I wanted to start a new topic in hope to continue a conversation I found insightful from the previous thread.  It seems to me we have got off topic on the last one, it went from "What has changed for you?" to "What did the Buddha teach?"... which of course may be two different things.

So, in this new thread, I'd like to focus on the second topic, "What did the Buddha teach?".  I'll copy from my previous post.  I think it's been established in the previous conversation that in the sutras, the Buddha does not offer a path towards ending of all physical suffering (illness, death, aging, etc).  The experience of the arhat is "just the senses" without the defilement or obstruction of clinging and ignorance.  There is still suffering which comes in through the six sense doors, but there is no clinging (also a form of suffering) in response to the suffering perceived from those senses.

My question then is whether or not this is made clear in the 4 noble truths.  To me it is ambiguous whether the suffering described in truths 2 and 3 includes the aging, illness, death that is mentioned in noble truth #1, which we will refer to as physical suffering.  





Also copying over one of Kettu's replies from the other post, which leads to another interesting ambiguity:

Kettu:
This brings me back to something that was said on the previous post about Buddhism positing no ultimate resolution to suffering.  (Which, by the way, I agree with.  There is no ultimate resolution to the sufferings of aging, sickness, and death, and other traumas).  

However, my understanding of the teachings is that by achieving complete enlightenment, we are ending the cycle of rebirth, that birth of course being the cause of existance and suffering, and therefore by ending or extinguishing that cycle, that would be an "ultimate" resolution for one's own suffering.  When one is no longer reborn into samsara there is no longer suffering as a result.  

So the ambiguity in question really hinges on the "craving which leads to renewed existence" in NT2 which I assume is included in NT3.  Does this include the physical suffering described in NT1?  This seems to imply that one's rebirth (which in turn would be the cause of the ailments of sickness and death) is caused by craving and therefore by eliminating craving, we are eliminating our future rebirth and therefore we are eliminating sickness and death.

I'm starting to think this confusion is all coming from the reincarnation aspect of Buddhism.  If one believes in reincarnation, then Buddhism does posit an ultimate resolution to that cycle of rebirth and suffering.  But, the Buddha does not claim to have found a way to prevent all suffering inherent to the moment to moment experience of this life.

Oooh, this is such interesting questions... I can sink my teeth into this!  

But what I want to preface about my reply is, ultimately I really really don't know.

It's so interesting. On one hand, buddhism is sold as the end of suffering. Yet when you look into it more deeply, it seems like the buddha says that this only fully happens when you die. As a result, some folks like to joke that buddhism is some grand suicide cult. (Which isn't quite true, but that's what makes it funny to say.)

But it's also important to understand the full story: this kind of grand relief from suffering at death is only possible if, in this lived life, you do the actual work to solve the big riddle of clinging and unsatisfactoryness in this incarnate body. You could basically say that he said that the mission in life, if we are interested in it, is to solve this big riddle of craving. 

Why do we continue to crave if we find that that craving never satisfies when we get it and just leads to another craving? That's the wordly question.

And why do we continue to spiritually aspire if we find that every spiritual asperation never quite gets us what we hoped it would? That's the spiritual question.

There is an answer to all of this. Finding the answer might not be important, but it's where this whole mediation practice eventually leads.

My hunch is that in buddha's time reincarnation was indeed the big big question. If you never ever escape your karma, then what? Even if you got sneaky and "got away with" some insult or injury or injustice, what if you never truly escaped from it? What if here you were in this life, inheriting all the karma of countless past lives --- what are you going to do about it?

My hunch than in our time, psychological rebirth is the big big question. What if who you "are" never changed no matter how good or bad your fortune is? Why do you continue striving when you can never be something other than yourself? Why is this self so inadequate and incomplete, no matter what you achieve? Seeing all of that --- what are you going to do about it. 

For what it's worth, on the matter of rebirth and realms... I copied this from the Aroter website years ago, it might still exist in cyberspace, but the intro is relevant:
"Hot blooded kindness is what roots us in this precious human rebirth
talk on the six realms, New York, 28th of March, 1994
Ngak’chang Rinpoche
In 1993 His Holiness the Dala’i Lama said that he no longer
believed in the existence of the six realms as actual locations.
Maybe now we can all relax. Maybe now we can explore this
subject in terms of our own patterns and projections. This
might offend the more traditionally minded; however, from
whatever position you may wish to adopt – even from the
point of view in which the six realms are actual locations – it
needs to be understood that they are all contained within each
other. Even from the medieval point of view there are six
realms within each of the six realms and so on into infinity.
That’s the bad news. Merely being human doesn’t make my
rebirth a ‘precious human rebirth’ – it rather depends on
whether I entrench myself in conditioning, or whether I allow
my constructs to be challenged. However, there is some good
news: you don’t have to die physically to be reborn and gain a
precious human rebirth. This can be attained at any moment –
by recognising that we’re trapped in a web of patterns; and
that at the very least, we’re ambivalent about whether we want
to remain with those patterns or not."

