Interestingly, I had a debate with someone on an earlier draft of this post about whether or not pain could be considered a cause of suffering, which led to me brushing up on some of literature on causation.
What seems clear to me is that suffering causally depends on craving/aversion, but not on pain—there is suffering if and only if there is craving/aversion, but there can be suffering without pain, and there can be pain without suffering.
On Lewis’ account, causal dependence implies causation but not vice versa, so this does not itself mean that pain cannot be considered a cause of suffering. However, given that suffering occurs if and only if craving/aversion occurs, I’m pretty comfortable pointing to craving/aversion as “the” cause of suffering.
I’m actually fairly sympathetic to a view which holds pain as an indirect cause of suffering in that it seems pretty natural to say that e.g. aversion arose in response to pain, at least in specific instances where there is pain, aversion (to the pain), and then suffering. However, I’m not sure I would make the claim that “pain causes aversion” in general, as it is quite possible for pain to occur without aversion then occurring.
I’m curious as to what part of my argument you perceived as invalidly inferring from extreme to average situations?
However, I’m not sure I would make the claim that “pain causes aversion” in general, as it is quite possible for pain to occur without aversion then occurring.
There are counter-examples to the claim, for example people liking spicy food.
But if you e.g. stab someone with a knife, not many people are going to say “thank you” or remain indifferent about it. I think that in such situation, saying “pain caused aversion” is a fair description of what happened.
It is interesting to know that a level 100 Buddhist monk could get stabbed with a knife and say “anyway, pain and pleasure are merely sensations, I can choose to react on them or to ignore them, and I am choosing to ignore this one”, but that is an exception rather than the rule. I feel it is wrong to focus on the 1 in a million case where X does not lead to Y, when in the remaining 999999 cases it does.
And it’s kinda the point of why pain exists, that it is a signal to avoid something. So when people feel pain, and a desire to avoid that pain arises… that’s the mechanism working as intended. It is good to know that a mechanism designed by evolution can be “hacked”. But by default, it works.
It is expected from civilized people to exercise some self-control, including emotional, to improve their lives. Even small kids are told to stop screaming if they need to be vaccinated or have a blood sample taken. I am not avoiding an appointment with my dentist, even if I know that some pain is going to happen there. And yet, if I was given a choice between “pain” and “no pain” with everything else being equal, I would obviously choose “no pain”.
It is easier for me to imagine a person who would choose “pain” instead (e.g. because they are curious about the experience) than a person who really has no preference whatsoever. How would a person with no preferences about pain survive in long term? Pain is often a signal of some damage to the body. So even if I could somehow become emotionally indifferent to pain, I would probably still want to avoid painful situations for rational reasons. (Not sure whether “avoiding painful situations for rational reasons” also counts as “aversion”.)
We cannot realistically expect a significant part of population (let’s say, 10%) to become advanced meditators to the level that they actually become indifferent to pain. So… for practical purposes, “pain causes aversion” describes the situation correctly, for a vast majority of people.
I want to address a common misconception that I see you having here when you write phrases like:
not many people… are going to remain indifferent about it
“… I can choose to react on them or to ignore them, and I am choosing to ignore this one”
when people feel pain, and a desire to avoid that pain arises…
a person who really has no preference whatsoever
to the level that they actually become indifferent to pain
Importantly, “not being averse to pain,” in the intended sense of the word aversion, does not mean that one is “indifferent to pain,” in the sense of (not) having intentions and preferences. When I speak of “craving” or “aversion,” I am referring to a very specific kind of mental action and experience which results in suffering, not to intentions and preferences. Craving/aversion is the kind of desire which finds the way things presently are fundamentally unacceptable. Craving is like an attempt to grab at sensations and experiences, and aversion is like an attempt to hold them at arm’s length.
So, it isn’t the case that someone who has let go of craving/aversion and therefore suffering is completely indifferent to pain or that they won’t take action to alleviate the pain. If you stab a non-sufferer, they’ll still e.g. go to a hospital and have the wound treated. They’ll still have a general preference for pleasure over pain and take actions in accordance with those preferences; they just won’t seek pleasure or avoid pain in the sense of “I am not ok without this pleasure, or with this pain”—that’s craving and aversion. Pain still serves its important functional role, without the extra mental (re)actions of aversion and suffering.
