In Buddhism, desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering. By desire, Buddhists refer to craving pleasure, material goods, and immortality, all of which are wants that can never be satisfied. As a result, desiring them can only bring suffering.
Sorry OP it was too tempting
infinitely improved
fuckin based
Joe Biden’s America smh my head
Daaaaamn you really shouldn’t have to tag a joke. I’m sorry, comrade.
People are wound too tight these days
this is th efutur the libturds want
Shaking my head my head?
It’s a joke. Like ATM machine
I’m surprised they’ve never seen SMH my head before…
Either I didn’t, or I never noticed.
ATM? Like a cash machine or…?
ATM = automated teller machine
ATM machine = automated teller machine machine
“Wow, thanks. I’m cured.”
Exactly…
Damn ppl are hella upset and somehow made this 2500 year old quote from the Buddha political.
The context of ‘desire’ for this Buddhist quote relates to the desire of ignorant things like a fancy car and not thoughtful desire like wanting better material conditions for yourself or others.
There are separate terms for this type of desire which are lost in translation.
Additionally I’d say the comic really over simplifies it because it’s trying to be clever but basically it’s saying the happiness is right in front of you and your ignorant desires are blocking you from reaching it. Meanwhile the path to enlightenment and even not desiring ignorant things is a long path.
Except this is a bastardization of Buddhist teachings. The Buddhist does not seek happiness by letting go of material desires. They seek peace, enlightenment, and release from suffering, but these are not the same as happiness.
It would be more accurate, although less compelling, if the word was “contentment.”
The accurate term is a cessation of suffering.
Joshu was at the market weighing out some flax. His attended asked him: “Master I cannot wait any longer. Just tell me: what is Buddha?” Joshu responded: “Seven pounds of flax”
What did Joshu mean by this?
Work on that koan is my advice to you.
That is true. I couldn’t think of a word that meant absence of suffering. Since suffering can also mean discomfort or discontentment, I suggested contentment. It’s not a perfect fit, but I think it’s closer to the notion than happiness or comfort.
What single word would you use to describe the cessation of suffering?
I wouldn’t try to use a single word for that term.
Good point
It wasn’t made political: it’s always been political. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it wasn’t political then or isn’t political now.
There are entire political parties functionally dedicated to the opposition of this statement.
Oh man, Sidhartha Gautama, is basically born of politics.
Prince, who rallies against the ruling ideals of Hindu beliefs of suffering being the best way to live life and that hurting yourself brings you closer to holy instead of further from reality.
Heck, Buddhism at its original core is less a religion and more of a counter culture movement against the ruling political and social ideas of his time.
As someone else explained, ‘desire’ in Buddhism is a bit more complicated than ignorant things. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said,
Additionally I’d say the comic really over simplifies it because it’s trying to be clever but basically it’s saying the happiness is right in front of you and your ignorant desires are blocking you from reaching it. Meanwhile the path to enlightenment and even not desiring ignorant things is a long path.
In trying to be clever the message got muffled. My understanding is that Buddhism is about letting go of unhappiness over things that you can’t control.
It’s acceptance that there is 3 truths to your existence.
You were born.
You will suffer.
You will die.You must find the right path through actions, effort, mental fortitude, and other aspects (even the words you speak) to find it in yourself to move past the suffering that is inherent to life, to live and put back less suffering into the world.
But we absolutely have the ability to control and shape our reality to do so, even though it does not come with the ability to end suffering.
No the “attachment” in buddhism does not refer to fancy things. It refers to using one’s mind like a pitbull’s jaws to grasp things tightly.
This can happen with anything, not just luxuries. You can be attached to your meditation practice if you approach it the wrong way. And it will cause suffering, just like attachment in all other contexts.
The attachment thing isn’t a moral phenomenon, it’s a psychological one.
This. Everything ends, no matter how tightly you hold on to it. Enjoy the time you have now, the future is promised to no one. Happiness, or at least contentedness, comes when you live completely in the moment, not desiring for a certain future or yearning for a different past.
