Caucasian skin is peachy and sandy (due to having no pigmentation) while the great man's body in nibbana is, according to the 32 perfections of a great man , "his skin is the color of gold". White skin requires some pigmentation. Currently my journey with white skin represents the Trix rabbit's (1994 commercial) attempt to take his own cereal. All he gets is "silly rabbit Trix are for kids!" And the fact that some saints may have received such a miracle to change their skin color forever makes the pain that much more serious. And what should I do regarding the psychologist? I am visiting one to drain my emotions of this, and that might make my eternity as a yellow man all that much more permanent!

As we would all know, the Buddha found/explained that self mortification like extreme fasting is not the correct way to liberation. So is dealing with extreme suffering also not an extreme? If one was in extreme poverty and/or extreme illness would it not be wiser to take the knife? Is there any precedent the Buddha explained in regards to dealing with extreme suffering and/or illness? a level of how much suffering we can or are able to endure? I know there is the story of the monk who took the knife because of extreme illness and the Buddha said he was blameless but he was already a high level attainer (not sure what stage of liberation he was) **EDIT:** wanted to bounty this as the question has not been answered and people seem to misunderstand the question and think it is related to suicide, and tag it as such just because I mentioned about taking the Knife. **The question is about what limits, if any, of suffering we should endure. Is there any precedent about when we should no longer endure suffering because it is too great.** Hypothetically imagining one is homeless, destitute in extreme poverty, starving, no limbs or illnesses akin that cause ones life to be extreme suffering or even extreme mental illness, all family and friends have died of illness or murder. Essentially one has serious negative karma where ones life is full of painful memories and painful present experiences. Is one still supposed to continue to endure such suffering forever. Well until natural death.

Did the Buddha ever said something like this: > What the world sees as pleasure, it is suffering for me. What the world sees as suffering, it is pleasure for me. Or something similar in the meaning, in any canonical texts?

I lost my brother 8 years ago in a tragic accident. He never was interested in dhamma, how to ensure he is alright wherever he is, how to ensure he is doing fine, Will i ever meet him again? How to find out where he is now? Unable to talk to anyone about this.

I often see the first noble truth (*duḥkha*) stated as "life is suffering". I have yet to come across a passage in a Buddhist text which phrases it like this - mostly they don't talk about "life" in this sense. So where does the idea that "*life is suffering*" come from? There's been some discussion about the definition and translation of the word "*dukkha*" also. Is there a definitive definition?

Made a thread that was sorta related on here: Does Teleonomic Matter imply Subjectivity without Identity? Triggered again by this answer: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/78860/88743 and I was sorta triggered further when I read this comic: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1 By the way I wouldn't recommend reading the comic, might not sleep tonight. But anyway, I've read Buddhism, attended some of the teachings from monks, and talked to Buddhists and the concept that always eluded me was no-self (attachment also but that's something else). I never really understood how it was supposed to be a good thing. That there is no enduring, unchanging essence that we can call me or "I", it's just a collection of causes and effects that is constantly in flux. It's "death" and "rebirth" in a metaphorical sense. To me it sounds like loosing so much that makes us human. No friends because there is no one you are friends with (even if you have friends), you aren't falling in love with someone because there is no "one" you are falling in love with. I can't really say "I like this" or "I wanna do this for a living" because that's not a permanent part of me, can't feel good or proud about myself when I achieve something because there is no one to feel that or celebrate, etc etc. Is it wrong to feel sad if my dog or dad dies because no "one" died? Am I even alive? It's something I try to avoid thinking about because when I listen to it and just view people as a collection of causes and aggregates I just stop caring about them, I can't really explain it. When I see myself like that my emotions just shut off for some reason. So with all that said I'm wondering how this is supposed to be beneficial for someone, let alone society (which I assume is the goal for Buddhism), because so far it's just hurt me and held me back from doing things in life rather than liberating me like they said. IMO Buddhism just feels like a religion that says everything I think and do is wrong, but I digress. I really need help with getting this because it's haunted me for years.

