As far as I’ve understood, a big idea with dukkha is that you have an intense desire for things to not be the way you perceive them to be, even though you might not have any concrete means of changing things, and the psychic pain is your constant awareness that reality isn’t the way you want. “Regret” and “yearning” both seem like good words to describe types of this, though you probably want to imagine the more extreme versions of both, not just mild wistfulness.
If you’ve looked into predictive processing, this sounds familiar. The low-level story might be something like being stuck with persistent predictive errors where you can neither update your model or act to change your circumstances.
That’s correct, the standard model of dukkha is that we have desires that can never be fulfilled and this is painful. When we wake up to our own non-separateness from the world, though, many of those desires fall away because they were powered by a false belief that the world could be other than how it is in the present moment. To have no such desires is to attain nirvana (“blowing out” or “extinguishing” as in extinguishing a flame).
psychic pain: mental anguish, emotional distress, etc.
I mostly agree that “suffering” is confusing and it would be better if we used a different word, but also at this point it’s become jargon among English-speaking Buddhists (not that they all necessarily understand what it means, but most serious practitioners do learn about dukkha and then learn that “suffering” is just the word we use for “dukkha” in English), and like all jargon it’s misleading to a lay audience but understood by those who learn it.
I mostly agree that “suffering” is confusing and it would be better if we used a different word, but also at this point it’s become jargon among English-speaking Buddhists (not that they all necessarily understand what it means, but most serious practitioners do learn about dukkha and then learn that “suffering” is just the word we use for “dukkha” in English), and like all jargon it’s misleading to a lay audience but understood by those who learn it.
I’m curious to hear more about this since I don’t find this to be the case at all. As I mentioned elsewhere in the comments of this thread, certainly the definition of “suffering” that I currently have has gotten a little different from what it was when I hadn’t yet meditated… but I do think that it overall still lines up with the common-sensical definition of suffering. Such that it’s a fair to summary to say something like “the practice leads to drastically reduced suffering” and that a past version of me who was shown various meditation-induced mindstates I’ve had would agree that those mindstates definitely involve less suffering. I find that the differences from the common-sense definition mostly only become apparent if one is pressed for details of what exactly the suffering-free states are like.
“Suffering” is confusing because it’s imprecise. It just means “to experience pain”, though with a connotation of happening for a duration because the “fer” part of suffering means to bear as in to carry. But dukkha refers to the pain we create for ourselves by expecting the world to be other than it is. So while awakening does reduce suffering, it doesn’t eliminate it because awakening addresses dukkha, not, for example, physical pain signals from injury (though dealing with physical pain gets a lot easier when you’re not also dealing with dukkha, to the point that “pain” can start to look like something categorically different from what “pain” was pre-awakening).
Thanks! That makes sense to me, though I still think that it’s close enough when talking to non-meditators, at least if one says that the path offers a “drastic reduction in suffering” rather than an elimination of all suffering.
psychic pain: mental anguish, emotional distress, etc.
Alright, makes sense, so tell me if I’m understanding the claim:
You’re saying that once one has gained this “deep understanding that the self is not separate from the world” (which is what happens when one has “awakened” a.k.a. “become enlightened”), one no longer experiences mental anguish or emotional distress (etc.).
I’m not sure that I’ve been precise enough about the kind of mental pain that’s alleviated, because there are some emotions that are painful but are not dukkha, like fear and grief. So if you read this and think “awakening means not feeling sad or afraid” then that’s wrong, but awakening does mean that feeling sad or afraid is not distressing in any way beyond the initial emotion (the experience of fear becomes like “fear is happing to me” rather than “I’m afraid”).
Second, and this is partly the fault of how we talk about things in English, but also just to reiterate that it’s also slightly wrong to say that one becomes enlightened or awakened in that the normal understanding of what that means is slightly off. This is not a switch to a different persistent state, but rather a switch to a different, stable, self-reinforcing pattern that is nevertheless not necessary total. An “awakened” person may not be awake in every moment, especially in the first months and years after they switch from identification with the self to not identify, because the new pattern of mental behavior is not completely stabilized and integrated (our minds are made up of many mental habits, and each of those habits has to get the awakening update, and new habits can potentially form that are not awake if one isn’t continuing to apply effort to stay awake).
