This one keeps giving - amazing.
Beginning with embarrassment, the agitation led to khandhas-dukkha for zandtaomed, but is now opening up to far more.
For zandtao there was a separation in dealing with agitation - vedana-dukkha. On the one hand there was the need to calm the dukkha, but when zandtao focussed only on calm the agitation remained it was too powerful. But he had learned to control the power of dukkha through piti and sukha from Ajaan Buddhadasa’s MwB.
What happened to these jhanas in MwB? They touched the Dhamma as does meditation. After the vedanas Buddhadasa taught the 4 Brahma-Viharas, but zandtao sees love as the control of vedanas so piti and sukha are transformed to love. Dukkha enables the power of love, dukkha is the power of love. No wonder patriarchy is scared of love, they are creating their own downfall through the suffering they cause. And similarly it is no wonder that it supports the mental discipline and concentration thta creates calm and then dissipates the power - with no love and therefore no change involved.
It is important to see agitation as having 2 elements - the agitation that is calmed and the power of love that is the fire of dukkha. The 4 Noble Truths and Ajaan Buddhadasa speak of quenching - nirodha, but zandtao argues for the transforming of that power to love and compassion - hence the 5th Dhamma comrade of karuna. Karuna is spoken of as being free from suffering; when the suffering arises the dukkha is calmed whilst the power of dukkha becomes compassion.
Given the intended outbreak of mental illness in patriarchy, this has huge implications. Some may question this statement but in the doco “Age of Anxiety” the medical solution is a pill - BigPharma. Zandtao hates that - hates pills, but supports Teal's position discussed below.
Look at all the dukkha words that are arising in patriarchy’s daily life - agitation, anxiety, depression and WRS - work-related stress (stress is a dukkha word). So let’s consider the application of the 2 factors of dukkha to these conditions, so we calm the dukkha and separate the power that was creating the dukkha and transform it to love. Can this be seen as a blueprint for dukkha-related mental illness?
With all of these words or conditions there is a presence of dukkha that makes it difficult for the individual to have control of the mind. To begin with, let’s establish what is meant by control of the mind. Control of the mind requires the graces or 5 Dhamma comrades to be able to function without restriction, and that restriction is caused by attachment. This attachment leads to egos and fragmentation that temporarily essentially take over the mind; our actions can arise as sampajanna from the 5 Dhamma comrades or they can arise from attachment that function as if they are a different person eg an angry man.
If the emotion of anger arises and we let the anger take over then we can act out of anger and regret that action later. Such an angry action arises from ego - the angry self acting. In the same way that anger or other emotions can form egos so can dukkha. In zandtao’s case he has learnt this in two ways - agitation and rare panics. With the panic he lost control. In the 2 situations mind perceived a possible problem and built up the problem through rehashing and recirculating, as a result there was a mental state in which there was no control and he then acted without control. Fortunately in neither case did the uncontrolled actions have consequences but the mental state is of concern.
With the agitation the mental state was discomfort, whilst the mind functioned well at times in this discomfort the mind was not in control. And the discomfort could last more than a day. If this had previously happened at work the discomfort would still be present but the pressures of work meant that his concentration-Dhamma-comrade was required and dealt with the situation. In retirement sitting here there were no pressures even though he might have had a desire to write or at least a desire not to have the discomfort.
Let’s consider the agitation. Mindfulness would see the agitation growing, mindfulness would suggest calm but calm did not work because agitation also had energy and power. Mindfulness could feel calm but the agitation was still there because the energy had not gone away. He was pulling at his hair to deal with the energy and not because his mindfulness was not calm. Without dealing with the energy, mindfulness could not cope. And mindfulness started to cope by transforming the energy to spiritual love but it could be any love - spiritual love is of course “safe”.
For Ajaan Dtun his quiet monastery without modern life enabled his calm, he did not discuss the energy and power but zandtao suspects the discipline enabled the power simply to be dissipated. Because phassa had prevented dukkha from having contect there was nowhere for the energy to go. As opposed to zandtao who let the energy become love.
But if it is energy it is chi. Tai chi is highly recommended online for anxiety and depression, so dealing with dukkha is also harmony with chi - Tai Chi. But what more is it?
3 characteristics of existence - anatta, dukkha and anicca - are they characteristics of all existence? All life is devoid of self, nothing is permanent; all experience has dukkha? That rings a bell, all experience has dukkha - except for beyond lokutarra. And there is no one way of dealing with all experience.
This dukkha just keeps on giving. Dukkha is a characteristic of existence and as such obeys the law of paticcasamuppada. Previously zandtao had seen paticcasamuppada as being concerned with events leading to self - in other words the characteristic of anatta. But with dukkha arising with events, this can also lead to ego according to paticcasamuppada.
