(May 31, 2016 at 9:39 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I don't see it that way. Most of the worst pains are psychological: missing someone, fearing something, etc.
But in the end, unless you are really a wreck physically, you can forget even the death of a loved one long enough to hear the birds singing outside your window in the morning. This is the lesson of Buddhism-- that we inflict the pain on ourselves by hanging on to it.
I can say from my own experience that mental pain can be transmuted to beauty almost every time.
Yeah, I'm starting to see that too. To live in the moment, without attachment and to dispense with the 'second arrow' would probably cut out 90% of human suffering. Even in the process of death, the worst part of the suffering would probably be the second arrow - all the fear, panic, exaggeration, and uncertainty. Without all of that it would just be the first arrow... the direct, physical pain... and pain on its own, though it can be various intensities, is just pain... it sucks but it can be endured and with no desire for it to end or fear that it means the end, death perhaps wouldn't be such a traumatic experience.
But my gut feeling - at the moment at least - is still with Cicero, but then I have not yet understood, in both senses of the term, the First Noble Truth: "There is suffering. Suffering should be understood. Suffering has been understood" and where understood actually means 'stood under' as in mindfully observed and reflected upon, wherever it crops up and in whatever form. So that's my task at the moment and who knows, if it resonates with me and makes sense, then maybe I'll switch sides to the other guy, but till then I'm with Cicero
