Logically, impermanence is only a source of suffering if one craves permanence. This conclusion is supported by the Second and Third Noble truths, where cessation of craving results in cessation of suffering.
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That is also how i tend to see it. But some say that just the arising and cessation of formations, such as thoughts, sense-vinnana’s and vedana’s, is a kind of agitation of the mind, a kind of mental suffering. What do you think about that?
As I understand the suttas, mind objects and sense-impressions are only a source of suffering when one identifies with them as “me” and “mine”.
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Nekkhamma is the first samma sankappo and the third paramita. we can’t renounce everything right away but an aspiration and effort to gradually renounce, retire, retreat, exit from mundane world and eventually from nama-rupa is part of the practice.
we don’t want pain and that is the easy part to solve. we have to give up pleasure too which is more tricky. all salayatana and khandas are pleasurable on a deeper level(read satipatthana -samudayasacchaniddeso/nirodhasacchaniddeso). you have to recognize it as pleasure and admit to cravings(no denial). pleasure is the cause of suffering but simultaneously an opportunity to remove suffering. you have to observe the rising -passing(intensity) of your craving moment to moment. there will be moments of no craving and it is great but it is also temporary and brief only during deep meditation. otherwise our subconscious mind is craving all the time more or less weather we like it or not. you have to fulfill all paramitas and you can root out craving in higher phala stages. so dukkha is the ultimate truth in the nama-rupa lokas. you escape nama-rupa you escape dukkha. to know what is outside nama-rupa have to become arhat first.
For me, the message of the buddha is that he has re-discovered that ego/self is not the nature of mind but knowing is. And that knowing does not suffer. Suffering arises due to the defilments which mix up with this knowing, and create the illusion that the knowing is done by a person, a Me, a ego or self.
In this the mind becomes burdened.
Maha Boowa even said that for this purely knowing, feeling is just feeling and there is not such a things as unpleasant feeling. Unpleasant is a judgement only in relation to a knower (ego who feels) and does not exist in relation to knowing. Oke…
I think it is very exceptional to dig into the nature of mind this deep but for me this is what the Buddha did. He reveals the nature of mind which has no dukkha because there is not me nor mine.
I’m not sure I understand Maha Boowa’s interpretation of feeling (vedana). For example, isn’t toothache objectively unpleasant? Isn’t the first arrow (bodily pain) an inevitability?
Hi @Martin,
Venerable Maha Boowa describes how his body was some day full of pain and how he made a resolution to meditate until he clearly understood the nature of this pain. He describes this in the pages 19-23 in arahattamagga/phala (book is a download on forestdhamma.org).
At a certain moment he …“saw clearly that it was the citta that defined feeling as being painful and unpleasant. Otherwise, pain was merely a natural phenomenon that occurred. It was not an integral part of the body, nor was it intrinsic to the citta. As soon as this principle became absolutely clear, the pain vanished in an instant. At that moment, the body was simply the body—a separate reality on its own. Pain was simply feeling, and in a flash that feeling vanished straight into the citta. As soon as the pain vanished into the citta, the citta knew that the pain had disappeared. It just vanished without a trace. In addition, the entire physical body vanished from awareness”.
He apparantly saw vedana, citta (knowing nature of mind) and rupa as seperate realities. In our lives, with craving, craving functions as the seamstress which sews all together whereby it looks like one inseperable realtity. But apparantly he saw that ‘unpleasant’ is a kind of judgement ( the citta defined feeling as being painful).