Spectrum of Dukkha
But the importance of this is best seen with this next realisation - dukkha is best understood as a spectrum of sufferings. It is no wonder that it is difficult to find a word to translate dukkha when in English these sufferings all have different words. For example dukkha is ill-at-ease but it can also be grief, these 2 are dukkha but at very different positions on a spectrum. Then you can look at other dukkha words like worry, restlessness, agitation, anxiety, frustration, panic, depression etc. These sufferings also can have very different positions on the dukkha spectrum. To recognise and release dukkha a spectrum approach is required - the spectrum approach of khandhas. So without previously describing dukkha as a spectrum of sufferings zandtao had come up with a strategy to cope - khandha-dukkha.
All khandhas require techniques for dealing with dukkha. For kaya-dukkha there is piti, and vedana-dukkha is sukha. In terms of ZPAP these occur at stages 5 and 6.
“Sanna-dukkha is so different. Zandtao addresses sanna-dukkha through completeness and Seeker Story, but it would have to be zandtaomed PhD to deal with it properly. Sankhara-dukkha leads to egos of mental process that zandtao released in stage 12 as well as sanna-dukkha that ongoing conditioning might give rise to after the releases of the Seeker Story.” from the advice on khandha-dukkha.
Sanna is memories and perceptions, and is dealt with in the Seeker Story. This of course is vast, and to be done properly requires the zandtaomed PhD strategy.
Sankhara-dukkha in a sense is glossed over, but zandtao now wishes to address dukkhas that can arise through mental processes - anxiety, frustration and depression. As mentioned above zandtao began watching the "Age of Anxiety" doco in which various people described many different mental processes causing anxiety. But what zandtao saw was sankhara-dukkha - mental processes causing dukkha as anxiety. MwB as ZPAP works its way across the 4 tetrads - 4 foundations of mindfulness. Firstly it conditions kaya, and in terms of dukkha zandtao has now called that piti. Then there is sukha to cope with vedana, but vedana are very powerful so exercise such as Tai Chi would help. Then we have all the fragmentation of sanna. Integrating these is complex, and is begun for zandtao as Seeker Story. And finally we have the mental process that can create the anxiety. Without all the energy and dukkha of the 1st 3 tetrads then we can examine the mental process that is causing the anxiety, the way the mental process unnecessarily repeats thought sequences that lead to a scenario that causes anxiety. Without all the energy of the 1st 2 tetrads such mental processes have less impact (power).
In his life Zandtao has a thought process that brings dukkha - frustration. He is frustrated for those people who want to follow the path but are unable to hear what he says. It is futile to keep trying to talk about the path yet at the same time it is a property of path to try to help others. Frustration occurs with this process, and it is futile to continue in an attached way. This is mainly a friends’ issue because he wants friends to follow their paths but he gets frustrated when he cannot help them do this. He has to accept that it is futile to try, and remain detached from any path discussion he has.
Accepting futility and remaining detached deals with this frustration. Does it also help with depression? Teal talks about depression as accepting futility (note the warning at the beginning of the clip if appropriate). Ruby Wax spoke of a cloud descending with her depression, and one person with bad anxiety spoke of a cloud following her. Zandtao could see this cloud as dukkha, and would hope integration and ZPAP could help. Teal’s solution is similar - her completion process, and she offers this as a solution for depression.
Through this dukkha door is far more understanding and far better strategies for coping than BigPharma. Zandtao notes that Teal said to continue with meds if they are helpful but she was not happy with them; zandtao feels the same way about drugs.
Existence arises out of consciousness as mind's attention is given to an event, therefore dukkha must arise with this attention - there is no dukkha in consciousness. The question is then "what happens to this dukkha that arises from the attention of mind?" According to paticcasamuppada we have the potential for attachment and egos arising, these attachments could be described using the different terms of the spectrum of sufferings. Through ZPAP these dukkhas are released through meditation, initially the kaya-conditioner as well as the piti and sukha of the vedana-conditioner. What is important about these releases is that they are the power or energy for the more impactful aspects of dukkha. For example anxiety arises as worry from the mind - a thought process, but that worry has no power and would simply be released as an unnecessary concern; if there is energy that worry has powerful energy to turn the thought of worry into a type of anxiety. It is the uncontrolled thoughts of sankhara that direct the energy and make some dukkhas powerful. This is why Tai Chi proves so useful for anxiety and depression because through Tai Chi the mind learns to control energy - chi. To complement such physical forms of energetic control, the 5 Dhamma comrades can control the thoughts of sankhara and with the mind also controlling the energy the dukkha does not become a fire to be quenched. This integrated approach where consciousness, body, emotion and mind work together is the way of minimising dukkha. But it is important to recognise that dukkha, some part of the spectrum of suffering, arises with all events, and if work is not done that dukkha can impact lives. This must be of particular note for a western upbringing where other than physical exercise and social control of behaviour there is nothing that addresses dukkha - nothing that addresses the energy or stresses that arise in the body. Learn to handle this characteristic - dukkha.
The characteristic of dukkha keeps on giving as yet anicca has not; is that to come? WOW Anicca and paticcasamuppada?
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