This is also why I prefer to use terms like craving, aversion, and clinging to terms like “desire.” Sometimes you hear the Buddhist teaching formulated as “the cause of suffering is desire” and “stop desiring in order to stop suffering,” but I think the layperson is likely to misinterpret this as “so I can’t have any intentions or preferences,” due to the common usage of the word “desire” as “intending” or “preferring.” For example, see this LW comment thread which discusses the use of the word “desire” in this context, or Daniel Ingram’s discussion (and eschewal) of “no-preference models” of awakening.
Similarly, one could mean by “aversion” something like “dispreference” and describe someone who simply intends to alleviate pain as being averse to that pain, but this is not “aversion” as used in the Buddhist context to refer to the cause of suffering, tanha. While “aversion” may still be misinterpreted in such a manner, I think it’s less likely to be misunderstood than terms like “desire.” Same for “craving”—I think people are generally already familiar with “craving” in experience in the sense of “I must have that which I crave, I am not ok without having that which I crave.”
On one hand, yeah, Buddhism has a lot of new concepts, and if you don’t translate them, it sounds like incomprehensible mumbo jumbo, and if you do translate them, the translated words do not have the same connotations as the original ones. So there is now way to make the listener such as me happy.
On the other hand, it kinda sounds like if I told you “hey, I have a chocolate cookie for you”, and then added that I actually use very idiosyncratic definitions of “chocolate”, “cookie”, and “you”, so you shouldn’t really expect to get anything resembling a chocolate cookie at all, maybe not even anything edible, and maybe actually you won’t get nothing. But if I disclose it this way, it’s not really motivating.
If we tried to avoid sneaking in connotations, it might be something like: “Buddhism uses words for many concepts you don’t know, let’s just call them ‘untranslatable’ for now. So, we have figured out that untranslatable-1 causes untranslatable-2, but if you do a lot of untranslateble-3, then instead of untraslatable-2 you get untranslatable-4, and we would like to teach you how to do that.” And if someone asked “okay, this sounds confusing, but just to make sure, untranslatable-2 is bad and untranslatable-4 is good, right?”, the answer would be “well, not in the sense that you use ‘good’ and ‘bad’; perhaps let’s say that untranslatable-2 is untranslatable-5, and untranslatable-4 is not that”.
Then the question is whether the idiosyncratic words are only ever explained using other idiosyncratic words, or whether at some point it actually connects with the shared reality. And if it’s the latter, how do all those words ultimately translate to… normal English.
Then the question is whether the idiosyncratic words are only ever explained using other idiosyncratic words, or whether at some point it actually connects with the shared reality.
The point is that the words ground out in actual sensations and experiences, not just other words and concepts. What I’m arguing is that it’s not useful to use the English word “suffering” to refer to ordinary pain or displeasure, because there is a distinction in experience between what we refer to as “pain” or “displeasure” and what is referred to by the term “dukkha,” and that “suffering” is best understood as this dukkha. That we commonly say things like “he suffered the pain” is an indication of this distinction already existing in English, even if there is a tendency to messily equivocate between the two.
We cannot realistically expect a significant part of population (let’s say, 10%) to become advanced meditators to the level that they actually become indifferent to pain. So… for practical purposes, “pain causes aversion” describes the situation correctly, for a vast majority of people.
Which, if this is just a semantic argument, then sure. But OP’s conclusion is goal-oriented:
Understanding the distinction between pain and suffering is crucial for developing effective strategies to reduce suffering. By directly addressing the craving, aversion, and clinging which cause suffering, we can create more compassionate and impactful interventions.
When I think of effective strategies here, I think of developing jhana helmets[1] which would imitate the mind state of blissful-joy-flow state. Although this causes joy-concentrated-collectedness, it’s argued that this puts your mind in a state where it can better notice that aversion/craving are necessary for suffering (note: I’ve only partially experienced this).
