WOLF MUSING

Samsara

The Unpopular View

Photo by National Library of Scotland on Unsplash

I am not trying to build a life — I am trying to exit one

Even the sweetest touch of Samsara is nothing but Nightmare

Samsara is variously defined as the world of illusion, as the world of suffering, and perhaps, these days, as the world of fake news?

The Buddha held, rightly I firmly believe, that life is Dukkha.

This word, Dukkha, is Pali for what is the most common translation, “suffering”. Now, these days it is probably politically incorrect, or religiously incorrect, or something-or-otherly incorrect to just come out and say that “Life is Suffering,” but I don’t think that the Buddha much cared (or cares, if he still looks down on us from the Tusita heaven) to avoid hurting feelings.

I think that for the Buddha, “suffering” would be a mild, almost wimpy, rendering of what he actually meant.

Yes, I believe that Gotama Buddha did mean suffering, that he meant painful, deep, lasting agony, anguish, distress, misery, torment, torture, pick your synonym of choice — especially when viewed with the eye of the spirit, contrasting spiritual bliss with life on Earth.

The Buddha saw life for what it was/is and he called a spade a spade.

Not so these days for suffering and torment do not go so well with the mellower view that life isn’t all that bad, not really; there is much good to be had here: food and entertainment and sex and poetry, so hadn’t we better tone the Buddha down a notch or two?

Perhaps, “life can, at times, be not entirely satisfactory,” or, as one guru keeps insisting, “life can be stressful”.

I’d say.

It really depends on from what layer of understanding you view this Earthly, human (and nonhuman alike, for animals are not spared: it’s all eat or be eaten around here — a zero-sum game if I ever saw one) life. From the Buddha’s enlightened view, and he was firm, life is suffering, torment, agony, no need to pussyfoot around that fact.

Yes, while there are pleasant, some will say pleasurable, sensations and emotions here and there, even those (if you take a good look) are suffering. Even such highly rated and sought-after sensations as sexual orgasms or, for that matter, the ethereal flight of a beautiful piece of classical music, are nothing but prison wall decorations, and if you buy them (which humans, as a rule, do, you’re also buying the wall and with that also the prison itself, i.e., life as we know it here on planet Earth.

Obviously, this is an unpopular view: dark, defeatist, pessimistic, fatalistic, what have you. But this only if you cannot see beyond the prison wall and the prison itself.

Another angle: Peter Englund’s “The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War”. This amazingly well-researched and, yes, very intimate (told from the view of twenty or so individuals who lived, and died, in this war) story lays life out in front of you, and it is not pretty.

This, the “Great War”, has nothing great about it. It was a four-year abomination, an actual hell. No two ways about that. Buy the book and take a look for yourself.

Then, there’s the sequel, with the Holocaust, along with Hiroshima, and yes, this is what humanity is capable of. The only tangible improvement of the Second World War over its predecessor was that people died a little quicker — better weapons, in other words. And probably better medics; they knew how to stuff the drooping intestines back into the shot-asunder soldiers as they screamed for more painkillers or even death itself.

We’ve been busy brushing this under the carpet ever since, even to the insane degree of making heroes out of the best killers and then creating an avalanche of hi-res video games where killing is the best thing on earth; much like we’re brushing under the same carpet the current right-wing insanities and terrifying wars while admiring (applauding) the prison wall decorations.

It does irk me that too many Buddhist teachers and gurus do pussyfoot around the plain misery that is this life — at least on this planet.

Yes, this planet. Sometimes I seriously think that planet Earth is an experiment gone drastically wrong, and I think the Buddha saw that and tried to wake people up to that fact — he still is.

Just saying.

© Wolfstuff

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