I think it's sort of a chicken and egg effect. Suffering causes a desire for things to be different than they are, and a desire for things to be different than they are causes suffering.

This lends some truth to Buddhist methodology as a means of suffering-reduction, but also runs contrary to their hopes of ever completely eliminating all suffering by giving up all desires, because some suffering just thrusts itself upon us causing us to desire its absence, not vice versa.

I think it's sort of a chicken and egg effect. Suffering causes a desire for things to be different than they are, and a desire for things to be different than they are causes suffering — Pfhorrest

But without suffering one would not desire for things to be different, right? Suffering necessarily becomes the first cause, or first link in the causal chain.

I don’t think that’s accurate. I think a more accurate translation is “suffering is caused by expectation”. I, for example, expect my internet connection to be stable since it’s being payed for, so when it isn’t I get angry. But if you give a homeless person internet connection he probably won’t expect it to be smooth so he will not suffer when it lags. Even if both me and the homeless person DESIRED the same thing (for example to look up the price of houses in a certain state to move to) I suffer because I EXPECT the world to be a certain way and my expectations get dashed.

So the way not to suffer is to have no expectations. This is different from having low expectations.

Not necessarily. Say things were objectively fine -- you had all your basic needs met as satisfactorily as any human being could want them -- but for some reason (social conditioning, say) you still want more than that. Then you will suffer needlessly, as you could be completely free from suffering if only you didn't want for more than you needed.

Being hungry is what causes me to desire food. Being in pain is what causes me to desire it’s alleviation. — Pinprick

Upon inspection, isn't a desire to continue living at the root of being hungry or feeling pain?

It states loosely that suffering is caused by desire. — Pinprick

Suffering would also be caused by a lack of desire. I am not hungry, I don't eat, I feel bad. I feel no desire to connect with other people. I do not try to get close to them. I live an empty, improverished existence. I feel no desire to create or make something. My life is less interesting and more boring. And so on. Now one can argue that I might not notice some of the things that are missing without desire, but there is an improvished life, and some degree of added suffering. I am a social mammal. Take away my desires and I am not really a social mammal anymore. There is something fundamentally anti-life in all this. We could all take pain killers and Valiums all the time and suffer less in a certain way, but the organism 1) is not longer as a live and 2) suffering things it may or may not notice.

To understand the philosophy and psychology of Buddhism, it is necessary to make some careful distinctions.

Appetite v desire.

Appetite is the physiological condition of hunger, typically triggered by an empty stomach.
Desire is psychological; a thought; an image of hot crumpets dripping with honey (from memory) - the image of myself eating them - imagined pleasure - identification with this image (projected into the future).

Appetite is present, or absent, whereas desire connects past to future and is always lacking - one never wants what one has.

Pain v suffering.

Similarly, pain is physiological, and suffering is psychological; the projection of a self without pain, a desire to be other than one is.

So one can see that desire and suffering are related and arise from absence of mind. Hence the focus on presence of mind through meditation that eliminates desire and suffering, but does not prevent one from eating or stubbing one's toe.

So what is appetite vs. desire in relation to intimacy, love, friendship, creativity.....

Appetite is the physiological condition of hunger, typically triggered by an empty stomach.
Desire is psychological; a thought; an image of hot crumpets dripping with honey (from memory) - the image of myself eating them - imagined pleasure - identification with this image (projected into the future).

It seems to me, then, one is trying to go back to an animal stage before the prefrontal cortex. How would one buy the particular paints one would need for a particular art project, without having a mental image of one's plan for the canvas or even wanting to trying painting. Or in social situations, I can spontaneously notice my appetite for someone who I can see, but I cause myself problems if I think of my friend Joe and go to the phone.

A related but separate issue is that since we are creatures with (more imagination) our apetities cause images. Because we have a tool that is more developed than other animals. So our apetites, which are much more complicated than other animals, have another tool at their disposal, an imagination. And the apetites lead to imagining...

Last one can of course suffer if one does not get food, whether one imagines honey dipped anything or if one simply is hunrgy. Animals suffer. People with no social connections suffer and not simply because of images in their heads, but because we need closeness with others, just as we need air and food, though we can go longer (while suffering) without the first.

I remember very vaguely touching upon this issue a while back. I seem to have forgotten what I thought of it. I think the whole notion of suffering and its link to desire in Buddhism is not as simple as it appears to be. The crucial fact to recognize as per Buddhism is the emphemeral nature of reality - impermanence. An unwillingness to come to terms with impermanence manifests most strongly and felt most acutely as desire, more accurately as a clinging or craving, an inability to let reality do what it does naturally, change. In essence, it's not that there's something wrong with desire per se but that desire is a first rank symptom of abject ignorance of reality, how it works. :chin:

I have been reading this thread and your one on whether Buddhism is a philosophy or religion. I do have sympathy with the whole approach to life whichever way it is perceived.
I do try to practice meditation, although do it in my own fabricated manner. I often play dance music, hopefully the more spiritual rather than bodily sort, on my headphones. I find this does work as meditation but overcoming desire is so difficult.
I certainly do not have a problem of gross desire such as wishing to kill etc but It is so hard to overcome desire while in a body, even if it is for the most mundane, such as the next cup of coffee, meal, new books and music or meeting friends. Surely, seeking pleasure is at the core of our nature and if we became that detached we might have become robots.

