They would still feel pain and find it unpleasant. The Buddha still disliked noise and disorderly crowded areas. He also disliked it when people didn’t understand his teaching, that’s one of the reasons he didn’t want to be a Samma Sambuddha until Brahma begged him.
So being an Arahant doesn’t make them non-sentient. It just means they no longer crave anything and don’t have discontent/boredom as a result. The body is still a burden that has to be dealt with, it’s one of the reasons jhana and nirodha samapatti are attractive because it handles the negative aspects of experience, such as relief from a feeling machine (body).
It depends on how one understands dukkha, and the cessation of dukkha.
Bodily pain is included in the list of examples of dukkha in the First Noble Truth, but arguing this continues for the Arahant when other examples of dukkha cease appears incoherent to me, even arbitrary.
The First Truth summarises dukkha as the five aggregates subject to clinging. But note the distinction between aggregates and clinging aggregates in SN22.48. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.048.than.html
This presumably means that when clinging ceases so does dukkha, since only “non-clinging” aggregates remain for the Arahant.
I read an article about a very desperate man who suffered very much from anxiety and compulsive disorder. He suffered so much that he wanted euthanasia. He was offered a last alternative treatment, deep brain stimulation. With this technique a kind of electrode or brain stimulator is placed in a certain region of the brain and one can stimulate parts with that ‘machinery’.
What happened? He was almost immediately cured. It was just gone. No axiety anymore, no compulsive tendencies and behaviour anymore. Bizarre, right?
Is anxiety and compulsiveness and all the feelings that accomponies this now mind-made or bodily?
Anyway, bodily pain is called unpleasant feeling but is also mental, dukkha vedana’s. It is only called bodily, i belief, because it relates to some affliction of the body. But isn’t this true for all kinds of disorders and mental suffering too? Is depression not also a kind of affliction of the body (brain) and anxiety etc? If one has a very intense experience, a kind of trauma, that also affects to body. Maybe ones behaviour changes and one suffers. Is this bodily or mind made pain?
I think the point of the Arrow Sutta is that much of our suffering is “mental”, or mind-made.
So for example, aging, disease and death are just natural bodily processes, and it’s our response to them that causes us to suffer. If we could really accept these things, we wouldn’t suffer.
I don’t think the first arrow is dukkha for the Arahant, and have explained my reasoning.
I don’t see why bodily pain would be dukkha if the Arahant no longer identifies with the body, or has the view “my body”.
And I don’t see why bodily pain is arbitrarily assumed to still be dukkha for the Arahant, when the other types of dukkha have ceased.
Anyone born gets older, and the Buddha seems to teach that such an sich is suffering. I also question this. Does this not show there is an ego? Ego does not want to get old and feel the limitations of getting old. It has always some emotional relation to what it experiences. Like, dislike. But what if there is no ego? I also think that old age, then, is just a natural process. Not suffering.
As mentioned, it depends on the definition of dukkha.
You’re using it as only second arrow is dukkha.
Whereas by the definition in first noble truth, rebirth, old age, sickness, death are also dukkha. Arahants still undergo old age, sickness, death. So logical deduction.
Don’t try to see it via any intuition of what’s it’s like being arahant. Just see the above as logical steps.
F is Y, A experiences F, therefore A experiences Y.
This is the view from conventional truth perspective, outsider’s perspective. Not an internal perspective.
We went to a devotee’s house one day for she’s close to death, bed bound etc. Had done lots of good etc. On the way back, the driver commented that she done so much good, still suffer like that. She was mentally happy to see monks visiting her. It’s just that she still does have bed sores due to being bed bound, weak etc. I replied that these are not due to her doing good or not, it’s due to being born. Being reborn, one is subject to suffering from old age, sickness and death. Whatever the mental state it is, there’s still the physical stuffs.
Sorry, but I don’t think your arguments are logical at all.
Why arbitrarily decide that some aspects of dukkha cease for the Arahant, while others don’t? The Second and Third Truths say that dukkha ceases when tanha ceases, and tanha has ceased for the Arahant.
And why would aging and death still be dukkha for somebody without self-view, somebody who no longer thinks of the body as “me” and “mine”, somebody with no aversion to these natural processes? It doesn’t make sense.
Well, Martin, if what you’re saying were true then why would the Buddha have back pain and lie down as a result of it?