Although I think you’re expressing skepticism of craving/aversion as the only necessary cause of suffering for all people? Or maybe just the 99.9999% reduction in suffering (ie the knife) vs a 99% reduction for all? What do you actually believe?
For me, I read a book that suggested many different experiments to try in a playful way. One was to pay attention to the “distance” between a my current state (e.g. “itching”) and a desired state (“not itching”), and it did feel worse the larger the “distance”. I could even intentionally make it feel larger or small and thought that was very interesting. In one limiting case, you don’t classify the two situations “itching” “not itching” as separate, so no suffering. In the other, it’s “the difference between heaven and hell”, lol. This book had >100 like these (though it is intended for advanced meditators, brag brag).
those jhana helmet people have pivoted to improving pedagogy w/ jhana retreats at $1-2k, I think for the purpose of gathering more jhana data, but then it became widely successful
I agree that emotional reaction can make the pain much worse. But I think that if you already are a reasonable sane adult, removing the emotional reaction would reduce the badness maybe by half. Even very experienced meditators can be overwhelmed by pain, if it is strong enough.
Reducing by half is still something worth doing. But I think we already are trying to get people there—the concepts of self-control, “no pain no gain”, stoicism, etc., are well-known even outside Buddhism.
Interestingly, I had a debate with someone on an earlier draft of this post about whether or not pain could be considered a cause of suffering, which led to me brushing up on some of literature on causation.
What seems clear to me is that suffering causally depends on craving/aversion, but not on pain—there is suffering if and only if there is craving/aversion, but there can be suffering without pain, and there can be pain without suffering.
On Lewis’ account, causal dependence implies causation but not vice versa, so this does not itself mean that pain cannot be considered a cause of suffering. However, given that suffering occurs if and only if craving/aversion occurs, I’m pretty comfortable pointing to craving/aversion as “the” cause of suffering.
I’m actually fairly sympathetic to a view which holds pain as an indirect cause of suffering in that it seems pretty natural to say that e.g. aversion arose in response to pain, at least in specific instances where there is pain, aversion (to the pain), and then suffering. However, I’m not sure I would make the claim that “pain causes aversion” in general, as it is quite possible for pain to occur without aversion then occurring.
I’m curious as to what part of my argument you perceived as invalidly inferring from extreme to average situations?
There are counter-examples to the claim, for example people liking spicy food.
But if you e.g. stab someone with a knife, not many people are going to say “thank you” or remain indifferent about it. I think that in such situation, saying “pain caused aversion” is a fair description of what happened.
It is interesting to know that a level 100 Buddhist monk could get stabbed with a knife and say “anyway, pain and pleasure are merely sensations, I can choose to react on them or to ignore them, and I am choosing to ignore this one”, but that is an exception rather than the rule. I feel it is wrong to focus on the 1 in a million case where X does not lead to Y, when in the remaining 999999 cases it does.
And it’s kinda the point of why pain exists, that it is a signal to avoid something. So when people feel pain, and a desire to avoid that pain arises… that’s the mechanism working as intended. It is good to know that a mechanism designed by evolution can be “hacked”. But by default, it works.
It is expected from civilized people to exercise some self-control, including emotional, to improve their lives. Even small kids are told to stop screaming if they need to be vaccinated or have a blood sample taken. I am not avoiding an appointment with my dentist, even if I know that some pain is going to happen there. And yet, if I was given a choice between “pain” and “no pain” with everything else being equal, I would obviously choose “no pain”.
It is easier for me to imagine a person who would choose “pain” instead (e.g. because they are curious about the experience) than a person who really has no preference whatsoever. How would a person with no preferences about pain survive in long term? Pain is often a signal of some damage to the body. So even if I could somehow become emotionally indifferent to pain, I would probably still want to avoid painful situations for rational reasons. (Not sure whether “avoiding painful situations for rational reasons” also counts as “aversion”.)
