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% On Dukkha
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 chaving against 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.
This is extremely weird. If I followed some common descriptions of enlightenment, then achieving it ends dukkha. Thus, if I do not experience it, I must be fully enlightened. I, however, do not agree with this and decided to dig deeper.
Maybe I'm just mistaken? The other two marks of existence, anatta (no-self) and anicca (impermanence) are easy to misunderstand, too. So I got myself the Visuddhimagga, the (perhaps) greatest scholarly work on Buddhism, written by Buddhaghosa around the year 430. It describes, essentially, everything there is to the practice. All teachings and methods presented in a systematic fashion, including all the details and proper sources. I worked through the whole thing, memorized everything of merit, tested it against other people.
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.
Not By Happiness
In the Dhammapada it is suggested that, in order to achieve deliverance, we must be rid of the double yoke of Good and Evil. That Good itself should be one of our fetters we are too spiritually retarded to be able to admit. And so we shall not be delivered.
-- Emil Cioran, De l'inconvénient d'être né (english translation)
Of all the things I believe or consider reasonably likely, one thing stands out as being extremely unusual. It is not [Trivialism], the [3 Jewels] or [Nondualism]. Those all have respected proponents or, at least, worthy arguments going for them.
Tibetan Buddhists make me sick. Their culture is infested by messages of love and happiness. That which they call enlightenment is mindful heroin. It extinguishes their mind, leaving them, as the Actual Freedom folks call it, "happy and harmless". This is the worst state to be in.
Let me illustrate the point. They are wrong about the meta-physical nature of the world. Choosing between love and hatred is like argueing whether it would be better to be eaten by Nodens, the Lord of the Great Abyss, or Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. It misses the point completely that you are fucked either way. Believing in any moral value misses the point that the universe is fundamentally empty and uncaring, that it has no goal, no judge and no purpose. If you care about happiness, piety, dignity, justice or freedom, then you fail to realize where you are! You are like the pagans living in Dante's Limbo, living quite happy lives, maybe not even aware that they are missing the point of Creation!
Clinging to a life, no matter how happy, traps you further in Samsara.
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.
The best prisoner is the one that loves their chains.