Suffering, Etc.

Another day of Zen.

I didn’t go to the last two classes because the teacher told me I should leave. I took Religion in Japan last semester and we covered basic Buddhism fairly well in that class. そして I already know a lot of what we are covering now for background in Zen.

Arguably, I could have skipped this lecture as well, but it was interesting. We went over the four noble truths(paraphrased):

  1. life is suffering
  2. suffering’s cause is desire
  3. suffering can be ended
  4. There is a way out

Buddhism sounds pretty bleak. But, it always seems that Buddhists like the Dali Lama are always smiling. And Thich Naht Han said be happy with the now, with the world. How does this jive with the idea of all is terrible and disgusting?

Actually, last semester Kenney told us about one of the ways that old school Buddhism would advocate ending desire. To help get rid of the desire for sex you should go to a grave yard and look at a decomposing corpse of a woman. Then whenever you see an attractive woman and feel desire, think of the corpse. Then, you will lose desire.

When I heard that I got this idea in my mind of these smiling Buddhist monks looking at the world and seeing decay and despair and rot. Which, I guess some of them do.

One of the things about Buddhism that differs from Christianity is that there are no authoritative texts. Even the four noble truths can be debated. Of course, most people interpret them in a more or less standard way, but there are Buddhist monks that have different takes on things.

Zen, for example.

We have not gotten into Zen yet in the class, besides mentions of how a lot of the things we talk about now, Karma, Nirvana, etc. are not really a part of Zen practice. Even the idea that life is suffering is not a strict thing.

I guess this leads to and follows from the idea of impermanence. Buddhism is all about impermanence. You can’t be happy because you want permanent happiness, and everything in the wheel of samsara is impermanent. Impermanence in the Buddhist context also has to do with change. Everything changes. Even Buddhism-though thats probably a bit of a stretch.

Buddhist arguments against the existence of real happiness and for everything being suffering seem to be based on the idea that everyone wants permanent happiness. What I wonder is what they would say to a person who could accept impermanent happiness, who thought happiness and sadness together bring meaning to life. Or if they even could be persuaded that such a person could exist.

Perhaps, they would say that such a person would still desire happiness and being desire would want the best possible happiness ie permanent, even if it wasn’t available. Hmm. I will have to think about that more.

Comments are closed.