To be kind is to allow things to suffer: self, others, all beings to whom suffering comes.
(This popped into me noggin’ today, thought I’d test it out in Musings.)
If I don’t come to see that my suffering is the result of my wish for things in me to be different than they are, your trying to remove or ease my suffering only prolongs it. My suffering (or discontent) is the key that can awaken me to the fact that something is wrong. And ultimately needs to be faced not assuaged.
Suffering, or knowing that something is wrong, is the reason we beat children, and also the reason it is forbidden to beat children. Thinking about it all shows how very tricky thought can make it.
That is more or less what I was trying to get at. Someone once said: “Suffering can be a great teacher.” I guess ‘great’ doesn’t mean pain-free!
Yes! What is the relationship between freedom and suffering? Is being free being free to suffer? Or is being free being beyond suffering?
If the cause of suffering is desire for things to be what they should be, the end of suffering is seeing desire for what it is. But desire blinds us to what actually is because the need to see clearly is overtaken by desire, which is demand for action.
If I can’t discern the difference between what I need to know and what I believe I should do, I will always do what I believe I should do and never be free to find out what I need to know.
This reminds me of the question : what happened before time existed?
If the questioner could get to grips with the concepts (time & the flow of events) they would, methinks, retract the question.
As long as there is an I separate from what I behold, there will be suffering. I will “mind what happens”.
No me, no observer, no suffering.
I don’t actually know that there is no “I separate from what I behold”, but I know this illusory separation is the problem, and the solution is the dissolution of I, so what am I to do?
I can’t choose/decide to dissolve because choosing/deciding is what I am. It seems I has to die a natural death before illusions are seen for what they are by what has no need for illusions.
Oddly enough, you can understand that you don’t exist.
That’s what the “observer is the observed “ means. Doesn’t it?
No, it is like saying Christianity doesn’t exist ,Islam doesn’t exist. It is not a matter of existence at all. It is a matter of awareness of falsehood as falsehood.
That’s the ‘bind’ we’re in. But someone comes along and explains that you have been ‘conditioned’ to see the world in this way.
And further explains that this conditioned way of seeing is the cause of conflict not only in yourself but in the world. Suffering is a result of seeing yourself as an ‘observer’ separate from what is being ‘observed’ and that that duality of relationship with the world is false, divisive and destructive. “The observer is the observed”.
Receiving that information, you can look at your situation from that point of view. The degree of intensity brought into it will vary with each person. Does this sound right?
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If this is a conclusion, it becomes my new reality - and I am back where I started : still acting within the field of reality (reality = my conditioned experience, which I take to be the whole of the truth - I take my personal projection to be the whole of the truth).
All the new things I learn (Buddhism, K-ism, Neurology etc) become part of my reality - add to the quality of my experience. Whereas we are being asked whether it is possible to see the whole picture - not just the reality that I am projecting/living; but that I am projecting. That I am totally lost in my own projection.
Maybe we can. Maybe in each instance of awareness, is freedom. And each time awareness/silence is allowed, is an instance where our desperate need is allowed to die.
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Yes, but knowing that my reality is not actuality means that it’s always in doubt, suspect; that I am not grounded but floating on a raft of make-believe and what-should/should-not-be, and this knowledge is a significant, if not radical, change.
we are being asked whether it is possible to see the whole picture - not just the reality that I am projecting/living; but that I am projecting. That I am totally lost in my own projection.
Not totally lost because I’m aware of the effect of what I’m doing, though not fully aware of how I am doing it. I lack the quality of awareness that exposes - thereby negating - my self-deception.
Maybe in each instance of awareness, is freedom. And each time awareness/silence is allowed, is an instance where our desperate need is allowed to die.
That’s a hopeful note, but does hope bring about the awareness that reveals the mechanics of my reality?
Yes, we know that our reality is not actuality because we are aware of how personal it is, how biased, prejudiced, willful, and incapable of naked honesty.
This knowledge about your reality, about your experience - how does it affect the experience?
For example, when I wondered about awareness here :
I meant : if we realise that we are participating in a particularly intense emotional delusion - some sort of conflict maybe - that we are actually participating in the creation of the delusion; does the realisation free us from our reality/experience, at least for an instant?
This is besides the point surely? reminds me of that (Greek?) story of the geezer who refuses to let the doctor operate on his wound until he is informed about the details (who shot him? why? what kind of bow? etc)
We know for a fact that we are creating our reality and thereby living in conflict with actuality; that we’re technically insane (even though it’s normal), and this realization is just part of our reality, but, it seems to me, the best part of our reality.
Does this self-knowledge “free us for at least an instant”?
Maybe, but if we’re not free now, what does it matter? Are we thinking in terms of progress? Is it a matter of how determined we are to be free that frees us, or is it a matter of feeling unbearably bound and limited? Would I sooner cease to exist than go on like this, or work assiduously to earn my degree of freedom?
By free I mean : not solely dependant upon.
I mean : consider the difference between someone who is only aware of reality (ie. they think that their experience is the truth, the totality of being & meaning) - and someone who knows that they are a conditioned process, experiencing their conditioning - and who is able to be aware of the process in action.
PS - reading back what I’ve just said, suddenly makes it quite apparent why ethics and morality is essential.
Is freedom a right or a responsibility?