Teaching on suffering (pain)

General discussion, particularly exploring the Dharma in the modern world.
shanyin
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Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

I'd like to understand and get a teaching on pain and suffering. I am in pain, which I mentally label emotional pain. I have to play video games or pace around or call my parents or take drugs or engage in sexual behaviour for it to stop. I recently made a quit date to stop smoking so I may be going through some changes.

My experience with learning Buddhism lead me to focus on the 4 noble truths and 8 fold path. However my intellectual understanding of it seems to have been washed away with psychiatric hospitalizations and drugs and now I feel I don't follow it. My understanding is it is wise to keep the 5 precepts so that's what I'm trying to do however my parents sometimes drive me nuts and I have harsh words for them which I think is uncalled for. Then with others sometimes I may be unfair.

Anyway, I'd like to understand the practical philosophy of "no attachment: no suffering". This is written on the International Buddhist Temple website which is a Mahayana temple. Trying to simplify.
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

So, are you asking about what Buddhism offers to help with emotional pain?
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shanyin
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

There are a few things I had in mind with my original post.

Mental pain, emotional void, the trick to stop suffering in Buddhism (whichi probably includes exercise, diet and a healthy lifestyle and meditation), emotional balance so I can stop going into a rage. Maybe learning a meditation on compassion and finding an emotional balance so I can feel hope and express myself better to those around me.

Happiness comes from within right? I feel happiness is so far away. I am worried I will becoming overwhelmed with self doubt and fear at how difficult I am finding it to stop smoking ciggarettes if you know what I mean.
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

Very important is simple breathing meditation. You have a lot of stuff on your plate and you need to be able to set that down, otherwise Buddhist teachings won’t help; it’s just piling on of more stuff.

Are you familiar with breathing meditation?
It’s where you just sit, watch the breath, and allow the mind to calm down. All that other stuff, the pain, cigarettes, whatever, it will still be there at first of course. But it’s a tool you work with to bring the mind back to square one, to its original peaceful state, so that then everything else can slow down a little and you can deal with one thing at a time.

A healthy lifestyle, nutrition, exercise, are all good things but they aren’t specifically Buddhist practices.

So, have you done any sitting meditation? There is a process to it. Zen, Chan, Shamatha, these are all terms for it. If you aren’t near any Buddhist centers that teach sitting meditation, there are videos on YouTube or on some doecigic Buddhist websites that can guide you through it.
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shanyin
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

Yes I am very familiar with breathing meditation. I am tempted sometimes to instead of focusing on my belly or nostrils just watch the breath wherever I feel it anywhere. When I focus on belly I start getting... annoyed I think is the best word to describe it. :thinking:

One meditation I have been doing has the instruction of: "Observe thoughts in one's mind without getting entangled in them. Pass no judgement upon them and do not engage in the thinking process. Be an impartial onlooker." It's from a book called "The Golden Ring" Buddhist meditation introduction book.

I did that for about a week and I think it helped.
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by muni »

Hello dear,

Emotional pain is causing us indeed lots of suffering. You/all deserve better.

Relying on outer things for some relief is keeping the ups and downs of our experiences going on. I am old and often I have been thinking: when I have that, I will be happy. When this will be my misery will be finished. But it did not worked so.

I think now, when own mind is not seen, we seek the reason of our misery outwardly. Others are faulty. So the world must change in the way I want it or I take a cigarette!

( just example :smile: )

One meditation I have been doing has the instruction of: "Observe thoughts in one's mind without getting entangled in them. Pass no judgement upon them and do not engage in the thinking process. Be an impartial onlooker."

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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

shanyin wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 5:37 am Yes I am very familiar with breathing meditation. I am tempted sometimes to instead of focusing on my belly or nostrils just watch the breath wherever I feel it anywhere. When I focus on belly I start getting... annoyed I think is the best word to describe it. :thinking:

I did that for about a week and I think it helped.
If you think breathing meditation helped, then maybe do more of that - - just simply that, not complicating things, and not switching from the breath to the belly button or whatever, just the breathing on a consistent basis, to slow down a little and make things manageable.

Speaking from my own experience: I am somewhat impulsive, probably ADHD (that diagnosis didn’t exist when I was a kid), I tend to jump from one thing to another, and I have difficulty prioritizing things. I get impatient. What I am reading in what you are saying feels familiar to me.

So, that’s why I was asking about whether you do meditation. A lot of people do, but also, a lot of people don’t.

Buddhism may talk about the general reasons why beings experience things in the ways that they do, which qualify as dukkha, all levels of emotional stress, dissatisfaction, and so on. It doesn’t necessarily offer specific remedies for specific problems, although it can get pretty close sometimes.

