/lit/ - Literature

>>12028769
The Dhammapada

Alright, time to break some misconceptions.

>Buddhism is about "suffering" and "the end of suffering."

The first problem with this is that "suffering" is such an awful fucking word for it. I truly don't know what whichever smoothbrained academic was thinking when they used this word. "Suffering" in English has deeply negative connotations, and usually refers to strong physical / emotional pain. Using this language, it's possible to say that even the Buddha "suffered", since he experienced joint pains in his old age. The actual Buddhist word "dukkha" is way more subtle and all-encompassing. It means something like a "a misplaced wheel", implying that no matter how well-built and pleasing our lives may seem, there will always be that nagging "offness", the wobble in our wheels, that causes us to feel doubt and insecurity.

The second problem is that the Buddha didn't even say this was the only thing he taught. He did indeed say "I teach dukkha and the cessation of dukkha", but never implied this was his only message. He taught a bunch of other unrelated things, like how much money a householder should save, or how a king should administer a kingdom. These may perhaps help someone to end dukkha in the future, but they themselves have little to do with it.

So what did the Buddha teach? It's in his name, "the Buddha", or "the Awakened One" He taught *Awakening.* By following his ethical, cultivative and metaphysical ideas, one is able to gain insight into their mind and shed the false ideas keeping them in a state of sleep and confusion. An offset of this is that indeed that one tends to suffer less (emotionally, intellectually, even physically) and is able to understand where misery arises, but that's not the principle goal. Once you realise these things, the whole Buddhist worldview makes far more sense, and the absolute shipload of misconceptions us smarmy westerners have heaped on top of it.