The Greater Discourse on the Mass of Suffering

Or, a happier title might be “The Best Feeling in the World” (see below).

The wonderful Bhikkhu Bodhi has produced a series of great interest to all who would like to dive deeply into the teachings of the Buddha, A Systematic Study of the Majjhima Nikaya.

This morning, somewhat at random, I listened to (and read along with) MN 13: Mahādukkhakkhanda Sutta — The Greater Discourse on the Mass of Suffering (download mp3 here) (read AccesstoInsight translation here) (Pāli here at paragraph 163)

The sutta discusses the importance of full knowledge in 3 key areas that keep us bound to the world:

1. Sense desires
2. Body (ours or others, or, more broadly, ‘material form’ in all its manifestations)
3. Feelings

The sutta is then a systematic account, covering the various gratifications of sense desires, their dangers, and finally escape – and then repeating for the next two.

Important to note is that he does point out the gratification, the pleasure and joy that arise from each of these. The Buddha would not deny that a glass of good wine brings pleasure, or music or games, and so on. So the Buddhist is a realist in this sense, he acknowledges the reality of our common experience. However, he quickly moves on from the gratifications to the seven dangers of sensuality:

1. struggle and strive
2. suffering of no gain
3. suffering of loss
4. quarrels
5. warfare and worse
6. crime/punishment
7. bad rebirth

First we must struggle and strive after objects of sensual pleasure: wine isn’t cheap, nor are most things that we require for our comfortable lives. So we all spend many hours each day working, often in jobs we do not particularly care for, in order to afford those objects. Next is the danger of the suffering that comes when we do not gain what we have worked so hard for. Perhaps a promotion is passed over, a house price rises outside your means, etc. It’s the common frustration of having worked hard with your eye on a prize, only to fall short in the end. Third is the -even more common- suffering of loss. And not just that, the Buddha describes the fears that arise whenever we gain something valuable: fear of thieves or government taxes, of fire and flood and ungrateful children (really!).

Fourth is the danger of quarrels, perhaps with jealous neighbors or competitive coworkers or a spouse or (again!) those darned children. This goes beyond verbal barbs to literal fights to the death. Fifth expands on this to the greater quarrels between nations and the horrors enacted therein (always in the name of some noble cause but really in pursuit of goods for sensual enjoyment). Sixth is the rise of crime – the poor and disenfranchised seeking goods through what is often the only means available – and punishment, often far more barbaric than the crimes.

Lastly is the one danger said to be apparent only in future lives, rather than here in this world, a bad rebirth.

The escape is simple: vinaya or discipline (which is the name of a major portion of the Buddha’s teachings); here translated as ‘removal’ of desire (chanda) and lust (rāga) for sensual pleasures.

‘‘Kiñca, bhikkhave, kāmānaṃ nissaraṇaṃ? Yo kho, bhikkhave, kāmesu chandarāgavinayo chandarāgappahānaṃ – idaṃ kāmānaṃ nissaraṇaṃ.

The sutta moves more quickly through ‘body’ and ‘feelings’ but these are no less important. In the section on the body, the Buddha has his monks imagine a beautiful young woman. He suggests that the gratification of ‘body’ arises in dependence upon her beauty and the monks all agree.

Bhikkhu Bodhi comments that he finds it a bit odd (and I agree) that the Buddha would use the beauty of a young woman here; because isn’t the gratification here already covered under sense-desires? Bodhi suggests that a more apt example would be our own bodies, which are not in themselves objects of sensual desire (for us), but are nonetheless material forms that keep us attached to the world of suffering.

The Buddha then walks them through the aging of that woman, from the height of her beauty to the point at which she is old and frail, laying in a pool of her own urine and excrement and finally dead. And not just dead in the ‘funeral home’ sense we know, but in the ‘charnel ground’ sense of ancient India, where one would watch the daily decomposition of a body.

The Buddha simply then asks if the beauty is vanished and the danger clear. “Oh yes,” reply the monks!  But the Buddha, always a show-man, doesn’t let up there. He goes on to have the monks imagine that body being eaten by crows, hawks, vultures, dogs and “various kinds of worms.”

The escape is identical to that above, replacing kāma (sense-desire) with rūpa (body).

Last covered, and perhaps because it is the most subtle of the two, is feeling (vedana). In Buddhist psychology, feeling can be of only three kinds: pleasant, unpleasant, or neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant (i.e. neutral). Here the gratification may surprise some people, the pleasures arising from meditative absorption, or jhāna.

The Buddha covers the standard four levels of jhāna, with each state cultivating the freedom from all  affliction. This, the Buddha says, is the best feeling in the world. But, warns the Buddha, it too has a danger because it is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and subject to change. So, as much as they love their meditative absorptions, the monks are warned and urged to escape even the desire or lusting after these refined states of being.

And that’s it.

As I noted, one gets a sense of progression here, from

1. more ‘mundane’ pursuits like a nice house and wealth to 
2. the relatively ‘higher’ pleasures of a sexual partner and finally (or simply our harmful identifications with our own body)
3. the pinnacle of feelings we can crave in the world, the sublime bliss of meditative absorption.