Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi Lal,
You said: anyone with a physical body will be subjected to all three types of dukka and that they continue until parinibbana.
I found the following in the Nettipakarana https://suttacentral.net/ne5/pli/ms
Tisso dukkhatā— dukkhadukkhatā saṅkhāradukkhatā vipariṇāmadukkhatā. Tattha loko odhaso kadāci karahaci dukkhadukkhatāya muccati. Tathā vipariṇāmadukkhatāya. Taṃ kissa hetu? Honti loke appābādhāpi dīghāyukāpi. Saṅkhāradukkhatāya pana loko anupādisesāya nibbānadhātuyā muccati, tasmā saṅkhāradukkhatā dukkhaṃ lokassāti katvā dukkhamassa mahabbhayanti.
The Sinhala translation is in the Buddha Jayanthi edition Book 43, Nettipakarana, page 27.
What I understand from this is that Dukkha Dukkhatha and Viparinama Dukkhatha can be removed while still alive, while Sankhara Dukkhatha is eliminated after anupadisesa nibbana. This means that an arahanth will have sankhara dukka while he lives; the eating and walking on arms round, bathing etc. (Agree that for these actions no abhi sankhara is created).
I agree in principle on everything you have mentioned but I think I am hung up on a few technical words here. I know that the meaning is more important than the semantics of the words but only brought this up since we were on the topic of what “dukka dukka” means.
Hi firewns,
The sanna that is cultivated depends on the situation and state of mind for me. But if i was to pick the most significant for me it will be aniccha. I think I am more of a viriya person so this makes sense. The other sannas would be anicche dukka, anattha and niroda sanna.
Hi Lal,
The Buddha and other arahanths have experienced bodily pain after attaining arahanthship. The root cause for these pains has been clearly stated being previous kamma. My question is whether this bodily pain has been referred to specifically as “dukka dukka”?
Reference to Salla Sutta: https://suttacentral.net/sn36.6/en/bodhi
“Bhikkhus, when the uninstructed worldling is being contacted by a painful feeling, he sorrows, grieves, and laments; he weeps beating his breast and becomes distraught. He feels two feelings—a bodily one and a mental one.”
“Bhikkhus, when the instructed noble disciple is contacted by a painful feeling, he does not sorrow, grieve, or lament; he does not weep beating his breast and become distraught. He feels one feeling—a bodily one, not a mental one.”
In Pali; “assutavā, bhikkhave, puthujjano dukkhāya vedanāya phuṭṭho samāno socati kilamati paridevati urattāḷiṃ kandati sammohaṃ āpajjati. So dve vedanā vedayati— kāyikañca, cetasikañca.”
“Evameva kho, bhikkhave, sutavā ariyasāvako dukkhāya vedanāya phuṭṭho samāno na socati, na kilamati, na paridevati, na urattāḷiṃ kandati, na sammohaṃ āpajjati. So ekaṃ vedanaṃ vedayati—kāyikaṃ, na cetasikaṃ.”
According to this sutta, the bodily pain is referred to as duka vedana. Both the ariya and anariya will feel this duka vedana. But there is second duka that an anariya will feel, and that I think is the dukka dukka.
Hi firewns,
This was one aspect I had questions about and discussed this with Lal previously. Most of what I am writing is based on what I learnt and understood from those discussions.
With regard to your question, of whether taking off life support of a parent leads to an ananthariya kamma; If someone commits these kamma, whether knowing or un-knowing, then he has committed an anantariya kamma.
How would sotapannas and other ariyas handle such situations: A sotapanna will definitely not do those 5 anantariya kamma. Not everyone has or will face such a situation. This may mean that a sotapanna will not face a situation to do such a kamma.
So the best method should be to avoid such situations. May be leave it up to the doctor, to decide. Also the financial side comes to play. But if you believe that one will go to the niraya because of this act, will you really bother about the finances? Can any amount of money come to your rescue in hell?
With regard to putting an end to life due to suffering; the worst possible suffering anyone can undergo as a human is not even comparable to what one will have to go through in the niraya. So ending a life to put an end to suffering does not make sense.
If one has commited one of these acts then there is no way to eliminate the vipaka from it. But yes they may be able to reduce the extent of suffering. This can be done through doing kusala kamma as much as possible and kusala kamma which have bigger impacts.
Also someone who has committed such an act will not be able to understand the dhamma and become a sotapanna. That is why the Buddha went to angulimala before he killed his mother, because if he did kill her, he would not have been able to understand the dhamma.