Makes sense. The obvious follow-up question is: what do you mean by “psychic pain”?
EDIT: Also, would you agree that using the term “suffering” for these purposes is not a good idea, on account of its misleadingness?
As far as I’ve understood, a big idea with dukkha is that you have an intense desire for things to not be the way you perceive them to be, even though you might not have any concrete means of changing things, and the psychic pain is your constant awareness that reality isn’t the way you want. “Regret” and “yearning” both seem like good words to describe types of this, though you probably want to imagine the more extreme versions of both, not just mild wistfulness.
If you’ve looked into predictive processing, this sounds familiar. The low-level story might be something like being stuck with persistent predictive errors where you can neither update your model or act to change your circumstances.
That’s correct, the standard model of dukkha is that we have desires that can never be fulfilled and this is painful. When we wake up to our own non-separateness from the world, though, many of those desires fall away because they were powered by a false belief that the world could be other than how it is in the present moment. To have no such desires is to attain nirvana (“blowing out” or “extinguishing” as in extinguishing a flame).
psychic pain: mental anguish, emotional distress, etc.
I mostly agree that “suffering” is confusing and it would be better if we used a different word, but also at this point it’s become jargon among English-speaking Buddhists (not that they all necessarily understand what it means, but most serious practitioners do learn about dukkha and then learn that “suffering” is just the word we use for “dukkha” in English), and like all jargon it’s misleading to a lay audience but understood by those who learn it.
I’m curious to hear more about this since I don’t find this to be the case at all. As I mentioned elsewhere in the comments of this thread, certainly the definition of “suffering” that I currently have has gotten a little different from what it was when I hadn’t yet meditated… but I do think that it overall still lines up with the common-sensical definition of suffering. Such that it’s a fair to summary to say something like “the practice leads to drastically reduced suffering” and that a past version of me who was shown various meditation-induced mindstates I’ve had would agree that those mindstates definitely involve less suffering. I find that the differences from the common-sense definition mostly only become apparent if one is pressed for details of what exactly the suffering-free states are like.
“Suffering” is confusing because it’s imprecise. It just means “to experience pain”, though with a connotation of happening for a duration because the “fer” part of suffering means to bear as in to carry. But dukkha refers to the pain we create for ourselves by expecting the world to be other than it is. So while awakening does reduce suffering, it doesn’t eliminate it because awakening addresses dukkha, not, for example, physical pain signals from injury (though dealing with physical pain gets a lot easier when you’re not also dealing with dukkha, to the point that “pain” can start to look like something categorically different from what “pain” was pre-awakening).
Thanks! That makes sense to me, though I still think that it’s close enough when talking to non-meditators, at least if one says that the path offers a “drastic reduction in suffering” rather than an elimination of all suffering.
Alright, makes sense, so tell me if I’m understanding the claim:
You’re saying that once one has gained this “deep understanding that the self is not separate from the world” (which is what happens when one has “awakened” a.k.a. “become enlightened”), one no longer experiences mental anguish or emotional distress (etc.).
Right? Or still wrong?
Basically, yes, although two notes.
I’m not sure that I’ve been precise enough about the kind of mental pain that’s alleviated, because there are some emotions that are painful but are not dukkha, like fear and grief. So if you read this and think “awakening means not feeling sad or afraid” then that’s wrong, but awakening does mean that feeling sad or afraid is not distressing in any way beyond the initial emotion (the experience of fear becomes like “fear is happing to me” rather than “I’m afraid”).
Second, and this is partly the fault of how we talk about things in English, but also just to reiterate that it’s also slightly wrong to say that one becomes enlightened or awakened in that the normal understanding of what that means is slightly off. This is not a switch to a different persistent state, but rather a switch to a different, stable, self-reinforcing pattern that is nevertheless not necessary total. An “awakened” person may not be awake in every moment, especially in the first months and years after they switch from identification with the self to not identify, because the new pattern of mental behavior is not completely stabilized and integrated (our minds are made up of many mental habits, and each of those habits has to get the awakening update, and new habits can potentially form that are not awake if one isn’t continuing to apply effort to stay awake).