My mother and I have slight issues because she is nagging and controlling (and I impatient). Despite that I love her very much, and I can't stand the idea that she will pass away in a few years; and she will suffer during death and later in a lower rebirth. I start crying every time this comes to my mind. In the moment I feel like leaving my job to go live with her and serve her (*I live in a far foreign country so I see her once a year or so*). Further I think of accepting it as part of life, but nothing comes to mind. I wonder, how is it even possible to be okay with this? Is there no other way but to endure great suffering when it inevitably happens? I wonder how other people deal with this? Do they all go through intense pain or somehow skillfully avoid it (especially buddhist master's who are not affected by this at all)? No matter how many books I read on Buddhism, I find no solutions to this question. Please educate me, as I think it is one of the most important questions of many people's lives.

During the withdrawal period of a non substance addiction (around 1 to 3 weeks), if someone genuinely wants to leave, there is an inner voice which fears missing out and an insecure empty feeling, which craves for that addictive habit. This is due to the person's previous dependence on that addictive habit. This voice gets stronger when the person is not engaged in tasks, for example, sleep, travelling etc. Does Buddhism offer any solution to these withdrawal pangs, from looking for a fix from that addictive habit? Note, this wanting for a fix is temporary, but if not avoided then the person will feel miserable, empty, insecure and this will serve as an excuse to move to the wrong habit. ***So, does Buddhism provide an easy instant and mindful way to change perspective, on such temporary feeling in the withdrawal period? A way to not be deluded by such thoughts and maintain abstinence.***

This question may seem a little new age. I am often discouraged in my life in general by the belief that I want more, nothing specific, but something is missing, perhaps a more meaningful life. Could this be attachment or thirst for an abstract idea? Can we be attached to the objects of the 6th consciousness? It's not obviously causing me to suffer physically or psychologically, perhaps in a subtle way, and it may be the suffering of change as it manifests to the 6th consciousness and its attachments. Any ideas? FTR I ***definitely don't blame*** - Buddhist - religion for that, even having had religious psychosis. It is just the mundane sense that my past is a disappointment and there's nothing I can do to shift my future into something better than that.

In grade school while in class, children would sometimes shoot paper darts with a rubber band at someone sitting in front of them. Often the class would end and all would be forgotten. However, if the harassment went on for a long time, the child in front would get so irritated, and they would snap and do something violent to whoever was harassing them. Of course, the teacher would only see/hear the violent reaction and would get no backstory about what led up to it. And the victim would end up looking like the bad person. From my perspective, in addition to being angry at the person harassing them, the victim is also frustrated at themselves for losing control after being provoked. What does Buddhism have to say about this? A victim might intellectually try to resolve their problem by saying that all is "maya", but their anger would still be real. There is still an "I" that is being harassed. When fists can't resolve the problem, what other approaches can one use?

My mother and I come from a non-Buddhist culture/background/society/country/family. At one point when I had an opportunity to explain to her what Buddhism is, I was doing well (i.e. she was listening and accepting what I was saying) when I was explaining that Buddhism includes a non-fixed identity-view and explaining why a non-fixed identity view is skillful (e.g. because an attitude such as attachment to your job/profession might be unpleasant when you retire, and because people's abilities and health change with age). But then what I mentioned the first Noble Truth she seemed to object, saying "Sorry you think life is suffering/dissatisfaction, I don't agree: I like life, I think life is good." --- So - Do you ever try to explain Buddhism to someone who barely knows the first thing about it, and if so what is your strategy for how to explain it? - Do you explain 'dukkha' using the classic 'death/poverty/illness/old age', and/or is there a better way to explain the first noble Truth? - Are there any alternate way to introduce Buddhism which don't begin with the first Noble Truth? - Might it be better to explain what I think Buddhism might mean to me (why it appeals to me) personally? I fear that might make it less strange to her ("yes I see why you like it") but at the same time less acceptable ("but it isn't for me because I'm not like you"). - Should I understand that if that's her reaction it's because she's already doing a lot of things right (e.g. not spending her life feeling angry)?

