---
title: On Samsara
date: 2011-08-02
techne: :done
episteme: :broken
---

> [The teacher] said, "You know, most of you are not qualified for *samsara*! Let alone the pursuit of nirvana. Do any of you have *jobs*?" And what he got on to was this question of being successful at samsara. It was really an important issue. There is this idea of *revulsion with samsara*. People hear this, "You must become revolted with samsara in order to become a Dharma practitioner!". And many people seem to misunderstand this as, yes, I'm revolted by samsara because I can't keep my bank balance in credit, I've got a problem with personal hygiene, whatever the issue is, people don't like me, I'm always doing the wrong thing and yes, it's miserable, I wanna go and live in a nice Tibetan center where I don't have to deal with it anymore.
> 
> This is not revulsion with samsara. When I'm talking about *success* at samsara, I'm not talking about getting rich. I'm simply talking about having an idea and being able to follow that idea through.
>
> So I want to learn a language, so I learn a language. I take a class to learn to do something, I do it. I get a job, I fulfill the role of the job, etc. I'm not always getting the sack because I'm useless. Now, the interesting thing is, in order to be successful at samsara, you need *desire*. And your desire has to be *sufficient* to going after what you want and *getting* it. Put the work in to get what you want.
> 
> Then you *get* what you want and *then* you experience samsara. Until you're able to get what you want and go after it and obtain it, you don't know what samsara *is*.
> 
> Because that point where you get what you want is extremely interesting. There's nothing wrong with it. It's actually quite *delightful*. But then when you have what you want and you're sitting there with it, thinking, "This is a jolly nice thing!", there's a certain strange edginess about that, which is, "How long can I sit here and admire it?".
> 
> Now, from a [Sutrayana][] perspective we would say, that is because this thing that I desired so much does not have the capacity to satisfy me. "The things of the world are hollow and worthless!" (This is not actually true, you know. They are pretty neat, things of the world. I love 'em. More more more!) [...]
>
> And the important thing about this, from a [Vajrayana][] point of view, is that there's nothing wrong with *things*. The things *do* contain the capacity to make us happy forever. It is *we* who get in the way of this process. Because what I want to be doing is not *having* what I want, but moving *towards* it. So that when I *get* what I want, the discomfort of that situation is that I'm no longer in motion. The process has come to an end and in that position, although I *have*, it's a position of emptiness because there's nowhere to go. That is why people do not like to be happy. They like to be moving *towards* happy.
> 
> Because happy is *useless* from the point of view of samsara. "So I'm happy. What now? Where do I go?"
>
> -- Ngak'chang Rinpoche, excerpt from talk on [samsara, suffering and suspicion][Samsara Talk]

Compare [Gospel of Muflax][], written October 2010:

> - TOKSHI said, now is good, tomorrow never good enough.
> - TOKSHI said, don't wish for things because then you will get exactly what you wished for and it will totally suck and you will look stupid.
> - TOKSHI said, don't be happy.

About a month later, I wrote in a draft:

> I experience no dukkha.
> 
> What is dukkha? It is one of three marks of existence, according to Buddhism. It means unsatisfactoriness or suffering, in the sense of an axle of a horse cart tumbling in a poor hole, which is the origin of the word. Overcoming it is the whole idea of Buddhism, experiencing it is why the Buddha started his quest in the first place.
> 
> I am not using a semantic trick. It is not an exaggeration, not a koan, nothing like this at all. I mean it, straightforward. *I experience no dukkha*.
>
> I understand what dukkha is. I see it in other people, quite clearly. I cannot find it in me.
> 
> The teachers cannot help me anymore.

I declared firmly that I want to experience dukkha. Shortly afterwards, I sat down and swore not to rise again until dukkha would appear. Pain came and went, fear came and went, boredom came and went, but no dukkha. Finally, all pain dropped away and I arose happy.

Some days later, dukkha came. I wrote in another draft:

> > I've yet to have an experience of any kind - game playing, sexual, food, travel - where I said, 'This is the most fun I could ever possible have in my entire life. I couldn't imagine, for one second, this being more enjoyable.'  I never said that.
> >
> > -- Gabe Zichermann, talk on Game Design
> I actually did. I managed to do exactly this, multiple times in fact. The last time I reproduced this, when I put down a video game controller and felt as happy as I ever could possibly hope to be, yet still unsatisfied, I knew it wasn't just a fluke. There's an upper limit to happiness, I can reach it any time and it still doesn't make the sucking stop.
> 
> This was the turning point for me. I realized that I couldn't just "solve my problems" and live a happy life. I realized that it was fundamentally impossible for me to do so. Not officially, not consciously, but psychologically, I became a Buddhist this day.
> 
> This feeling, this essential unsatisfactoriness, which Buddhists call dukkha, is what I think makes some people get the idea of enlightenment and others not. If you never felt it, you will not understand what it's all about. I don't know what actually makes the difference, what is necessary to feel it. Maybe you need to have lived a carefree and fulfilled enough life for long enough to max out your personal happiness (like the Buddha or I did) or maybe you need a special kind of mind to have the patience to actually optimize for happiness and fail, and have the clarity to realize it. I see no reliable pattern in the kinds of people to feel it, but if you do, welcome to the path. May it be your last.

Not long after that, I broke. (And started the blog.) I thought at first that something was wrong with the *things*. That my goals sucked. Half a year later, I [gave up on happiness altogether][Stances]. I always suspected there was something wrong with being happy. Wireheading seemed simultaneously attractive and evil. But I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Any unsatisfactoriness seemed to just come from me sucking  or following the wrong goal. I hadn't actually done a good job at getting exactly what I want. Luckily, I managed that, often enough to notice something. Two months ago, in another draft:

> You know that feeling when you're almost done with a great game, when you realize that this is the definite last level, there are no more upgrades, no more quests, just this one last obstacle and the boss at the end?
> 
> But you aren't ready to quit?
> 
> So you draw it out. Organize your inventory. Finish all those minor sidequests you've been ignoring. But nothing can push away that realization. It's about to end. Soon, the boss will go down and then what? Credits, memes and a highscore? Big letdown.
> 
> And that's how I feel about life right now. For a while, I thought that's just some depression killing the fun. But I'm not so sure about that anymore.Things are still fun, in a way. It's just that there's not much of an achievement left. None that I care about, anyway.
> 
> (I mean, it's not *literally* the end. I don't exactly expect to *die*. Still got a few decades, I guess.)
> 
> I'll soon be fully enlightened. I mean, a decade ago I didn't even understand what that meant when I decided to go for it. Now I kinda don't want it to happen. In a way, life was more interesting with a big liberation story behind it. Actually being free? Not so fun.
> 
> I really got this playing Minecraft. In a way it's perfect. It's almost exactly what I thought heaven would be like. (Needs more machinery and no height limit, though.) But when I had built a little house, I realized that there's no point to it. I stared upon the vast landscape, knowing that it would be impossible for me to ever be *satisfied* with it.
> 
> There is peace, but it's the peace of a blank screen. It is not victory.

Now I have a useful idea what the symptoms are. I understand that the purpose of self-help for me was merely to create new problems so I could always have something to fix. I never wanted to *arrive* anywhere. This mistake I have fixed.

Liberation can now begin.
