Suffering and Fetters
The webzine Killing the Buddha is always a good read. Currently it features a heartfelt story by Jeff Wilson, author and assistant professor of religious studies and East Asian studies at Renison University College in Waterloo, Ontario. Professor Wilson practices Shin (Pure Land) Buddhism.
In "Birth is Suffering," Wilson describes his and his wife's heartache over miscarriages and the traumatic birth of his son, which nearly cost his wife's life. He writes, "The Buddha named his son 'Fetter.' So too, my son’s birth ties me to this world of pain and joy in a way that nothing else possibly can."
My only criticism is that Wilson seems to use the word suffering in the limited, English-language way, to mean the experience of something painful. This is not at all what the Buddha meant by "life is dukkha" in the teaching of the Four Noble Truths.
The Buddha taught that the skandhas are dukkha; that is, anything composed of the skandhas is dukkha. The translation of the First Noble Truth that "life is suffering" (meaning, stressful, temporary and conditioned) is literal. It is not "to live is to experience suffering," which I think is how many understand it.
Comments
The way I’ve always heard the meaning of the word dukkha explained (I’m not a Sanskrit or Pali scholar, so I only know what I hear) is that it originally referred to a wagon wheel the axle hole of which is off-center, so that the wagon gives the passenger a bumpy, unpleasant ride.
In any case, as you rightly point out in your article on “life is suffering,” it doesn’t just refer to what we would consider unpleasant experiences. Rather, it means that life as a whole is ultimately unsatisfying because all experiences are transient–even what we consider pleasant or happy episodes in life are only fleeting. Also, “pleasant” experiences seduce us into trying to prolong or intensify them beyond what it possible, resulting ultimately in disappointment.
I would like to comment on Barbara’s reaction to Jeff Wilson’s moving story about suffering – Dukkha – experienced in his wife’s birthing process, involving pain, loss and great joy. Barbara reflects that dukkha refers to more than just the experience of pain or unpleasantness. Its presence is felt in the skandhas, or aggregates; in the dharma of impermanence and the false belief in an inherent self and inherent objects. Quite so, but I do feel there is an important place for personal stories that illustrate aspects of buddhadharma experienced directly and that this is a different sort of teaching to the lists of dharma categories (the Four of this and the Ten of that, etc!) that need to be more comprehensive. In my website, http://eastwestwisdoms , I have chosen to prioritise stories of personal experience of particular dharmas (such as the Parami), rather than provide comprehensive “teaching” that covers all that I know on the topic.
Dr. Dodds, you write of dukkha, “Its presence is felt in the skandhas, or aggregates; in the dharma of impermanence and the false belief in an inherent self and inherent objects.”
I would say “is felt in” is extraneous. The skandhas ARE dukkha, period. “Is felt in” assumes an experiencer who is inhabiting the skandhas; it’s a separation. The point I was trying to make is not that there are a variety of experiences that are dukkha, but that it’s missing it to think of dukkha only as something we experience.
Ah, Barbara! I take your point about how I have indicated a separation between experience and experiencer. However, if we agree that the skandhas and the aggregates are the same thing, my understanding is that the aggregates(skhandas) manifest in both impure and pure forms. In their pure/purified form they are the Buddhas of the Five Races (Dhyana Buddhas) and in their impure form they are, indeed, suffering. I guess the idea that the purified aggregates are none other than the deity and therefore free of suffering is what makes me hesitate before agreeing that the skhandas ARE suffering/dukkha.
Dr. Dodds, I sometimes get caught in sectarian differences, and this may be one of them.
First — and I realize translations differ, and my interpretation is unusually literal — this is the famous passage from the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, Thanissaro Bhikkhu (dukkha translated as “stressful.”)
“Now this, monks, is the noble truth of stress: Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful.“
Whether you think of it as rebirth or “housebuilding,” my interpretation of this is that the very coming together of the aggregates is dukkha. In short, life is dukkha. It is not experienced as dukkha, it is dukkha.
When we pull out one particular experience and say, yep, that’s dukkha, it sort of implies that there’s something else about life that isn’t dukkha. I think we have to watch out for that, because that’s not what the Buddha taught.
I’ve never heard of skandhas manifesting in a pure form. I’m not saying there is no such teaching, somewhere, but it’s very far from a doctrine that is universally accepted in Buddhism. Certainly it’s not something one hears in Theravada or Zen. Can I infer this is a vajrayana teaching?
Leaving the notion of the skandas aside and viewing suffering from a more ordinary point of view, I have always felt a certain inadequacy of the rendition of dukkha as suffering. I view it more as discontent. Most people are unaware that their ordinary experience of life is suffering but when confronted with the notion of discontent they are much more willing to concede to a myriad of discontents that constitute their life. Discontent arises from the wrong view that happiness can be found externally, outside oneself. Buddhism, corrects that misconception by affirming that nothing outside oneself can be the cause of contentment. Contentment is a product of mind and mind only. Discontent will persist as long as we are looking in the wrong place to eradicate this misery. Not easy at all to correct this misconception, , but what is the alternative?