If one tries hard enough, does one find true happiness in things that are subject to change, to aging, illness, and death? — baker
Was the Buddha sourgraping? — baker
"sour grapes"
"bad behavior that happens because someone else is more successful"
Cambridge Dict
What would you say distinguishes true happiness from untrue happiness?If one tries hard enough, does one find true happiness in things that are subject to change, to aging, illness, and death? — baker
Was the Buddha sourgraping?
Did he dismiss too easily life as it is usually lived? — baker
No. Therapists or physicians are not "sourgraping" when they treat, and teach others how to treat, illnesses. (Besides music, what could be more life-affirming?)Was the Buddha sourgraping? — baker
No. The Buddha diagnosed and prescribed a treatment for "life as it usually lived" maladaptively.Did he dismiss too easily life as it is usually lived?
Therapists or physicians are not "sourgraping" when they treat, and teach others how to treat, illnesses. — 180 Proof
(Besides music, what could be more life-affirming?)
Was the Buddha sourgraping?
— baker
"sour grapes"
"bad behavior that happens because someone else is more successful"
Cambridge Dict — Hermeticus
I don't think so. Supposedly Siddhartha Gautama was a prince, with a lifestyle to show for it. Pretty clothes, good food, servants and guardians, all that jazz.
Of course it also depends what you understand as a "life usually lived"?
Either way, I don't see the Buddha being "sour" about anything.
It is not ordinary unhappiness — Janus
It is a mix of up and down. I am familiar with the Buddhist idea of learning to cease to respond to the "five hindrances", but you will not be motivated enough to do that unless you have become convinced that liberation from them is actually possible.
That depends on whether the Buddha of the Pali Canon really was sourgraping or not.
— baker
What do you think? — Tom Storm
The reference is to Freud's idea that the goal of psychotherapy is to overcome being neurotically miseable and instead be ordinarily unhappy. — baker
I actually don't know a canonical reference for this. — baker
But I see no reason to think anyone would attempt to give up responding to the five hindrances if they didn't believe that liberation from them is possible. — Janus
Perhaps. In modern (western) context, "the Buddhist solution" is like weaning-off of a heroin addiction with physician-assisted methadone treatment (& group counseling support) and then maintaining with premium THC & CBD edibles.In the case of the Buddha, his solution to the problem of suffering is so radical that it doesn't seem like a solution at all, but, rather, a whole new pathology. — baker
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