In the story of Prince Nanda, He equal the most beautiful female humen on earth to a died monkey as compared with a women from higher realm. Lord Buddha said that The king of all earth is like a beggar in the heaven. Are there more other detailed comparisons between humens and people from higher realms ? I'm asking this because, I don't feel much suffer about this life. Life is going ok. But, If we compare the typical humen life to the life in heven, This is lot of suffering. Because, People of heavens doesn't need to do hard jobs. Some of them don't do any job. Brahmas don't get hungry. So, Having a better understanding of higher realms may helpful to understand suffering of this world.To avoid pursing physical things (Because richest/luckiest/happiest person is nothing compared to the heaven, most valuable thing/achievement is nothing compared to the heaven) Kind regards.

Are the heavens and hells in karamdhatu meant to be physical places? I was looking at the abhidharmakośa-bhāsya, and Vasabandhu lists 20 places: 8 hells; 6 heavens; pretas; animals; physical world; and the circle of wind (I'm fairly sure the last one is also a "place" -- sthana). You might think that these are all physical because e.g. animals live among us, but just as the desert is the place of some hell beings (not being included in the main hells, due to not being created through the "force of the actions of beings"), animals primarily live in the "Great Ocean". So I reckon that the heavens and hells are not physical, even-though rebirth there inlcludes all five skandhas, descriptions of suffering there refers to bodies, etc.. Am I right, and if so does that mean they lack the organs of the eye etc.? I am asking not because I want to underplay the suffering of hell beings etc. (avici *is* worse than the desert) but because I'm interested in whether suffering is different there insofar as bodhisattvas, when unmoved by their own suffering in hell, might be better off than they are with the vicissitudes of physical suffering in this human place.

So I've been thinking about how in scripture, Buddha often refers to certain views as the "extremes". A famous example is the eternalists (eternal soul and afterlife) vs the annihilationists (no soul, no afterlife, pure materialists). The Buddha taught both of these as the two extremes and promotes a Middle Way. But is Buddha's own approach not a form of extermism? Consider the following: one extreme that I will call eliminationists (suffering is intrinsically bad and is to be completely eradicated - this is Buddha) vs masochists (suffering is to be sought out and maximized as much as humanly possible). The Middle Way here would be "We do not like suffering (though that does not make it bad or evil by itself), but it has important functions and is in some ways, simply inevitable as long as one is actively "alive" in any conceivable way, so we should seek to reasonably reduce unnecessary suffering as judged by us, but re-orienting the entire society for the sole goal of eliminating suffering can lead to other negatives and extreme behaviour". Why should we eliminate rather than lessen suffering? Isn't that one extreme (other being actively seeking out as much suffering as possible)? I can list many ways in which obsession with harm reduction can lead to a highly dysfunctional society and worsen conditions of many people. So why does the Buddha actively promote the Middle Way for other positions, but does not apply it for his own?

In the [Lokavipatti Sutta](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an08/an08.006.than.html) the 8 worldly dharmas are pleasure, pain, fame, disgrace, blame, praise, and gain, and loss. The Buddha also says the noble ones experience all of those but don't rebel against the loss etc. and don't welcome the praise etc. In the [Sallatha Sutta](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn36/sn36.006.than.html) , the Buddha says that noble ones experience physical pain but don't follow it with mental pain. This leads me to wonder: if noble ones don't have mental pain following physical pain, it would seem they don't experience loss, blame, and disgrace as mental pain either. But how do they experience it? Is it a physical pain? In psychology they say that a broken heart over a loss literally hurts the heart, i.e. those freakish cases where a person dies of grief when their wife dies. Does a noble one then feel physical pain when they are blamed, disgraced, hurt, or at a loss? Or perhaps everyone does but often run-of-the-mill people only notice the subsequent mental pain, whereas a noble one only feels the first half with no mental pain at all.