Btw, this why Buddhadasa followers only believe dependent origination refers to the birth of an ego, and not a physical being. (Not saying they’re right/wrong, just interesting)
Oke, but then we describe “the arahant” or Tathahata as being the same as rupa, vedana, sanna, sankhara and vinnana, but do the texts not teach one may not see any of khandha’s as the Tathagata and vice versa?
Does a Tathagata or arahant really get old or are we then talking about something the arahant and Tahtagata is not, such as the body?
Personally i feel i do not get older. I do not change at all. Oke the body gets old but i do not feel i get old. Oke, feelings change during a day or even during seconds, but do you change in the same tempo. I do not feel that, i do not thik anyone feels that way.
I’m not saying the Arahants don’t have back pain (whatever), I’m saying that for them it isn’t dukkha.
It’s not dukkha because the Arahant is free from self-view. They longer regard it as “my pain”, it’s just an impersonal sensation.
It’s not dukkha because the Arahant is free from craving and aversion, so they don’t crave the cessation of unpleasant sensations.
And again, it seems arbitrary to exclude bodily pain from the cessation of dukkha, given the Second and Third Truths are not expressed in this partial or qualified way.
I don’t understand the view that tanha and dukkha only finally cease at death, given that Nibbana is a living experince, and is described as cessation of the taints.
I think they teach that tanha can end before death. At that moment any future dukkha ends, because all causes for future suffering, i.e. rebirth, are gone. I think this the most common interpretation.
This question actually began as a conversation with my mom who thought birth wouldn’t be painful for the baby since most of the pain of childbirth is (from what she tells me) due to contractions and the cervical dilations, not the baby actually having to fit through.
I don’t disagree that arahants don’t suffer mentally due to these physical sufferings.
What I am saying is that the first noble truth doesn’t seem to carry a conditional statement that rebirth, aging, sickness, death are suffering, except for arahants. Oh maybe it works, see how flexible your mind is to refer to the term dukkha. It seems that your mind is not flexible to see dukkha as in a bigger picture to include both primary and secondary arrow, both physical and mental suffering, so stick with your knowledge then.
Let’s stick to conventional truth/reality/ language. I am using arahant to refer to the 5 aggregates who has given up clinging.
This sounds like reifying a self beyond the 5 aggregates. Do investigate. Still an eternalist view.
To reconcile with how all suffering ends when cravings are eradicated, it’s that the ending comes in stages. The mental suffering, second arrow ends while the arahant are living, nibbana with remainder.
The primary arrow of old age, death ends due to no more rebirth. Not that the arahants become immortal, but due to no more rebirth, no more subject to these primary suffering. Nibbana without remainder. It’s only possible for an arahant, thus the ending of the suffering of rebirth, old age and death is also due to eradication of craving, ignorance.
A graphic example of the sufferings possible for an arahant due to past kamma: MN 86: Aṅgulimālasutta—Bhikkhu Sujato (suttacentral.net) Do note that whatever feelings, reactions, imagination you think you would have if you’re in Aṅgulimāla’s shoes is not the same as whatever arahants would experience, unless you’re also an arahant. So this example is not to say that there’s a secondary arrow to Aṅgulimāra’s suffering, but nonetheless, from external perspective, I would regard being hurt in such a manner as part of suffering, even if it’s just a primary arrow.
Then Aṅgulimāla, living alone, withdrawn, diligent, keen, and resolute, soon realized the supreme end of the spiritual path in this very life. He lived having achieved with his own insight the goal for which gentlemen rightly go forth from the lay life to homelessness.
He understood: “Rebirth is ended; the spiritual journey has been completed; what had to be done has been done; there is no return to any state of existence.” And Venerable Aṅgulimāla became one of the perfected.
Then Venerable Aṅgulimāla robed up in the morning and, taking his bowl and robe, entered Sāvatthī for alms. Now at that time someone threw a stone that hit Aṅgulimāla, someone else threw a stick, and someone else threw gravel. Then Aṅgulimāla—with cracked head, bleeding, his bowl broken, and his outer robe torn—went to the Buddha.
The Buddha saw him coming off in the distance, and said to him, “Endure it, brahmin! Endure it, brahmin! You’re experiencing in this life the result of deeds that might have caused you to be tormented in hell for many years, many hundreds or thousands of years.”
