Mark:
I'm afraid this post is going to be a little morbid. However I would like someone to be candid honest with me and not biased by the nature of the post itself. I apologize for the location of this post. I really couldn't figure out where to post this and Mahasi style Vipsassana seems like a popular route to ultimate insight. I'm a twenty-two year old male living a very decent life. I have many friends, a great job, and I'm in a great school. I'm also probably going to kill myself in the next few years.
This isn't based on depression or some terrible tragedy in my life, although I've had a few of those in my past. My impending suicide is a result of certain realizations. For my entire life I've been trying to find things to make me happy. Now I realize my idea of happiness was just an illusion. There's this fundamental sort of suffering I have identified in my life. Even in throws of ecstasy or euphoria, it's always there. Nagging at me, like a splinter lodged in the back of my mind. I've realized that everything I've wanted, video games, lovers, achievements. They've all been in an attempt try to cover up this fundamental unsatisfactoriness with life.
In fact I think this unsatisfactorinessis an inherent property of achieving sentience/sapience. I think any intelligent agent must have a level of unsatisfactoriness in their existence if they wish to achieve goals. To put it another way. Organisms erect barriers to their environment because they don't want to be consumed by the universe around them. Barriers like skin and bones, and barriers like behaviors to seek food and safety. Suffering is the price of these barriers.
The four noble truths claim that suffering can cease and there is a path to the cessation of suffering. I'm not very entrenched in Buddhist dogma. In fact I don't believe in a God or afterlife at all. I haven't killed myself so far because I've felt guilty about it. But now I don't care anymore. However if there truly is a way to end suffering, which I suspect isn't what enlightenment or nirvana is really about, I would live long enough to see if it exists.
Does the enlightenment gained with insight actually end suffering? Is there away to end suffering? Perhaps with actualism or something to that effect? Or is there no end? Again I apologize if I have disturbed anyone with this post.
Please don't deliver knee-jerk reactions like “There is so much worth living for!”, or “How would your loved ones feel?”, or "You're still just a kid!". If there is no substance in your post, don't bother replying, and I know people will inevitably tell me I should get on an anti-depressant or talk to a therapist. I've done both, by the way. What I suffer from isn't clinical depression. I know what clinical depression is like. What I suffer from is unsatisfactoriness.
Thank you for your responses.
aloha mark,
Wow! Great letter. You have gone as far as intellect can take you, and divined the true nature of things.
You say:
"Organisms erect barriers to their environment because they don't want to be consumed by the universe around them. Barriers like skin and bones, and barriers like behaviors to seek food and safety. Suffering is the price of these barriers."
Don't want to pay the price? Don't erect barriers. Failing that, tear down the walls.
Being as you are describing the existential predicament, there is no escape. Even suicide won't extinguish suffering. And, besides, if you are paying the price already, why not get something for it, instead of fighting it?
I expect you would like someone here to tell you, "Yes, I have ended suffering on the personal level and you can do so as well by following this map...". But what you think is being sought - permanent personal bliss - is non-existent, as the ego itself is non-existent. You cling to the (mode of) being which has barriers, the being who sets goals and suffers when they are not achieved and suffers when these goals are threatened, which is always, given the fact of impermanence.
What you seek is transcendence. A worthy goal, one might think, but the setting of goals and being attached to progress just creates more suffering.
What you could be seeking is realization. What the buddha called "this whole mass of suffering" can be seen through at once, but it is not completely dismantled in an instant of insight. It takes practice, practice, practice.
The sequence involves first realizing that suffering is systemic and inherent in everything the ego conceives, speaks and acts. You have that part. The next phase, as you have intuited, is "suicide." A symbolic suicide, a killing of everything in yourself that is not already perfect and complete. This death of ego involves the insight that all of life, all of the universe and beyond is one, unitary, complete and perfect.
So, your "problem," as it were, is to gain the attention of god. It is not enough to love god - which you don't - god needs to love you as well. To that end, you need to be a better person, someone who loves and cares for others, and not for self.
Buddhism wouldn't tell you this, there is no divinity in buddhism, there is only self and self-transcendence. There is no "god" that may be discerned by the intellect. What we have are the qualities of god, such as the brahmaviharas; as blake says, "mercy, pity, peace and love." Adopt those qualities and your being is slowly transformed into the divine. As attachments drop away, life will seem much more beautiful and interesting. Love blossoms and flows.
Intellect leads only to the dry desert of nothing Real. Love leads to paradise and the waters of life, and one becomes "like a tree planted by the rivers of water, which bringeth forth fruit in due season." ("We'll be forever loving jah.")
Intellect has taken you to the point where your only reasonable option is suicide. So why continue to cling to your ego? Why not throw away self interest and live for love, since your life is worthless anyay? Why not give it to god? It turns out your life is god's already. On loan, as it were.
