Two Sides of Dukkha:A Dialogue with Grief

-continuation of  Two Sides of Dukkha:A Dialogue with Desire

II Grief

Mourning and grief are the other side of desire in this particular hypothesis.  Loss of that which is desirable or even comfortable and familiar gives a sense of shock.  Reality has changed.

Dealing with impermanence, if one is rooted in desire, is difficult.

In the doctrine of dependent origination or co-arising the conditioning of Samsara is related. One thing leads to another is the basic premise. That seems to be the premise of most of Buddhist doctrine from karma to rebirth as well as the 4 Noble Truths and the realms described within the Abhidharma. Everything comes from something before and carries on to something beyond. The only end as described in Buddhist doctrine is to end ignorance.  Returning to the point of origin and understanding it’s meaning.

And what is dependent co-arising? From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications. From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness. From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form. From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media. From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact. From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving. From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging/sustenance. From clinging/sustenance as a requisite condition comes becoming. From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth. From birth as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering. 

“And what is ignorance? Not knowing stress, not knowing the origination of stress, not knowing the cessation of stress, not knowing the way of practice leading to the cessation of stress: This is called ignorance.

Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta: Analysis of Dependent Co-arising

When we reach the end of something or the loss of something there is often a state of loss or grief that needs to be dealt with. In psychology there have been many theories posited about the grieving process. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief are probably the most well known.

The discipline of psychology has been interested in grief and loss for many decades. There are specially qualified grief counselors for this purpose. Perhaps there needs to be specially qualified “desire” counselors as well.

Grief is a time of adjustment. We must acquaint ourselves with an alteration of circumstances and re-orient our lives to account for that alteration.  It is an acquaintance that takes time and energy and does cause some amount of discomfort simply because we are human.

When one is free from passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, & craving for form, then with any change & alteration in that form, there does not arise any sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, or despair… Seeing this benefit, our teacher teaches the subduing of passion & desire for form… for feeling… for perception… for fabrications.

Devadaha Sutta: At Devadaha

This is not to say we need to become inhuman automatons in order to deal with grief and loss.  The passage above contains the suggestion that a subduing of passion and desire is beneficial in later dealing with change and alteration. It does not say there is an eradication of it. And it does not say change will not occur. What is advocated is a reasonable stance towards excessiveness.

We have form. We have feelings. We have perception. All due to our human birth. In dealing with loss exaggerating or distorting these things with fantasy and simply being them are two different things.

In dialogue there appears a difference between types of loss, that is situations involving material objects and situations involving living beings. Although I have met people who were more invested and showed more concern for the denting of their cars than in the death of a relative or friend.  Such an arrangement of priorities is a little alien to me. There is an ad currently running on Indian television with the well known actress Priyanka Chopra about a new brand of cell phone.   The last line states,  “It’s not just a phone it’s who we are.”

Here’s a copy of it on YouTube:

With relation to objects the more one has investment in personally identifying with those objects the stronger the loss reaction becomes:

• my whole life was on my phone
• I can’t do anything without my car
• I can’t live without my…

There are a lot of variations on the theme.  Tying identity to objects is a common practice.  Ownership becomes about my identity as projected through an object or relationship. Such phrases as “a man’s home is his castle”  come to mind. The concept of shelter is tied directly to an ego boosting concept of kingship.  Is it really “who we are” ?

Consider the crime of identity theft. If someone steals your stuff, including your name are they really stealing who you are? If so, who are you beyond that stuff?  Is “stuff” worth grief?

With regard to people I am reminded of a story I heard some time ago. A young man was scheduled to go to a retreat in Europe. This happened to coincide with the time his father was dying. Rather than sit vigil with his father in his last moments the young man decided to attend the retreat supposedly in a demonstration of non-attachment.  This is not non-attachment it is denial. It is not a compassionate way of doing things. It is cruel both towards the father and towards himself. It is selfish, misguided and a misrepresentation of non-attachment. It is an act of defiance against reality and ego pride. Even if there were family issues, to use a Buddhist concept as an excuse is still denial.

There are irrational and rational dialogues when one is confronted with the loss in one’s life of living beings. The irrational dialogues:

• my life is over if he doesn’t love me
• I am nothing without them
• my life is now empty and meaningless
• How will I survive?
• this is senseless

More rational dialogues include:

• this is not what I would have wanted
• I feel disturbed/uncomfortable/sad
• adjustments will have to be made
• I will miss them
• I loved them then and still do
• I wish this hadn’t happened but it has and now I will deal with it

All these dialogues can occur simultaneously or move from the irrational to the rational as one begins to adjust to the new circumstances.  But it takes time. As we have taken time to collect and maintain  those close relationships and even though many of us come with a default set of relationships called a family upon birth there have likely been many years of familiarization with those family members, it also takes time to adjust to changes to that familiar grouping.

III Conclusion and Some Resources

Connection and attachment are two different things.  We are interconnected beings. We come from a birth mother and father. We have friends, relatives, possessions. We need interconnection to survive.  It is our context. There is the old saying “No man is an island.” and it is quite true. How we handle interconnection in terms of desire and becoming tangled in it or strangled by it makes all the difference in the quality of one’s life.  Attachment and clinging to attachments with fervor amplify suffering. Connection is an acknowledgment of the reality of our human situation.

And when that web of interconnection is disturbed we must adjust.  The more enmeshed one becomes with fantasies or delusions the more adjustments beyond those of necessity are required.  And if we try to deny the need for adjustments or cover them by apparent indifference we are still adjusting but not in a healthy way.

Desire is about the future and grief is about the past. Neither have any reality except in imagination and memory.

Addendum:

Barry Briggs made a good comment on the last post pointing out his thoughts that the other side of desire is aversion. Rather than comment there I will address it here.

In these posts I am thinking more of gain and loss. A little more materialistically.  A conceptual framework from the Star Trek characters world-view.   In the sense of commodification of the self, others and objects.

Aversion to me is also “anti-desire” but in a different sense. Engagement vs. escape. Attraction vs. avoidance. Aversion is still as tied up with the object with the same intensity. Both are tied to ego preferences. With loss, the object as we have solidified it and attached to it in mind is gone or radically altered so as to be unattached. Gone is gone and desire cannot endure. Neither can aversion.

It is like love and hate. People say the opposite of love is hate but I think the opposite of love is indifference.

So in this view desire is the anticipation and the clinging while grief is the aftermath.  Desire is a fantasy of gain and grief is dealing with the reality of impermanence. Still tied together but pivoting on the intersection of time, reality and the inevitability of change.

As well dukkha is such a big term it could well have more than two sides.  The breadth of it includes:

• Dukkha-dukkha (pain of pain) is the obvious sufferings of :

1. pain
2. illness
3. old age
4. death
5. bereavement

• Viparinama-dukkha (pain of alteration) is suffering caused by change:

1. violated expectations
2. the failure of happy moments to last

• Sankhara-dukkha (pain of formation) is a subtle form of suffering arising as a reaction to qualities of conditioned things, including the

1. skandhas
2. the factors constituting the human mind

Every one of these aspects has an element of desire as well as the potential for aversion, grief, longing, dissatisfaction, failure, disruption, anxiety, disappointment, regret, cruelty and disillusionment.  Plenty of fuel. Plenty of dukkha for everyone.

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Here is a video of Pema Chodron called Working With Shenpa During Meditation

Article in Shambala Sun on Shenpa by Pema Chodron

Article in Tricycle on Shenpa by Pema Chodron called Don’t Bite the Hook