| | Disclaimer: I've writtent this mainly in order to "get it out of my system". Still, if anyone feels inclined to comment or answer, it would be very much appreciated.
Buddhist discourse carries a lot of century-old conceptual baggage that is confusing and hard to relate to from the standpoint of a modern life. Upon reading Thanissaro Bhikkhu's book "With each and every breath" I have found that the notion of "putting an end to suffering / stress" is highly problematic for me.
I can of course see why the idea of "ending suffering" would appeal to people who are forced to live their lives in difficult circumstances, surrounded by illness, poverty, war, political suppression etc. But that doesn't seem to be the idea of Theravada, at least if I understand Thanissaro correctly. He seems to be saying that the suffering that is eventually eliminated by practice is the suffering that the mind creates for itself "needlessly".
This seems to imply the following model: The mind, if left alone, tends to create a lot of suffering for itself, regardless of external conditions, i.e. even if you live in paradise, you suffer now and then, because your mind misbehaves. Buddhist practice (as described by Thanissaro) approaches this problem in two steps.
First, it trains the mind to create less (and less severe) suffering for itself. Thanissaro calls this "fabricating more skillfully". This means, in Thanissaro's terms, that the practitioner for example seeks pleasure and recreation in Jhana instead of going out and getting drunk or high etc. I would add that noting and metta practices and many other kinds of practice can fall into this category, if they are integrated into day-to-day life and done in order to improve the quality of life here and now, i.e. without too much attainment orientation.
Having calmed the mind down and trained it to "fabricate skillfully", the second step in practice, which Thanissaro calls "insight", consists in teaching the mind that every kind of fabrication, i.e. every action, perception, feeling, thought etc. is in itself bound to suffering and stress. Fabrication itself, i.e. all sorts of mental and physical activity, skillful and unskillful alike, are to be seen as stressful. When the mind sees this clearly, it turns toward "the deathless", which is free from fabrication and thus free from suffering.
It is this second step that I can't understand. In my own words, this means that practice is not only supposed to help me get some control over the amount of suffering I create for myself (which I find very reasonable), but its ultimate goal is to teach me that all the capacities to feel, think, imagine, act etc. that I have because I am an embodied being are "not worth the effort", because they entail the capacity to suffer. Ultimately then, the goal seems to be to get rid of these capacities in order not to suffer from them.
I don't see how this can be a reasonable goal, because for me it's obvious that the capacity to suffer is not separate from the capacity to feel joy or happiness. Both are consequences of the sensual and mental makeup of embodied beings, and thus the idea of getting rid of one implies getting rid of the other. There is no distinct sensory or mental apparatus for experiencing suffering that can be shut down by practice, and sensations of suffering are in their essence not different from any other sensations (impermanent, not personal, causal etc.). With this in mind, I don't see why anybody would ever want to "put an end to suffering", because he/she would simultaneously and inevitably "put an end to happiness" as well.
Even if I take Thannissaro's qualification of "needless" suffering into account, the idea doesn't really add up: The capacity to "inflict needless suffering" upon myself is bound (by logic and in experience) to the capacity to create "needless", i.e. spontaneous joy and happiness for myself. Both are consequences of mind and body. Getting rid of one implies getting rid of the other. |