In the Samannaphala Suta https://suttacentral.net/dn2/en/bodhi it is stated “Soon after King Ajātasattu had left, the Exalted One addressed the bhikkhus: “This king, bhikkhus, has ruined himself; he has injured himself. Bhikkhus, if this king had not taken the life of his father, a righteous man and a righteous king, then in this very seat there would have arisen in him the dust-free, stainless eye of Dhamma.” So this shows that someone who has committed an anantariya kamma will not be able to understand the Dhamma, and become a sotapanna.
Hi Lal,
In the post https://puredhamma.net/paticca-samuppada/paticca-samuppada-in-plain-english/introduction-2-the-three-characteristics-of-nature/, it is stated that “Until the death of the physical body, even an Arahant is subjected to dukkha dukkha.” Is there a sutta reference for to say that an arahanth will experience dukha dukkha?
In the Dukkhatha Sutta; https://suttacentral.net/sn45.165/en/bodhi , it is stated that “The Noble Eightfold Path is to be developed for direct knowledge of these three kinds of suffering, for the full understanding of them, for their utter destruction, for their abandoning.”
In pali: Imāsaṃ kho, bhikkhave, tissannaṃ dukkhatānaṃ abhiññāya pariññāya parikkhayāya pahānāya … pe … ayaṃ ariyo aṭṭhaṅgiko maggo bhāvetabbo”ti.
And it is also stated that the Buddha or an arahanth has ended all kinds of suffering after he attains enlightenment. If one does eliminate all types of suffering he should also eliminate the dukkha dukkha in this life as well.
So I don’t think that the dukkha dukkha refers to the bodily pain due to past kamma. Because, if one has eliminated all types of suffering by attaining enlightenment, then he has eliminated dukkha dukkha as well (as per the sutta).
I think dukkha dukkha refers to the mental pain / lamentation one creates because of a bodily pain arising. For example if I lose a limb, the actual physical pain of that incident will last only a few hours or days. But the mental suffering because I have lost a limb will be much more and last longer. This mental suffering is the dukkha dukkha and is what will be eliminated (even in this lifetime) by attaining enlightenment.
Hi Uyap,
The act of killing animals will result in a bad kamma vipaka. There is an intention to kill and this is the intention (kamma) that will result in the bad vipaka. Similarly the intention of giving the food to the poor will result in good vipaka. So in this context, these ACTIONS (of killing animals and giving to the poor) will result in good and bad vipaka.
For example if that person is born as a human, he may have lots of wealth and food (the result of giving) although he may be of bad health and have a low life span (the result of killing).
1 user thanked author for this post.
Hi Uyap,
The only method to be 100% certain that one will not end up being re-born in one of the lower realms is to become a sotapanna. This is true for Buddhists and non-buddhists a like.
When practicing the metta bavana, if one is to wish for all beings to attain nibbana, the only way that can happen is if they understand the dhamma. So we can even wish saying “may all beings understand this Dhamma, eliminate the chance of being born in the lower realms and be free from all suffering by attaining nibbana.”
Although this may sound selfish, each person has to understand the Dhamma for himself. No amount of metta bavana will lead to someone else to understand the dhamma. Also it is foolish for us to think that we can get the infinite number of beings to attain nibbana (by say teaching them the Dhamma or in any other way). If this could have been done, the Buddha would have done it. So the only thing we can do is hope / wish that everyone will be able to understand this dhamma and attain nibbana. This emitting of metta can help them and that’s all we could do.
Interestingly the Budha didn’t categorise people as Buddhists and non-buddhists. The categorisation was pruthakjana and arya shrawaka i.e. people who have not attained at least the sotapanna anugami stage and others who have.
Firewns said: is there anyone who can elaborate on why viriya types contemplate better on anicca, saddha types on dukkha, and panna types on anatta?
I will try to explain the best I can, based on my understanding.
Anicca is the inability to maintain something the way one wants it to be / or the way he likes it. A viriya type person is someone who will put a lot of time and effort in doing stuff, whether it is studies, work, family life etc. All this effort he puts in is to attain some kind of happiness or to maintain the way he likes it to be. Anicca basically means that whatever effort one might put into maintaining or achieving something, it will never be the way he likes it to be. So a viriya type person will contemplate on the effort he is putting to achieve something (mundane things) and will be easier for him to realise the worthlessness of that effort because everything is anicca.
Anatta, the way I understand it, is the fact that everything is in the end of no substance / value etc. A panna type person will be someone who will try to come up with the shortest or easiest way of doing things. His level of understanding will be higher, so he will not put as much effort as say a viriya person. So when this type of person realises that everything is anatta he realises that anything he does is, in the end, worthless.
