[MD] som unplugged - corrected lines

[MarshaV]

John,  

We suffer, or we accept the difficulties, or we overcome them, or we wait until 
they pass.  I'm not so sure one can make such an easy, generalized statement 
when it comes to suffering.  There's all kinds of suffering.  


Marsha


On Jun 13, 2011, at 4:17 PM, John Carl wrote:

> I don't think so, Marsha.  If you enjoy the difficulties of mountain
> climbing, for instance, then you are joyful while enmeshed in even the most
> extreme difficulties.  And if everything is made easy for you, like you're
> locked up in solitary confinement with nothing to do all day long and your
> food provided, it might be that all difficulty has been removed from your
> life, but I'd say that your suffering is at its peak.
> 
> The key to your question is "having to endure".  when we feel we have no
> choice, we suffer. Where there is no choice, there is no Quality of life.
> 
> John
> 
> On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 10:31 AM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> I wonder about having to endure difficulties and suffering.   Are they
>> identical?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Jun 10, 2011, at 11:19 AM, X Acto wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>>  "Discussing illusions plays such a big role in the Perfection of Wisdom
>>> literature because the Buddhist texts state that there is a close
>> connection
>>> between the existence of illusion and the existence of suffering.
>> According to
>>> the Buddhist worldview, the existence of suffering is neither a necessary
>>> feature of the world nor the consequence of a specific fact about the
>> past (such
>>> as the fall of Adam), but is rather due to an intellectual error that is
>>> mistaken about the way things exist.  Suffering is produced by a wrong
>> view of
>>> the world, a view that is in fact so much part and parcel of our habitual
>> way of
>>> thinking that we are not aware of its perspectival nature any more.  More
>>> worryingly, the mere intellectual insight into its falsity does not mean
>> that
>>> the illusion goes away, in the same way that mere intellectual insight
>> that the
>>> two line in the diagram below are the same length does not alter the fact
>> that
>>> the lower line appears to be longer.
>>> 
>>>  <--------->
>>>> ---------<
>>> 
>>> "That's why the absence of suffering last night seemed so ominous and her
>>> change to what looked like suffering today gave Phaedrus a feeling she
>>> was getting better. If you eliminate suffering from this world you
>>> eliminate life. There's no evolution. Those species that don't suffer
>>> don't survive. Suffering is the negative face of the Quality that drives
>>> the whole process. All these battles between patterns of evolution go on
>>> within suffering individuals like Lila.
>>> And Lila's battle is everybody's battle, you know?"-Lila
>>> 
>>> 
>>> "Another immoral way of killing the static patterns is to pass
>>> the patterns to someone else, in what Phaedrus called a
>>> 'karma dump.' You invent a devil group, Jews or blacks or
>>> whites or capitalists or communists - it doesn't matter -
>>> then say that group is responsible for all your suffering,
>>> and then hate it and try to destroy it. On a daily personal
>>> level everyone has things or people they hate and blame for
>>> their suffering and this hatred and blame brings a kind of relief."-Lila
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ...
>>> 
>>>  "The aim of the Buddhist enterprise is therefore not just to show that
>> all
>>> things are like illusions because the way they appear is different from
>> the way
>>> they are.  Its aim is to bring about a complete change in how we perceive
>> and
>>> conceptualize phenomena.  In this way ignorance is cleared away and, one
>> hopes,
>>> suffering will completely disappear."
>>> 
>>>    (Westerhoff, Jan, 'Twelve Examples of Illusion)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Marsha:
>>>> I suggest the primary goal of RMP for the West, with his presentation of
>> the
>>>> MoQ, is to overcome a subject-object-metaphysics.  Has this topic become
>>>> unplugged?
>>>> 
> 



 
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