HW 30

I decided to explore the Buddhism origin of Dukkha, from my research it seems as though they have three ways of defining it. (I am just going to copy and paste their definitions of it because I like the way they are explained).

1. In the Four Noble Truths Dukkha is represented as birth, old age, sickness, and death; grief, sorrow, physical and mental pain; involvement in what one dislikes and separation from what one likes; not getting what one wants; in summary, the five groups of grasping (or craving) are the source of suffering.
2. Threefold Dukkha is ordinary physical and mental pain, that is, pure or intrinsic suffering, suffering as the result of change, suffering owing to the impermanent and ephemeral nature of things; and sufferings due to the formations of individuals and their temporal or finite states.
3. It is maintained that all transient beings, whether gods, humans, pretas (deceased), animals, or inhabitant of hell, are subject to Dukkha. Gods suffer the least since they are in a hierarchy of different beings, and the inhabitants of hell the most. Humans lying midway experience a mixture of suffering and happiness; this makes them best fitted to escape from their temporary surroundings, because the mixture gives them both the opportunity and the impetus to discriminate the nature of reality.

In my own words I think that their first definition is basically trying to say is that we all suffer. Some of us suffer more than others but we are all humans with feelings and emotions. Our lives play out more similarly than we realize we are all brought to this planet and we are not here forever. We all see death and we all see sickness. We all get hurt and have to learn to cope with it. We are all here trying to figure out and discover our purpose before our time runs out. By doing this we figure out what makes us happy and what doesn’t, yet one person doesn’t always get everything they strive for. We are all here on this planet together and only for a brief moment. The second definition continues to emphasize the suffering but the idea that after everything we do there will be suffering. Since we are a creature that has feelings and emotions we are guaranteed to come out of situations with sorrow. Maybe not because we are upset about what we just did but the fact that it is over. The third definition reminds us that we are equal regardless if we come from different places. That in our lifetime we will all experience Dukkha. We use “happiness” as a way to escape reality, this than allows us to forget our suffering for that moment. By doing this we distract ourselves for what we all know is coming next. Before I decided to focus on this one philosophy I was thinking about my own idea of why we find it so necessary to live the way we do. I think this universe and this world is just like the game Jenga. For those who have never heard of this it is the game where you have a tower of wood blocks and you have to pull ones from the bottom out one by one and keep stacking them on top of each other. If the tower falls the game is over. Just like Jenga I think humans represent the wooden blocks and the tower represents the world. We are all here together for that brief moment in time and although we hate to admit it we all need each other to survive. Every move we make and every moment we live has an affect on the other 6,706,993,152 people on this planet. Just like in the game we try to move forward to get closer and closer to the top of things. While doing this though sometimes we suffer and loose loved ones, family members friends. This than makes us feel incomplete and we loose our sense of “happiness”. For just like our lifespan is brief so is our happiness. So while we play the game of life we feel it necessary to do as much as we can before our tower falls. We feel that without all the things we buy, all the conflicts and drama we make and all the unnecessary judgments we have throughout out lives when the day comes where the tower falls we will feel incomplete about ourselves. I think some also to factor in is that all the wooden blocks are identical to one another; I think we are frightened to want to be different. Maybe not frightened but unaware of how to not be a cookie cut person. We are so focused on death that we sometimes forget to live.