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I desire to have a place to live without fear of homelessness.
I desire a job I don’t hate or have to slave away at for 50 years to hope someday I might be able to enjoy the last few years of my life, if I even get to live that long.
I desire a world that isn’t slowly dying because of the shittiness of a fraction of the population.
My unhappiness is my fault. Clearly.
Yeah. If you stopped desiring those things and learned to live with your allocations, you would be happy. Now quit yapping and get back to work before I give this job to someone more
desparatedriven than you.There are some things you can control, and some things you can’t (or can but but with insane effort).
In the words of my mother, who was almost executed in a bloody civil war, survived a husband who never let her work and then ditched her to support herself without a pension:
“All you have is your health and these tender moments. Everything else is just extra.”
Happiness is an internal thing. Those are all external things. You can be happy despite there being things around you that are shit. You can be happy, and still work to improve your situation and others. You can be happy, and uncomfortable. None of these are either-or.
All three of those are in your head.
I’ve been homeless. I don’t live in fear of homelessness.
I’ve found a job I don’t hate. Also, I meditate to just reduce the hate I feel generally.
I don’t think our world is dying, any more than the normal fact that everything is always dying.
Do you meditate? I think you can legit have a better life by altering your attitude.
Hey I’m Buddhist too but there is some callousness in your response that negates the suffering of others. It isn’t just about pretending it’s all in our heads, but an acceptance of the things we can and can not change with the right movement to improve.
There is a reason the 8 fold path isn’t just, ignore it, ignore it harder, etc. attitude is but a single focus on the greater wheel.
I have been homeless, 4 separate times, it is not something to brag about or wish upon others.
And our world is having issues as people do not like to look at it clearly and do not think to check the harm they do to it.Humans are unique, we are the only species that can truly change our environment and our world to fit our needs, what we should do is recognize that ability and help to slow the cycle of suffering, do not get stuck on just changing the mind and nothing else.
What steps are you taking to achieve these goals? I think the most important one would be to find a job you like.
ah yes let me add job hunting to my current list of things I have to cram into a single workday, hope I can find one that doesn’t pay substantially less than my current job, apply for an interview, and pray to god that they hire me and that I won’t have to move house in order to accept the position
You have time to look for a job hunt if its a priority. What other option do you have if you actually want a better life?
For this person, a better life consists of the satisfied smirk they get to feel for a few seconds any time they hear of a successful person failing.
I have to say I wont be able to relate to them, it just sounds like a terrible way to live.
Happiness comes when your needs are fulfilled. You can’t be happy if you’re constantly thinking about how to survive next week.
Stop wanting to survive. Then the true embrace of happiness will be upon you…
Except that it doesn’t. People with every one of their biological needs fulfilled still manage to be unhappy. Happiness is an internal thing, not tied to externalities except that you, the individual, is attaching a desire to a certain outcome.
Everything will end, everyone will fail. We can’t control that, and the more we try to, the more we realize it’s fruitless, and the more unhappy we become. There’s a limited section of the world you can control 100% - all of that exists inside you. There’s another broader section that you can exude some control over - the natural world around you. And then there’s the stuff that you have absolutely zero influence over. The eventual death of everything, the tendencies of society, and the things that go on inside of other people. We get so caught up in those last two things, the ones we have little or no control over, and forgot to maintain the one thing we actually can.
True but I am skeptical that many people here are really at risk of not surviving.
Though there could be people at risk of eviction which is an extremely stressful and dangerous thing to happen to you.
You can’t be happy if you’re constantly thinking about how to survive next week.
Fortunately, you don’t need to think constantly in order to survive.
This is the equivalent of “Don’t improve. Lower your expectations.”
How is it equivalent?
How is it equivalent?
Man the Buddha would be so disappointed with the responses in here.
If shaving your head and wearing robes absolved us of suffering we would do that to our children at birth and throw them out the door for they are already perfect.