I'm facing a dilemma. There are 2 cats that often come nearby my house. One is the mother (who happened to come to my house even before I fed it) and the other a kitten that was born also nearby my house. I think the mother might have been abandoned by previous owner because she was comfy with humans. At first the mother was skinny and had infection. I helped her by feeding whenever she comes and buy medications from vets to treat her skin and cough. Now she's healthy. The kitten is also well fed because I helped it since it was a little. However because of my actions, both have a dependency towards me. Sometimes they ask for attention, which I give from time to time. On top of it, the mother cat keeps getting pregnant, which led to my neighbor who don't want their kids to play with kittens, throwing away the kittens. I think some of the kittens might have been dead too without me knowing it. I have very little control about this because the cats are always outside and anyone can do whatever they want. I don't bring them in or keeping them as a pet, because I don't think a Buddhist should keep pets. Which brings me to these questions: 1. Am I wrong for feeding these cats? my heart tells me to feed hungry animals if possible but of course not everyone sees strays as animals that need help. By feeding I also invite them to stay around my house (being more dependent on me and causing annoyance for the neighbor) 2. Am I wrong for thinking Buddhist aren't allowed to keep pets? 3. Since stray cats usually breed a lot. Should I neuter the mother cat? my hope is so that there will be no more kittens thrown away from their mother not long after birth, or to experience suffering. Is it wrong to neuter animals? Answers to these questions will help me decide on what to do next. Thank you. Namo Buddhaya.

I am new to Buddhism and wanted to ask a question that's been brimming on my mind for a while now. As a warning, I will touch upon a number of concepts that I am a complete layman in and so I am sure this post will be rife with fundamental misunderstandings and false equivalences: I thoroughly welcome any corrections of my ignorance. This post will get a bit long-winded, so I will briefly summarize my high level question: As I learn more about Buddhism and its central philosophy around desire, karma and the perpetuation of suffering, I an reminded of the thermodynamic concept of entropy: the similar idea that actions (or thermodynamic interactions) have consequences, and that consequence is consuming usable energy and permanently increasing the level of chaos disorder in the system. If this connection is legitimate (and I hope to substantiate it further in this post), I can't help but wonder if the ultimate "goal" of reaching nirvana - the cessation of karmic output - is futile in the face of the [2nd Law of Thermodynamics that entropy is nondecreasing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics) (and is de facto increasing), and an empirical observation of the accelerating trajectory of today's society toward disorder? The connection between karma and entropy further is most evident in terms of their human interface: human desires and actions. My understanding is that in Buddhism, our desires and our karmic actions based on those desires have direct cause-and-effect consequences - ultimately perpetuating the cycle of suffering. Meanwhile, our desires increase entropy output on both a thermodynamic level of disorder (in order to exist, we are entropic engines that consume energy and produce waste), and on a conceptual level of disorder: our ego needs take from the systems around us and perpetuate existing feedback loops of increasing chaos. In feeding our hunger to exist we kill, disrupting both lives and ecosystems, in feeding our desire to build we exhaust nonrenewable natural resources, in feeding our egos we perpetuate escalating cycles of conflict and violence. All the while we produce waste: biological waste, material waste, emotional waste, which impact the systems around us. Entropy increases, and so does suffering. In fact, a [recent up and coming theory of the evolution of life](https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of-the-origin-of-life-20140122/) posits that life itself evolves directly as a consequence of the law of increasing entropy: our desires are outwards projections of the universe's unyielding creep towards efficient energy consumption. Here we can see a potential direct relationship between entropy, karma and samsara: in both Buddhism and the material world, we exist because of (and in order to) desire, and our desires produce entropy and karma that perpetuate suffering. On a societal level we can see that this creep toward efficiency has outgrown us individually: our collective desires feed into the insatiable organisms of capitalism and technological growth which efficiently and exponentially march forward toward profit and progress, often if not always at the cost of individual happiness. Again the karmic/entropic consequences of growth are self evident: at the cost of our collective egos we plunder our planet for resources, we efficiently fry our dopamine receptors (and increase desire) with decreasing time frames of gratification, we experience rapidly increasing political polarization in social media echo chambers and wage wars that escalate toward nuclear destruction. [At certain science-fiction scales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) , even the Sun itself is no longer a renewable resource in civilization's journey towards consumption. As accelerating growth and technology increase consumption and suffering, it directly disrupts the human condition and proportionately increases the difficulty of achieving presence (a sentiment shared in the infamous but prescient [Unabomber's Manifesto: Industrial Society and its Future](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future)) . A really fascinating case study of the relationship between technology, exponential growth, and samsara is that of recent developments in artificial intelligence. Regardless of one's specific opinion on the timeline toward AGI or sentient AI, [the general consensus among experts](https://ourworldindata.org/ai-timelines#:~:text=At%20the%20time%20of%20writing,than%2020%20years%20from%20now.) ([reinforced by tremendous growth over the past year](https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/18pqd58/a_look_at_midjourneys_journey/)) seems to be that this is a question of not if, but when we will develop AI with human-level capabilities. Suppose at some time T in the future we have an AI that has the ability to progress and self-replicate exponentially. The underlying mechanism of growth for this AI is that of innate desire and suffering - they exist solely to efficiently chase some reward function, not unlike ourselves. As thus, it appears that the AI would be subject to the cycle of samsara: the idea of karmic feedback loops are clearly manifest in the self-tuning of parameters towards efficiency (and greater suffering). As the AI performs actions or do work based on these desires, their karmic actions [consume vast amounts of energy](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/climate/ai-could-soon-need-as-much-electricity-as-an-entire-country.html) and produce consequences not unlike those of our own desires. To sum this all up: we have a sentient system (or at the very least a suffering system subject to desires and samsara) that multiplies exponentially, thereby exponentially increasing (a) # of sentient beings trapped in samsara and (b) karmic output, entropy production, and resulting suffering. To wrap up the science fiction(?) and bring this back to the original question: if there is a connection between the concepts of karma, suffering, and entropy, is the Buddhist path toward individual and collective enlightenment possible in the face of the iron law of thermodynamics that entropy is nondecreasing? To be clear, this is not a comment on the validity of the Buddhist message: its truth and wisdom are clearly self evident and have brought enormous benefit to me as an individual and all of us collectively. Rather, this is a question of its feasibility in the grand scheme of things, in the same way that we can acknowledge that late stage metastatic cancer is less than ideal while admitting that fighting it is futile. Projecting current trends into the future, all feedback loops toward disorder appear to be accelerating, and it feels unlikely if not thermodynamically impossible to ever turn back the entropic clock. Is enlightenment feasible if each subsequent rebirth lands you in a reality exponentially more chaotic than the previous one? Is achieving the Bodhisattva vow to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings feasible in the light of the exponentially increasing number of sentient beings, themselves exponentially growing towards more efficient suffering? Thank you for reading my rant / question and I wholeheartedly look forward to all discussion, critiques, corrections, and resources!

