The cessation of suffering

Thinking in a Buddhist way, our aches and pains don’t just come out of the blue.  They, in fact, arise from certain things things we did previously.  I have known this for years.  Its practical application has be of tremendous value for me.  It has saved me from taking medications, for example (I take about a half dozen aspirin a year—that is it).

When I get a physical injury, for example, I review what I did physically during the past three days.  I can remember one time when I moved the wrong way and—wham!—I pulled a muscle between my shoulder blades.  Well, I started thinking, “What did I do previously?”  Then it suddenly dawned on me:  I had washed the windows of my bedroom which overworked a certain muscle group.  (I had not done this for some time I can assure you.)  Knowing this fact, right then and there, the pain almost went away.  It seems that there is a mysterious link between our ability to rightly assess the real cause of pain and its cessation.  To be sure, it gets rid of apprehension and fear.

In the same way, when we really come to know what actually brings about our suffering we become unburdened; almost free of it.  It is an extraordinary feeling of genuine release.  

While the illustration of my pulled muscle is an apt example, it is not far off to suggest that for almost every other problem we have, there is an antecedent cause that led to its arising.  It could be from drinking dirty water, to eating too much, or just procrastinating.  Even the failure of a great company or a nation can be attributed to antecedent causes.  The term the CIA uses, which I like, is “blow-back” which implies that we are the agent of our own problems.

Most regrettably, we humans hold on to the terrible belief that we should experience no blow-back in our lives from the things we’ve done previously no matter how careless they were; that, in fact, we should be forgiven for all of our incautious actions which, in truth, we brought upon ourselves.

But no one is above the law of cause and effect.  And everyone must observe the proper limits of every action making sure they don’t become excessive which, incidentally, is what “evil” suggests in its English etymology.  But indeed we moderns are excessive!  And then when the blow-back comes back upon us, we try everything we can to avoid seeing the real cause.  

It is astonishing to see just how patently stupid we are sometimes.  We refuse to take responsibility for our actions which led to this particular consequence—moreover, we refuse to learn from our past mistakes.  It will be the epitaph of modernity that it never learned anything from its mistakes and, instead, dispensed a lot of medications.

Comments

[Ein]

At what poitn did he say there was an end to physical suffering? You might be able to do something about the immediate pain you feel, though one measn or another, but we all know eventualy something else will come up.

In addition unless "transcendence commanded contains" is soemthing more specific, you just broke the english language and I am not sure what your reffering to. You also might want to avoid convoluted run on sentences as they uneccessarliy confuse your point. Same goes for your over use of sensatioanlsit words that cheapen your comment in an attempt to sound more insightful.

In a buddhist though it is wrong to say “no one is above the law of cause and effect” as the goal is to remove onself from Karma (casue and effect)

Your comment (suvimutta) is, at best, cocktail covnersation.

[suvimutta]

There is NO end to physical suffering, not logically nor in Buddhism’s premise as basis of its doctrine; as such your self-lauding of “taking 6 aspirin a year” is without relevancy to the metaphysics of transcending “the root (mula) of suffering, …avidya”. The body is a pile of trash crawling to the grave, either slowly or quickly, there is no ‘polishing the turd’ in the commandment of transcendence as forms the basis of Buddhism. “sick and riddled with disease, foul heap fools swoon over” –Dhm.

You speak of “the law of cause and effect”, yet you lack the wisdom to know the transcendence commanded contains within itself the wisdom that this body is a compounded effect within which no rest can be found; for even Gotama “was in great suffering” –MN 2.154 [Mahaparinibbana sutta] shortly before death.

Your comment that “no one is above the law of cause and effect” is both an existential reality and a spiritual heresy, for the persona is always slave to its very “origin/fate in time”, but the Person (mahapurisha, atman, nous, spiritus sanctum) who has “won liberation, the prize with wisdom” has transcended same and “knows not of causes and the antinomies of becoming”.

Your mini-article is, at best, highly pedestrian.

[Bodhiratna]

This might be the reason many pharmaceutical companies and those evil American psychiatrist doctors make huge amount of money treating these psychopaths, lol..

Yes, and by not remember mistakes, these people naturally will repeat them again (and again) and subsequently, they repeat rebirth in the flesh as well (of course, speaking of a greater perspective).

Thanks for this good and insightful post.

Bodhiratna