If thinking the word happy was enough to make someone truly so the world would be a different place but that is not the case. We must make many stands and apply ourselves in several aspects to be resistant to the suffering. And it does not end.
But it does not mean you are free to halt action or pushing for better. If you cling to a single aspect of stopping the suffering you do not change as needed to live within a changing world.
There are 8 aspects to living a life of reduced suffering so try not get stuck on one and miss out on all the others, sometimes you must change more than just your mindfulness.
Yeah. Fuck, not all of us are even ready to escape samsara. I’d love to go again when I’m done. I understand it will suck, but it’s what I want. Nirvana is nearly impossible with that in my heart. Instead I am better off living a life of kind wisdom and trying to find my way to staying middle class in future lives.
Sometimes you’re miserable because you’re thinking guarantees it, other times you’re miserable because you’re not planting the seeds of joy, but expect to harvest it anyways.
Or don’t listen to me, I’m not even a Buddhist, I just bothered to figure out what they think is wrong with me
That’s fine. Did you know according the people “in charge” of Buddhist sects there are only 28(ish) people who have reached nirvana and they even say that they are all reincarnations of Gautama, which makes the whole escaping Samsara thing kinda a losing battle for all of us if you think about it for a second.
Mahayana even doesn’t agree and says that none of us get out of it until all of us do (which at least hold consistent that you can’t have humans suffering if there are no humans left)I think you may be looking to much into it though. But apparently so am I.
Sometimes you are just miserable.
And sometimes you aren’t.I wish you well on your path however you choose to go it, and if you choose nothing at all I hope the fates are kind.
I think you summed it up well. We’re overthinking this. But also I approach Buddhist philosophy like I approach all philosophy. I’m reminded of how a couple friends of mine open relationship classes they teach “if this helps you wonderful, use it, and if it doesn’t that’s ok too.”
The whole package is great, but it’s not for me but wisdom often comes from the contemplation of ideas, including ones you don’t adopt.
The face in that last panel isn’t happiness; it’s acceptance that happiness is a transitory state.
Lobotomised 🤗🤪😘
Granted idk how it works in theravada which i assume this is about but it’s weird that you’d achieve things once you stop desiring them. Seems like orientalist/new age weirdness. Like a reverse law of attraction or something. Happiness isn’t the end goal nor the result of letting go of attachments.
Maybe its the way this comic was written but its more than a little ironic that people on here are so lib-brained that they understand the buddhist conception of letting go as a matter of morality
how do i do that though?
If it is something you can change… Try. It may not work and wanting it to work may hurt you should it fail to change, but you got to try.
If it’s something you can not hope to change try to relieve yourself of worrying about it.This is actual Buddhism and not the white yuppy idea of sitting in a nice garden and emptying your brain of thinking about stuff.
You should try to empty your head a bit. Focus on what is in front of you currently but you will always have some suffering. You may want food but not have anything to eat. You can try to ask for it, or make some, or think that food is unnecessary as ways to appease that suffering but you may just end up hungry at which point you must try not to lament on it. Things will not always be true, not even life.
The trick is to be content with living. And live the moments that are happy and not try to hold on to tightly should they leave.
Well you won’t find happiness in Buddhism. That’s not that it’s not worthwhile or a good religion, it’s a great religion, it just isn’t selling happiness. It’s hawking inner peace, and the price is adherence to the eightfold path in an attempt to live a life of neither excess nor self deprivation so that you may stop the suffering caused by desiring transient things like happiness.
Oh cool so if I just stopped Desiring to want to be part of a family group and stop Desiring connection to a community and stop Desiring friends I’ll be happy haha it’s that easy!!!
It’s literally a lifelong journey to find happiness despite the things you can’t control not being exactly how you want them. No one said easy, just possible.
Great comic, and text, thank you. And it is not only this. People want happiness and pleasure but not pain, and those two are sides of the same coin. Learning to be content with what you have can bring great joy.
Nah, my thoughts are fine for now - it’s me who belongs in a garbage can, not some poor words.
I want to fart
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💨
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… happiness