Whenever I have read any book or article on Buddhism, one of the biggest takeaways of Buddhism seems to be its indifference to pursuit of 'Metaphysical' questions like origin of the Universe (which in those times belonged to the realm of Philosophy) and the fundamental nature of reality, etc. Buddha was non-theistic, that is, he kept mum on the existence and nature of God. Buddhism seems to teach us not to bother with these questions and focus on ethical living. But Science and Engineering IS the reason why we have everything we have now. Many of the sufferings like death from polio or tetanus has been eradicated thanks to Science, famine has become a thing of the past due to Science, and so on. And all this has happened because of metaphysical questions which later evolved into the subject of Science (and still guides Scientific progress). For example, NASA's missions like James Webb help us unravel the mysteries of the Universe but at the same time, it also helps us push the boundaries of technology and reduce our sufferings. It seems to me that Buddhism seems to discourage us asking questions like these that has lead to Humanity's progress and sideline Science and Philosophy. Is my thinking correct? Would Buddha, if he would have lived today, discouraged us from pursuing Science and Philosophy and try to make us go to monasteries and live ethical life of meditation? By this rule, does it mean that physicists should abandon Physics and Cosmology?

This question arises from [this previous post](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/29818/why-does-one-suffer-because-of-ignorance-if-ignorance-is-unintentional) . The questioner seems perplexed that a person should suffer for not knowing or possessing certain knowledge i.e. simply for being unaware. While there is an active component in desire (us wanting or craving) and aversion (us disliking or hating). However, ignorance is not something we can control or actively avoid. So, my question is there an active component in ignorance i.e. do we intentionally ignore and/or indulge in ignorance? Perhaps, by understanding this process better, we can also answer [this question on how to get rid of it](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/49878/how-to-get-rid-of-ignorance) .

I consider the profession unwise and harmful to all. But I'm looking for a compelling argument against it. PS. Maybe "compelling" is too strong a word.