Surely, seeking pleasure is at the core of our nature and if we became that detached we might have become robots. — Jack Cummins

It's not desire per se that's bad. It's just that it indicates you've not come to terms with a fundamental truth about reality - impermanence. I remember an analogy I made a long time ago about how deeply one would get involved in writing an essay that's going to be put through a shredder the moment you complete it. Of course one can't forget the weeks, even months, of back-breaking hard labor and intense concentration spent in creating the exquistely detailed and aesthetically mind-blowing mandala for the Kalchakra.

Appetite v desire. — unenlightened

:up: :100:

I cannot answer all your points, but I will address one and hope you can extrapolate.

How would one buy the particular paints one would need for a particular art project, without having a mental image of one's plan for the canvas or even wanting to trying painting. — Coben

Obviously one needs to have an image of the colours in such a case. Likewise an architect imagines a building, and even a speaker foresees the end of his sentence. Buddhists are not idiots, and they do not seek to stop all thought or suppress all images.

...identification with this image... — unenlightened

This is the step that one does not need to make when buying paint. There is a whole process of knowledge from the past projected into the future that is the basis of science and much of what we do day to day. It is very effective as long as it is directed outwards to the world. It is when it is directed inwards that it becomes identification and gains the power to cause suffering. there, it extends the self in time.

So here's the Animal Farm slogan for you - Plan to do, good; plan to be, bad.

I have the suspicion that if I were to somehow be continuously pleased or fulfilled, or whatever term means the opposite of suffering, that I would have no need for desire. If correct, doesn’t this argument essentially refute Buddhism? — Pinprick

It's not possible to be continuously satisfied because, as the Buddhist say, everything changes. So in essence change is what causes dissatisfaction and without change there is no life. But is change, or anything else for that matter, real? If it's just an illusion then isn't it the illusion, or ignorance of our true nature, that causes suffering?

I meet up with you on different threads, but yes maybe I have got to accept impermanence. Sometimes it seems everything is stagnant and then changes come so suddenly that it is overwhelming, making it hard not to fall apart.
Generally, I feel on a karmic rollercoaster. In particular, what I spoke about in my answer to the response I made to your porter post started to happen today, my second move during the pandemic into another shared household. Meeting a new group of strangers and being told their truths? I was rather stunned when my landlord told me at 4.30 today that I needed to move all my belongings today. I am still arranging transport today, but moving does make me question my attachment to material belongings as I gather my piles of CDs and books.
Anyway, the philosophical point of my reply is that I do genuinely believe in lessons of life and possibly karma. For all my adult life, I do find that the events of my life and their timing, including meeting certain people, have never been pure coincidence. Of course this is a subjective argument, which is hard to explain on a website discussion but I do think it has some bearing on the issue of the second noble truth.
My argument is that unfortunately desire is often met with a lot more suffering than pleasure alot of the time, but perhaps this is part of the learning curve towards an understanding of impermanence.

:ok:

To be happy I must stop desire
To be happy but is itself a desire
Surely then it's impossible to stop desire
For to not desire is again itself a desire
Ergo, desire can't be what we must retire
Fire can't put out fire

:up:

Obviously one needs to have an image of the colours in such a case. Likewise an architect imagines a building, and even a speaker foresees the end of his sentence. Buddhists are not idiots, and they do not seek to stop all thought or suppress all images. — unenlightened

Sure, it just seemed like the difference between apetite and desire in your schema was being in the now without imagining the future. (and I know a good number of Buddhist and in the past a really wide array of them so I am under no illusion they are idiots. My experience was they were academically ahead of most people (in the West that is, not so much in the East where I also used to know many. And those in the East were not idiots either.) To me the dichotomy between apetites and desires is not Buddhist, nor to I think the schema holds. It is how they relate to desires (and emotions) that is trained to be quite different over time.

This is the step that one does not need to make when buying paint. There is a whole process of knowledge from the past projected into the future that is the basis of science and much of what we do day to day. It is very effective as long as it is directed outwards to the world. It is when it is directed inwards that it becomes identification and gains the power to cause suffering. there, it extends the self in time.

So here's the Animal Farm slogan for you - Plan to do, good; plan to be, bad. — unenlightened

And this also feels no quite Buddhist to me. People can suffer immensely based on their plans to do. I don't think Buddhist is working on content, at least this is not my experience within both Eastern and Western Buddhism nor with the Buddhists I met. It has to do with how one relates to one's planning and the feelings around them. You disidentify with the emotions and desires. You observe them. You don't plan not to desire about yourself, that will go on anyway, but you no longer allow this to spontaneously express via the body (as emotions, facial expressions, movement expressing desires and emotions) and withing the mind the observing portion of the mind is all that is identified with. This disrupts the way the limbic system interacts with other parts of the brair or perhaps better put how they react (or learn not to) with the limbic system, it detaches action from emotions for example, and externalizes ALL content. That is not me. The inside of us is just like the external world. It is something to notice, not judge, not try to change and it is not me.

And this also feels no quite Buddhist to me. — Coben

Buddhists are at least as as various as Christians, and I cannot pretend to speak for any of them. My understanding of both religions is much better than that of most adherents.

Well probably not, but I make what sense I can philosophically of what seems to be a kernel of something true.

It's opposite day today! :smile: