~P: dukkha is not substantially existent
What you are then doing is applying a further axiom that is similar to LEM:
Either dukkha is substantially existent or it does not exist at all
Because we concluded ~P above you are concluding that P (dukkha) is a total non-existent. It is this last step that I do not think is justified.
The Teacher speaks of this world supported by a polarity of existence and non-existence and through understanding the middle way through this polarity one makes an end to suffering. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the “middle way” and the Law of the Excluded Middle seem at odds
My hypothesis is that it is important and necessary to understand the lack of substantial existence of things in order to properly generate dispassion towards them. However, there is a very big danger: by assuming that lack of substantial existence equals non-existence we can come to the very harmful conclusion that things such as dukkha, the five aggregates, rebirth, khamma, persons, cars, boats, rivers, gravity, etc, etc do not exist and thus we can do whatever we please to disastrous consequences. This is the snake that we do not handle wisely.
That is why I like to remind that just because a river doesn’t substantially exist, realizing this fact does not prevent you from drowning in it
I am afraid that you lost me at dukkha exist substantially. What does it do to a person to believe in that. And how do I have such a view when I dunno what you mean by substantial? It’s not an everyday word we use.
What does it do to a person to believe that dukkha is totally non-existent vs dukkha exist non-substantially?
There are also these variations:
Dukkha doesn’t exist substantially, dukkha doesn’t exist non-substantially. Which one of them maps to totally non-existent dukkha.
And in which stage of practise does which dukkhas apply for people? From before stream winner, stage 1, or stage 2, stream winner to arahant, stage 3, arahant to parinibbāna, and stage 4 after parinibbāna.
I think that you are both on the same page but that the confusion is with the word “substantial”.
AFAIK the Venerable does not deny that dukkha-dukkha still does not end with the elimination of greed, hate, illusion. Therefore it is from a certain viewpoint subs-istent.
Yes, this is the nub of it. This is the question of the so-called “object of negation.” What is it that we’re negating when we perform a reductive analysis and come up empty. Will think about how to express this and come back to it later.
Yeshe, is this all not very theoretical. If you feel pain, or even intense pain, does not all in your body and mind tell you this is substantial?
Have you any moment considered that a Buddha really has the knowledge, direct knowledge that the cessation of the khandha’s in this very life is bliss, peace. And the return comes again with an modicum of stress, even without clinging? Is that for you an acceptable reason why the Buddha teaches that the khandha’s represent suffering?
Sorry to ask , Is negation or reductive analysis helping in ending our dukkha ?
Is meditation some sort of a negation ? Or some kind of reductive analysis ?
Yes, and I think this is why the Teacher taught the Phena sutta. He did not teach this arbitrarily and at the end of it he said we should pursue the end of substantialist view as if our hair was on fire
I feel it is easy to see how insubstantial all those stories in our head are.
One can step out of it any moment, and this whole cinematic world is suddenly gone. While it some reality. At least that appeared that way while involved in the stream of conceivings.
It is our attention which make all these mental stories substantial.
But i feel it is very different when one has to deal with suffering, with pains for example.That was what i wat trying to share with you.
Why do you not comment on what I said about tke khandha’s really representing a burden?
Using our “thinking tool” to guide us toward a direct perception (read: non-conceptual) of the result of reductive analysis and then based upon this, the giving up of desire, hatred and anger through dispassion for the wholly insubstantial.
You’re mistaking the lack of substantial existence with lack of any kind of existence. It isn’t that dukkha does not exist; it is that dukkha does not exist substantially. In just the same way as the Teacher said the aggregates do not exist substantially, but did not say that the aggregates do not exist at all. You are coming at this as an affirming negation by applying the law of the excluded middle. It isn’t necessary and it is an assumption you’re using to come to the conclusion of an affirming negation.