| | Hi everyone,
This is my first post, and I'm really excited to have found this community. I've read MCTB a few times now, and I've been browsing over the contents of this forum for a while. I'm amazed by the commitment so many people here are showing to genuine practice and non-dogmatic exploration. You are all awesome.
So here are my questions. MCTB describes the second form of suffering as "being limited to our ordinary state of consciousness, with our only way out coming from sleep or the use of chemical substances. We yearn for bliss that is not so bound up in things like whether or not we get a good job, for experiences like those found in the concentration states. Our minds have this potential, and the failure to be able to access these states at times when doing so would be helpful and healthy is a source of bondage"
My confusion on this point comes from the fact that I find the second form of suffering defined as "the suffering of change" in other sources. How exactly does mastering the concentration states help with the suffering that comes from impermanence?
MCTB goes on to describe the third form of suffering as what "comes from making artificial dualities out of non-dual sensations, and all of the unnecessary reactivity, misperceptions, distortions of perspective and proportion, and basic blindness that accompanies that process."
I have a hard time understanding how this relates to other definitions of the third form of suffering the dissatisfaction and insufficiency that comes from conditioned existence, or from being a psycho-physical aggregate. So how, when you define the third form of suffering in this way, does it specifically relate to the third training?
Thanks in advance everybody. |