You can do this through insight, if you are blessed and god loves you, or you can do this through faith, like a normal person. The prophet, upon whom be peace, suggested that we enter the house through the door.
You are very close, brother. I hope you don't lose the clear insight you currently have into the dissatisfactoriness of egoic life. Now realize that the ego is only conditioning that you are perfectly free to dispense with anytime you decide you really want to wake up. Since if you are at all normal you don't really want to wake up, but intend to cling tightly to your suffering as being familiar and comfortable and helpful in "fitting in,"try at least to recognize that you are clinging and creating your own suffering out of obstinacy and habit. Then you can chip away at it and slow progress won't dwindle to nothing.
The less attached, the more free. Be like god, in the world and not of it. God is the light, in which all being is seen; it shines on us and makes us real, and visible to each other. When you are the light - which you are already beond a doubt, you just don't realize it - you will be free to suffer or not as you please, or as it pleaes god, which is one thing.
It is not about understanding, bra. There is a leap of faith, or a gift from the source. A transforming insight of love that changes your focus from ego to Ego, from one to One. The Knower looks at you out of every eye; when you are the Knower you will know. All being is Being; all created things dissolve into the creator, who is All.
Your mind is the mirror of reality. All of reality, every bit, the whole enchilada, is your Mind. Your mind is informed by words, through words you know what is real. Everything cognizable has a name. The most beautiful names are god's. Light, truth, beauty...each of these names opens the universe in all its glory. Divinity pours from every pore. Stop being obsessed with petty obstructions and realize the only obstructions worth noticing are those which prevent you from realizing your divinity. Arealization which is had by nobody because you must be nobody to have it.
This is the essential paradox: what you are seeking can only be had when the desirer and haver have completely dissipated. The cosmic enjoyer will have bliss, not you; you will disappear. The prophet, pbuh, said "die before you die." When the ego is gone, only love remains. It is through death that the ego becomes free, becomes what it always was, non-existent. There is only god: that is realization.
You might ask, how about you, are you free from suffering? I have compassion for suffering, so it is a familiar companion, all my friends have it. I don't think animals suffer as we do. Oh they feel pain quite as much, but the ache in the soul of separation is peculiarly human. The blessing is that, rare as it might be, we humans have the capacity for realization, for nirvana. It is for this chance that we suffer. Worth every penny, my friend, so have faith. But don't let faith save your ego from destruction; it still must die.
On the path many of us get "glimpses" of the truth, often only once but sometimes more often. One glimpse and you never forget that the fact of bliss is real and infinitely beyond anything the material world or intellectual striving can possible offer. You can seek this experience and/or have faith in it from its many witnesses.
Good luck, and thanks for the entertaining and insightful message. I hope your impending suicide goes well.
terry
from the rubaiyat of omar khayyam, trans fitzgerald
42.
Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of This and That endeavor and dispute;
Better be merry with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, fruit.
43.
You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
44.
And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,
Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape
Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and
He bid me taste of it; and ’twas — the Grape!
45.
The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The subtle Alchemest that in a Trice
Life’s leaden Metal into Gold transmute.
46.
Why, be this Juice the growth of God, who dare
Blaspheme the twisted tendril as Snare?
A Blessing, we should use it, should we not?
And if a Curse — why, then, Who set it there?
47.
But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me
The Quarrel of the Universe let be:
And, in some corner of the Hubbub couch’d,
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee.
48.
For in and out, above, about, below,
’Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.
49.
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass’d the door of Darkness through
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.
50.
The Revelations of Devout and Learn’d
Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn’d,
Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep,
They told their fellows, and to Sleep return’d.
51.
Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Is’t not a shame — Is’t not a shame for him
So long in this Clay suburb to abide?
52.
But that is but a Tent wherein may rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
Strikes, and prepares it for another guest.
53.
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And after many days my Soul return’d
And said, “Behold, Myself am Heav’n and Hell.”
54.
Heav’n but the Vision of fulfill’d Desire,
And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerg’d from, shall so soon expire.
55.
While the Rose blows along the River Brink,
With old Khayyam and ruby vintage drink:
And when the Angel with his darker Draught
Draws up to Thee — take that, and do not shrink.
56.
And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, should lose, or know the type no more;
The Eternal Saki from the Bowl has pour’d
Millions of Bubbls like us, and will pour.
57.
When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh but the long long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As much as Ocean of a pebble-cast.
58.
’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
59.
The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes,
But Right or Left, as strikes the Player goes;
And he that toss’d Thee down into the Field,
He knows about it all — He knows — HE knows!
60.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
61.
For let Philosopher and Doctor preach
Of what they will, and what they will not — each
Is but one Link in an eternal Chain
That none can slip, nor break, nor over-reach.
62.
And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to it for help — for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
63.
With Earth’s first Clay They did the Last Man knead,
And then of the Last Harvest sow’d the Seed:
Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.
64.
Yesterday This Day’s Madness did prepare;
To-morrow’s Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why:
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.