Part of the Dukka that the Buddha is referring to is the dukka that one can get in the lower realms. To really see this dukka one needs to have faith in what the Buddha has said (unless one can develop abinna powers or samadi powers to see those things for himself). I find it hard to explain the connection between dukka and saddha here. I have a weaker saddha indriya and this may be a reason too.
But saying this, all three are connected. And I don’t think one should just stick to one type of contemplation. There are also, I think, nearly 30 types of sanna that one can use. Anicca sanna, dukka, sanna and anatta sanna are just three of them.
Hi Siebe,
Let me explain what I do if I am stressed or irritated or unhappy. I try and look back to see why I am irritated. There is always some cause we can pin point it to. And this cause invariably is due to something not being the way I like it to be i.e. anicca. I don’t think one will be unhappy, irritated, stressed without some kind of cause.
But saying this, there are times when we (or even certain people who) are more prone to get irritated. Either way there is some kind of cause for that irritation. And that is due to anicca. I have not been able to find any other reason for my unhappiness or irritation or stress, other than anicca. If you (or anyone) can find another cause please share it.
Do you think an arahanth would experience any kind of mental pain, unhappiness, distress? I don’t think so. And that mental pain, unhappiness and distress is exactly the suffering an arahanth will eliminate in this life time.
This is just the way I see it.
Hi Siebe,
The bodily pain arising due to the ripening of a kamma vipaka is not the dukka sacca the Buddha talks about. The Buddha eliminated all future suffering when he attained enlightenment. This means that he will not experience any dukka in this life time too. However he did experience kamma vipaka, which brought him bodily pain. So we can see that the bodily pain brought about by a ripening kamma vipaka is not the dukka he was referring to, when he said he eliminated all future dukka.
You said “sometimes there seems to be no real reason to be irritated or heated up”. Yes, I think we have all experienced something like this. But if we really sit back and look for the reason, it will turn out to be because of anicca. Most often the reason we don’t understand this is because we are too engrossed in this irritated state of mind, we are blinded by it that we can’t think properly. Either way I don’t think that an arahanth, someone who has completely eliminated future suffering, would get irritated and heated up like normal people do.
Hi Lal,
My reply is with regard to trying to understand thilakkana without the need to believe in re-birth. This is something I mentioned under a different topic as well.
The truth of the Dhamma is said to be seen / experienced here and now. The Buddha told this to the Liccavi’s saying that if the dhamma is practiced properly it will not bring any bad outcomes, even if one doesn’t believe in a life after a death. So I’m trying to explain how I see the truth of anicca, dukka, anatta in this light. This is not to mean that, I don’t believe in rebirth or that one shouldn’t believe in it.
So let me try and explain. “Yadaniccan tan dukkan, Yan dukkan tadanatta”. If something is anicca, it is dukka (leads to / causes dukka). If something is dukka, it is (leads to) anatta. This is something we can see / experience and understand here and now.
If I cannot keep something to my satisfaction, then it causes distress / pain / unhappiness / sadness etc. If something causes distress etc. then there is no point in doing it. So when we realise that everything cannot be kept the way we like it, we realise that everything causes dukka and therefore everything is of no point / substance etc. I am not going to give any example because one can check this out with anything.
Let me put it in a different way, and this is something I do most of the time. Every time we experience dukka, if we look to the cause of it, we see that it is because something has turned out in a way that we did not like it to be. We thought something would be one way, but when it turned out in a different way, that causes us dukka. This is always true. There is no one time that I have been able to say that the distress / unhappiness / anger that I have experienced is because of something other than anicca. So it is very very obvious to me that all the dukka we experience is only and simply because of anicca. Or more specifically that we thought we could have something the way we like but it didn’t turn out that way.
If you take the example of the man who was born into the wealthy family and lived a fulfilling life, can you say that he wasn’t sad or unhappy even for a second during his life. However fulfilling one’s life may seem there is no one who has not experienced sadness at least for a moment in his life. If he analyses that moment of sadness and the causes, he will see that the reason for that sadness is nothing but anicca.
There is no need to account for rebirth to see this. Whether rebirth is there or not, we can see that all dukka is because of anicca. And if something is dukka then it is anatta.
Saying this, the more one sees the truth of this, the more he will tend to believe in all other things that the Buddha has told as well. This is definitely the case for me especially since I have not been able to disprove or find any loopholes in the teachings.
Johnny said: According to the Buddha, the only being who takes his/her own life blamelessly is an arahanth.
I think this is a common mis-conception. The relevant Sutta/s refer to a monk committing suicide and when other monks asks the Buddha what happened to him, the Buddha says that he attained arahanthship. This does mean that the monk was an arahanth before committing suicide.
