Understanding pain (duhkha)

Understanding duhkha (suffering, pain) may seem easy enough but getting to what it really means may prove somewhat more difficult.  Not helping us, the term duhkha does not seem to be in the Rig Veda.  Duhkha is,  therefore, a much later notion.

Duhkha is something, obviously, that we cannot see externally.  There is no thing called duhkha floating around for all to see as if it were a common object.  We only know duhkha from the standpoint of the vagueness of the first-person who understands, to some degree, that the psychophysical body (skandha) is wrapped up in duhkha.  Further, this should mean that duhkha is not one thing and the psychophysical body is another.  They are one and the same.

Where this starts to get interesting, in my view, is when we turn to the first-person who is in pain (duhkha).  He is aware of pain; but unlike the Buddha, he does not know that this is not his self (anattâ/anâtman).  According to the commentary on the Vibhanga (VbhA 49) “what is not the self (anattâ) is not known unless there is a Buddha.”  It is with such knowledge that one can say, “What is suffering is not the self (anattâ) (S. iii. 45).  Put another way, this implies that the true self (the Buddha’s self) does not suffer—but only a Buddha knows this.  Duhkha only belongs to the world of the five aggregates in which we as ordinary, worldly beings are situated and are conscious of pain.  

The feeling of pain is not related to my self but, instead, is the second aggregate of feeling.  I am conscious of this painful feeling which is the fifth aggregate of consciousness.  I do not, as yet, have the wisdom (prajñâ) to be able to distinguish a painful feeling from self.  Unlike the Buddha, I cannot say, This duhkha is not mine, this duhkha I am not, this duhkha is not my self—Yes, of course, I can say it, but unlike a Buddha I am not connected with that which is always free of duhkha.

The Immaculate Essence which neither diminishes nor increases; 
The living beings that know nothing about it
Constantly experience manifold suffering that is like poverty”

          (The Uttaratantra of Maitreya). 

 

Comments

[The Zennist]

Jure: I think the Java is referring to the 2nd skandha, vedana—the lower grade stuff—with its three feelings: 1) duhkha; 2) sukha; 3)aduhkha-asukha (neutral).

[Jure]

Java Junkie:

In the Sutta Pitaka nirvāna is described as the perfect peace. In the Dhammapada, the Buddha says of nirvāna that it is "the highest happiness", an enduring happiness QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT from the limited, transitory happiness derived from impermanent things:

Hunger is the greatest ill,
the greatest dukkha - conditionedness,
knowing this reality at it is:
Nibbana bliss supreme.

We find the same in the Mahayana sutras, where Nirvana is described as:

"Eternal (nitya), Blissful (sukha), the Self (atman) and Pure (subha)" (Nirvana Sutra)

[Java Junkie Foghorn Leghorn]

in your lack of doctrinal studies, perchance you missed that buddhism teaches "adukkham asukkham" (NEITHER dukkha NOR sukkha), both are antionmies parcel to temporal or khandhic being.

You err in failing to mention, that while nice pertaining to life, sukkha is a metaphysically EQUALLY undesirable state or hope, and contrary to the endgole of transcendence of both.

[Mahesh CR]

"..term duhkha does not seem to be in the Rig Veda. Duhkha is, therefore, a much later notion."

Really? Absence of a single word indicates that Dukha is a later notion? The word might have been the foundation upon which Buddha launched his investigations but life has suffered and endured from the very first moment there was a wisp of prana to animate flesh.

Rig Veda's approach to solving the riddle of life did not share lexicon of the Buddha but that does not mean the hundred Rishi's were daft to sit and ponder away for nothing. A cursory reading of "Secret of Veda" by Sri Aurobindo would provide the vocabulary and taxonomy to interpret the Rig Veda and understand for oneself what the Rishis actually did.

FYI, I venerate the Buddha and every spiritual being who have left the fruits of their sadhana for humanity. But this foisting of conclusions on what Rig Veda is without having entered into the spirit of its enquiries is counterproductive at so many levels.