Anyway, my personal answer is that buddha was using dukka like the word shit. Life is shit because it's shitty. Okay, now that I've got your attention, more deeply, life is shit because we have a really shitty attitude about it. We can get over our shitty attitude, but still there's some shit to this life no matter what. Yet without being so shitty in our mind, we can deal with that other shit in our world without much extra drama. 

Yes, I think he was using the bodily suffering aspect to say: dudes and dudettes you're trapped in this life. No escape. Don't get seduced by easy answers... but then he said, but you deal with the mental suffering aspect and you have basically cracked the code to this life and you can die in peace.

Not so different than other religions that say, if you die and the gods weigh your heart and it's lighter than a feather, then you go to heaven.

But one thing I love about the buddha is that he was really quick to point out how stupid discussions of metaphysics were. How can you know ultimately? You can't. That's what makes it metaphysics. It is beyond the physics of evidence, so never can be truely known one way or the other.


Stupid words, hope they help in some way. Definitely disregard as silliness if it's silliness.

Hey shargrol, nice to hear from you!

Not silly at all. It's a great answer.

You're right, just like we're never going to understand the ultimate nature of anything beyond our senses, we're never going to know these authors' intentions, so many thousands of years later.  

I also think you're probably right - the 4 noble truths is the Buddha's quick pitch.  Just one of those things where you have to wonder why they couldn't  have made that distinction more apparent right off the bat, seems like it could have been pretty easily clarified without making the 'pitch' any less attractive or effective...

I'd go out on a limb and say this has been the topic of debate at least a couple of other times throughout the millennia
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Love this XD

I'm eager to contribute despite not having a lot of technical knowledge, so I was going to share a GPT breakdown that, as far as I can tell, agrees very much with what Shargrol summarized so beautifully, lol. I keep reminding myself to test these things in life, but the concepts fuel my practice, so. 

Here's what GPT came up with for me, to help me learn these things:

Found the link with the full discussion of rebirth and realms:

Hot blooded kindness

I've also been mightily confused by the concept of "birth" as it shows up in the cycle of dependent origination. The other links in the chain seem to refer so clearly to movements of the mind, but then at the end you've got "existence", "birth", and "death". I guess I've been interpreting these in a figurative sense, as referring to a conceptual self that is born of sensation, and the continual re-creation of that conceptual self. When I read "craving for existence", I believe what it's describing is a craving to continutally re-create that conceptual self. To keep the cycle going; keep the balls in the air.

   
I certainly have further non-progress to make on my un-path as many others here, but I do recall a distinct period of a couple days where my non-physical/non-inevitable suffering was functionally non-existent compared to how it normally was. In particular, whatever was manufacturing that seemed to let itself go as quickly as it came up.

I recall one of those days I had a migraine; which is not an abnormal experience. Unlike any other time I have had a migraine, my mood was stable and there was "nothing added" to the experience. I certainly wouldn't say that the sensations associated with the migraine were pleasant in any way. But nothing extra was added, and it seemed as though in that was where the majority of the total suffering was. 

I'm no sutta expert but the Buddha talking about his back pain seems is the most curious and possibly illuminating story on this topic:https://suttacentral.net/mn53/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin

It looks like the Pali for "My back is sore" is "me piṭṭhi kharati". At least what I can find through Googling, he definitely seems to be talking about his back and in rough shape. In any case, please do tell me if you have knowledge or resources on this translation that imply something else. 

This has many different implications to me. It looks like a clear case of the buddha talking about a physical ailment and taking action about that (asking Ananda to take over, doing some stretches). 

Perhaps my opinion will change. So far my experience and theoretical understanding indicates that the extra stuff that can get added to inevitable suffering (merely boiling this down to "physical" suffering seems inadequate to me) going away and never coming back. Mine did come back of course.

But the experience was formative to see it actually go away for a while (at least 98%). After that there could be no doubt that this kind of non-suffering is within the possible range and that I really don't need any more than that.
  

I think that’s the nail on the head Ryan. I often use the analogy that being on the path was like riding a large water wheel. One minute going up into the sunlight, a brief ecstasy when you reach the top, or full sunlight, and then eventually back down before face planting back into the water and being drug through the murk. I vaguely had the notion that the water wheel would slow down eventually, allowing me to step off and into some other place. This idea was fed by lots of spiritual teachings, or at least my misinterpretations of those teachings. What really happened though, is that the wheel never stops, and you never get off or go to some other “realm.” It just keeps going the same as always. What changes is the way you “feel” about it. There is almost no difference between the sunlight or the murk. If given a clear choice I would choose sunlight, but we are rarely given that choice. Life happens, and just keeps on happening. When most of us hear: “oh my back hurts,” we automatically think: “oh man, that sucks!” But, it ain’t necessarily so. It’s just what happens.