Mar Neecha’s Reply to my reflections on Sammuti: 

The idea is, sammuti starts out arbitrary and then we build on that arbitrary until it feels permanent. Where initially we recognize the arbitrary nature of sammuti, after growing used to it, it becomes real and permanent for us. So much so that after we are removed from the situation we persist in seeing things according to that sammuti. Even being told or seeing for ourselves how something has completely changed doesn’t change how we view it in our minds. Because we feed off of that sammuti. It gives us identity.  It gives us worth. Not universal, but subjective. And even in our subjective view of that sammuti, we are inconsistent – bending our own rules to please ourselves.

As long as it is sammuti, as long as it isn’t a universally accepted notion, it cannot be true.

And once you’ve supposed something to be sammuti, what is “wrong” in terms of that sammuti or “right” in terms of that sammuti – if not just another sammuti concept?  Aka meaningless?

If we can see through this sammuti, we will see its flimsy nature, and all the Tuk Tok Pie it causes us. And we will accept that there is nothing pleasing or attractive in this world. Only suffering.

Alana’s Reply –The Initial Question of How Everything Could Be Suffering:

I have given it some thought and I think I understand, all save the last line which I am struggling with a bit. So I am just going to ask — what is the bridge that gets you from the flimsy nature of sammuti and the suffering it causes (which is obvious to me when I think about my own sammuti for mother and partner) to the nothing pleasing in the world, everything suffering

I see this statement a lot actually — ‘everything only suffering’ and I balk at it because it doesn’t exactly feel true; probably because I also see pleasure in the world — it exists, it is what we are born for, it certainly seems real. It is just that it comes along with suffering, no way outta that. I always sorta figured practice was about laying down both.

Little personal example I have long thought of as a parallel to practice.. When I was young, I used to do ecstasy with my friends — it was a blast for a few hours, that was undeniable, but the lows afterwards were horrible, just days of depression. The reason is simple, the very thing that makes the drug fun — it flooding your brain with dopamine and serotonin –means your stores of these essential brain chemicals are  used up and it takes days to replenish them. You are miserable until the replenishment happens.  One morning, after a fun night on drugs, I woke up so deeply depressed, and in that moment I decide “not fucking worth it.” And that was the end of my ecstasy use — it’s not that it was ‘all suffering’ it was just that it was a shit ton of suffering for a few hours of pleasure and the math didn’t make sense to me. Never was I even the slightest bit tempted again.

So maybe that is what it is and ‘everything is suffering’ is just short hand for ‘ no possible way to disaggregate suffering and pleasure so either pick them both or leave them both behind’. That I totally get. Or maybe there is something I am missing? Some self deception so deep it makes what is  unpleasurable a delight?

On another note, Eric got a CT scan yesterday; no sign of cancer, lots of kidney stones. It’s a relief of course, but it is sorta funny — it’s bad news, he likely needs surgery, but it sure seems like great news because it could be so much worse …ah, maybe that is the trick to seeing everything as suffering, when less bad turns into awesome…