> Most people who awaken experience deep compassion for all being because awakening shows them that there’s no real separation between self and other. Not “beings”, mind you, because the plural implies a separation that awakening sees through, but “being” that includes everything and leaves nothing out.
I have a question about this part: AFAIU you are saying that there are no separate "beings". In that case, what is it that suffers?
In the conventional model, suffering and well-being are experienced by individuals. If there are no individuals, then why does it seem as different "beings" experience different levels of suffering and well-being?
This is always a tricky point to explain, so sorry if I didn't do it well. There is some absolute sense in which there doesn't appear to be any separation between one being and another. And yet, we can meaningfully talk about separate beings. Why? The distinctions we draw between self and others are contingent rather than essential. They help us understand the world, but don't seem to exist independent of that understanding. When we try to draw the line between "you" and "me", we find that following the causlaity it gets quite messy to find a cut line, and ultimately the line we draw is based on what is useful to us, and other minds might and do draw other lines.
Thanks for the reply! What does it mean that the distinction is not "essential"? The question of "who/what experiences suffering and well-being" seems very essential to me.
Not essential in that beings do not have a separate, independent essential nature that makes them separate. The appearance of separation is a perceptual fact, one chosen because it's ontologically useful.
Now to be very careful, this can be read as making a metaphysical claim, and what I instead mean to say is that I'm metaphysically skeptical, so it's properly that I'm not claiming there is or isn't ultimately separation between one being and another in some way independent of a mind observing the separation, but rather the only separation we know of is the separation we believe in, and this is generally true of all categorical distinctions we try to make.
For a more full development of this argument, I make it in some detail in my book https://fundamentaluncertainty.com/book/ but a fuller argument of these points is made by the likes of Nagarjuna and Kierkegaard and Husserl.
OK, but what is it that suffers? What is it that enjoys? That's the part of the question that I am most interested in, and that's the part you keep dodging.
This is the right question to ask, but it's hard to answer directly, because the move you need to make to see the heart of what I'm saying is to unask the question. When there's no separation, what suffers? The answer is straightforwardly "nothing", and so suffering falls away.
This all hinges, I should note, on understanding that suffering here is translated jargon for "dukka" and could alternatively be translated as "unsatisfactoriness", "stress", "friction", or "self-imposed suffering". There can be simply pain without suffering, and pain without suffering is merely hedonically neutral, not negative.
> Most people who awaken experience deep compassion for all being because awakening shows them that there’s no real separation between self and other. Not “beings”, mind you, because the plural implies a separation that awakening sees through, but “being” that includes everything and leaves nothing out.
I have a question about this part: AFAIU you are saying that there are no separate "beings". In that case, what is it that suffers?
In the conventional model, suffering and well-being are experienced by individuals. If there are no individuals, then why does it seem as different "beings" experience different levels of suffering and well-being?
This is always a tricky point to explain, so sorry if I didn't do it well. There is some absolute sense in which there doesn't appear to be any separation between one being and another. And yet, we can meaningfully talk about separate beings. Why? The distinctions we draw between self and others are contingent rather than essential. They help us understand the world, but don't seem to exist independent of that understanding. When we try to draw the line between "you" and "me", we find that following the causlaity it gets quite messy to find a cut line, and ultimately the line we draw is based on what is useful to us, and other minds might and do draw other lines.
Thanks for the reply! What does it mean that the distinction is not "essential"? The question of "who/what experiences suffering and well-being" seems very essential to me.
Not essential in that beings do not have a separate, independent essential nature that makes them separate. The appearance of separation is a perceptual fact, one chosen because it's ontologically useful.
Now to be very careful, this can be read as making a metaphysical claim, and what I instead mean to say is that I'm metaphysically skeptical, so it's properly that I'm not claiming there is or isn't ultimately separation between one being and another in some way independent of a mind observing the separation, but rather the only separation we know of is the separation we believe in, and this is generally true of all categorical distinctions we try to make.
For a more full development of this argument, I make it in some detail in my book https://fundamentaluncertainty.com/book/ but a fuller argument of these points is made by the likes of Nagarjuna and Kierkegaard and Husserl.
OK, but what is it that suffers? What is it that enjoys? That's the part of the question that I am most interested in, and that's the part you keep dodging.
This is the right question to ask, but it's hard to answer directly, because the move you need to make to see the heart of what I'm saying is to unask the question. When there's no separation, what suffers? The answer is straightforwardly "nothing", and so suffering falls away.
This all hinges, I should note, on understanding that suffering here is translated jargon for "dukka" and could alternatively be translated as "unsatisfactoriness", "stress", "friction", or "self-imposed suffering". There can be simply pain without suffering, and pain without suffering is merely hedonically neutral, not negative.
Sure, but even if *I* am free from suffering, other beings might still suffer. That is what the whole Bodhisattva business is about, isn't it?