Very often, people say, “oh yeah, I tried meditating a while, it was okay” but they didn’t keep up with it. Meditation takes a lot of repetition. And if someone has a tendency to jump from one thing to another, looking for quick remedies, ‘Buddhist advice’ will generally go in one ear and out the other. But if you’ve got a lot going on, there are no quick fixes.
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

shanyin wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 2:39 am I'd like to understand the practical philosophy of "no attachment: no suffering".
Simply put, we perceive things as unchanging, and we become attached to these perceptions. But since things are always changing, we suffer.
We suffer because our perception of things as unchanging is faulty.
The less that you become attached to the perception of things as being unchanging, the less suffering will result when things do change.
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shanyin
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

:yinyang: :tantrum: :namaste:

I feel like I can relate to your ADHD situation. I feel like I would want a stable situation in life and use medication in moderation, maybe also asking the doctor if I could try meditating on Ritalin to practice increasing attention. Also one idea I had was playing inexpensive and attention straining (I think that's what I mean) video games on PC and practice FOCUSING on them. Then take that feeling of relaxed contentment into your daily mindfulness or meditate right after.

:techproblem: :guns: :hug:
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

Your first post expressed this…
I'd like to understand and get a teaching on pain and suffering. I am in pain, which I mentally label emotional pain. I have to play video games or pace around or call my parents or take drugs or engage in sexual behaviour for it to stop. I recently made a quit date to stop smoking so I may be going through some changes.
… which seems to be saying that you have some kind of suffering and that you are making use of various means to basically distract you, or to keep your mind off of the suffering.

And in the previous post you indicated that…
shanyin wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 2:45 pmI feel like I would want a stable situation in life and use medication in moderation, maybe also asking the doctor if I could try meditating on Ritalin to practice increasing attention. Also one idea I had was playing inexpensive and attention straining (I think that's what I mean) video games on PC and practice FOCUSING on them. Then take that feeling of relaxed contentment into your daily mindfulness or meditate right after.
Talk to your doctor about any medical advice. Nobody here is going to advise you on that. If your doctor prescribes something to help you relax or focus, that’s fine whether you spend your time meditating or playing video games or even flipping pancakes. But getting a prescription specifically to combine with meditation? No doctor is going to write that.

The Buddha, when he was still young Prince Siddhartha, grew up surrounded by distractions. His father, the king, wanted to make sure his son avoided anything unpleasant. But Siddhartha was restless and wanted to see what was outside of the palace. There’s more to this story, I’m sure you know. But among other things, he realized that outside distractions don’t last forever, that suffering and dissatisfaction will always come back because outer distractions only provide temporary relief. Instead, he practiced meditation. Buddhists practice breathing meditation because breathing is always there with you, everywhere you go.

So, while video games and other distractions are fun for a while, they never cut to the causes of one’s suffering. You don’t need to give them up, but at the same time, just adding buddhism to your heap of distractions, or meditation as yet another distraction, that won’t really help.

Instead of coming up with various schemes of how to mix Ritalin, video games, meditation and cigarettes together to achieve a perfect balance (which is impossible) just sit. Just sit. Sitting is the opposite of scheming and busyness.
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shanyin
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

Just so you know I was trying to advice you on how to deal with your ADHD, I wasn't talking about myself. Nor was I asking you to get a prescription so you could meditate on it.
shanyin
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

Yes, sitting just sitting. I asked a question on here if Zazen was really literally "just sitting" and the answer I got was no.
shanyin
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

:thanks:
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

shanyin wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 4:57 pm Just so you know I was trying to advice you on how to deal with your ADHD, I wasn't talking about myself. Nor was I asking you to get a prescription so you could meditate on it.
Oh sorry I misunderstood!
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

shanyin wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 4:59 pm Yes, sitting just sitting. I asked a question on here if Zazen was really literally "just sitting" and the answer I got was no.
Well, it isn’t “just” sitting.
For example, there is also walking meditation.
“Just” means not combining it with visualizations, or chanting or trying to reach some kind of trance-like state, or anything special.
There are no goals involved.

However, it’s not just lazing around either. The point is to relax and focus one’s mind, one’s attention.

In a talk given by Mingyur Rinpoche, he refers to the jumping-around mind using the well-known expression, “monkey mind”, and he makes a very interesting point, which is that meditation is also basically a type of distraction.
Monkey Mind refers to how the mind jumps from one thought to another constantly.
Meditation simply gives the monkey just one thing to do. So, instead of bouncing all over the place, it reduces all the distractions down to a single distraction: watching the breath enter and leave the body.
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shanyin
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

That is very generous of you. :namaste:
shanyin
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

I do not agree with you that noone on this forum will advise me to take or not to take medication. I have been advised more than once to take medication, which in my opinion is irresponsible and false.
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

shanyin wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 1:50 am I do not agree with you that noone on this forum will advise me to take or not to take medication. I have been advised more than once to take medication, which in my opinion is irresponsible and false.
Nobody here has the authority to give you medical advice. That would amount to practicing medicine without a licence.
This is a web forum about Buddhism.
People can only offer you suggestions related to Buddhist teachings regarding suffering.
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shanyin
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

Is everyone but me insane, mean spirited, paranoid and thinks everyone they don't like is lying to them?I just told you I have been advised to take medication on this forum. So why don't you help me sue them for "practicing medicine without a liscence?"
shanyin
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Re: Teaching on suffering (pain)

Post by shanyin »

go frak yourself bud
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