The best explanation of this bu Waharaka Thero, is that the monk had a vipaka to repay which was by / to commit suicide. He would have attained arahanthship at the very last moment he was living, after he had actually done the act of cutting off his head. These are very minute time scales (citta viti), which may be hard to grasp for us.
Be that as it may, I cannot understand how / why, if taking one’s own life is an unwholesome act, how an arahanth is blameless in that action. This does not make sense. Also if it is blameless as interpreted by some, why didn’t all the other arahanths (or at least much more) commit suicide?
I feel that someone who commits suicide thinks that this life is no good and hence wants to end. There is some kind of aversion (dosa / dvesha) there. So, committing suicide cannot be something blameless, at least according to the Dhamma. That is how I see it.
Hi Vince,
There is a youtube channel (Dharmayai Obai) with sermons from 2 monks, who follow the same teachings of Waharaka Thero. Sermons of one of the monks is in English.
You can search for the sermons on youtube “Dharmayai Obai BBE”. Below is a link to one such sermon. BBE stands for Budhu Bana English.
Hi Firewns,
Let me try and answer some of your questions based on my understanding.
Does this mean that anyone who has read and accepted conceptually the Ariya meanings of anicca, dukkha and anatta as outlined in this website will be assured of attaining the Sotapanna stage in the immediate future, as he or she would be a Sotapanna Anugami?
Short answer, no. Just because one reads, hears or accepts the dhamma he would not become an ariya. There is a level of understanding that is required. So one has to read and then understand it to be “assured” of attaining an ariya stage. There were lots of people (even monks) who heard the dhamma directly from the Buddha but did not understand it and therefore did not attain an ariya stage. However, without reading, hearing or accepting there is no way of being an ariya.
Would this same person lose his or her progress if he or she were to be reborn in a place where the Dhamma has never been heard? What if he or she was reborn in an immoral family? Could he or she start to veer off course?
Short answer, no. A sotapanna person is bound to attain nibbana and there is no hetu for him to veer off course. Since a sotapanna has no vicikicca, he knows the exact path to liberation and hence will not follow any other path.
However the Buddha only mentioned this after being asked this by ven. Ananda or Sariputta (I can’t remember who specifically). The Buddha later said that he hadn’t mentioned this earlier as people would become complacent and not strive to attain nibbana if they knew that they were an ariya.
Does a sotapanna understand these three characteristics all at once, or only one after the other at the magga moment?
Waharaka Thero mentions that if one understands one of these aspects, he will understand the other two at the same time. So at the pala moment all three would be understood.
Are any of the characteristics more easily comprehended than the others?
Yes. Based on the different gati and the development of each person’s indriya, they will be able to comprehend one aspect easier than the other. A person with a developed viriya indriya will be able to comprehend anicca, shadda will comprehend dukka and pragna will comprehend anatta easier. However this is just a general idea. It may differ from person to person.
Is it necessary to contemplate on pattica samuppada as well to become a Sotapanna?
It said that an ariya will have an understanding of paticca samuppada. So I feel that understanding PS is a result of comprehending the thilakkana. The different types of contemplations are given as aniccanupassana, dukkanupassana etc.
Hi Kalyanamitta1,
A good reference is the first sutta in the sutta Piṭaka, the Brahmajaala Sutta (https://suttacentral.net/dn1/en/bodhi). Here the Buddha says:
“If, bhikkhus, others speak in dispraise of me, or in dispraise of the Dhamma, or in dispraise of the Sangha, you should not give way to resentment, displeasure, or animosity against them in your heart. For if you were to become angry or upset in such a situation, you would only be creating an obstacle for yourselves. If you were to become angry or upset when others speak in dispraise of us, would you be able to recognize whether their statements are rightly or wrongly spoken?”
“Certainly not, Lord.”
“If, bhikkhus, others speak in dispraise of me, or in dispraise of the Dhamma, or in dispraise of the Sangha, you should unravel what is false and point it out as false, saying: ‘For such and such a reason this is false, this is untrue, there is no such thing in us, this is not found among us.”
On a personal note, I rarely tend to get angry towards such people but feel something like “can’t these people understand this, are they this foolish”. In that instance I contemplate that I too would have been similar to those people in the past. Certainly before I came across purdhamma and also in innumerable past lives. So that way I can put myself in their shoes and this lets me develop compassion towards them. Like the metta bhavana that Lal mentioned.
Most importantly I look at myself and think if an Arahanth saw me they would think that I am foolish as well, for being engrossed in these sense pleasures and not understanding the true aniccha, dukka, anatta nature of the world. This helps me a lot.