We cannot realistically expect a significant part of population (let’s say, 10%) to become advanced meditators to the level that they actually become indifferent to pain. So… for practical purposes, “pain causes aversion” describes the situation correctly, for a vast majority of people.
I want to address a common misconception that I see you having here when you write phrases like:
Importantly, “not being averse to pain,” in the intended sense of the word aversion, does not mean that one is “indifferent to pain,” in the sense of (not) having intentions and preferences. When I speak of “craving” or “aversion,” I am referring to a very specific kind of mental action and experience which results in suffering, not to intentions and preferences. Craving/aversion is the kind of desire which finds the way things presently are fundamentally unacceptable. Craving is like an attempt to grab at sensations and experiences, and aversion is like an attempt to hold them at arm’s length.
So, it isn’t the case that someone who has let go of craving/aversion and therefore suffering is completely indifferent to pain or that they won’t take action to alleviate the pain. If you stab a non-sufferer, they’ll still e.g. go to a hospital and have the wound treated. They’ll still have a general preference for pleasure over pain and take actions in accordance with those preferences; they just won’t seek pleasure or avoid pain in the sense of “I am not ok without this pleasure, or with this pain”—that’s craving and aversion. Pain still serves its important functional role, without the extra mental (re)actions of aversion and suffering.
This is also why I prefer to use terms like craving, aversion, and clinging to terms like “desire.” Sometimes you hear the Buddhist teaching formulated as “the cause of suffering is desire” and “stop desiring in order to stop suffering,” but I think the layperson is likely to misinterpret this as “so I can’t have any intentions or preferences,” due to the common usage of the word “desire” as “intending” or “preferring.” For example, see this LW comment thread which discusses the use of the word “desire” in this context, or Daniel Ingram’s discussion (and eschewal) of “no-preference models” of awakening.
Similarly, one could mean by “aversion” something like “dispreference” and describe someone who simply intends to alleviate pain as being averse to that pain, but this is not “aversion” as used in the Buddhist context to refer to the cause of suffering, tanha. While “aversion” may still be misinterpreted in such a manner, I think it’s less likely to be misunderstood than terms like “desire.” Same for “craving”—I think people are generally already familiar with “craving” in experience in the sense of “I must have that which I crave, I am not ok without having that which I crave.”
On one hand, yeah, Buddhism has a lot of new concepts, and if you don’t translate them, it sounds like incomprehensible mumbo jumbo, and if you do translate them, the translated words do not have the same connotations as the original ones. So there is now way to make the listener such as me happy.
On the other hand, it kinda sounds like if I told you “hey, I have a chocolate cookie for you”, and then added that I actually use very idiosyncratic definitions of “chocolate”, “cookie”, and “you”, so you shouldn’t really expect to get anything resembling a chocolate cookie at all, maybe not even anything edible, and maybe actually you won’t get nothing. But if I disclose it this way, it’s not really motivating.
If we tried to avoid sneaking in connotations, it might be something like: “Buddhism uses words for many concepts you don’t know, let’s just call them ‘untranslatable’ for now. So, we have figured out that untranslatable-1 causes untranslatable-2, but if you do a lot of untranslateble-3, then instead of untraslatable-2 you get untranslatable-4, and we would like to teach you how to do that.” And if someone asked “okay, this sounds confusing, but just to make sure, untranslatable-2 is bad and untranslatable-4 is good, right?”, the answer would be “well, not in the sense that you use ‘good’ and ‘bad’; perhaps let’s say that untranslatable-2 is untranslatable-5, and untranslatable-4 is not that”.
Then the question is whether the idiosyncratic words are only ever explained using other idiosyncratic words, or whether at some point it actually connects with the shared reality. And if it’s the latter, how do all those words ultimately translate to… normal English.
The point is that the words ground out in actual sensations and experiences, not just other words and concepts. What I’m arguing is that it’s not useful to use the English word “suffering” to refer to ordinary pain or displeasure, because there is a distinction in experience between what we refer to as “pain” or “displeasure” and what is referred to by the term “dukkha,” and that “suffering” is best understood as this dukkha. That we commonly say things like “he suffered the pain” is an indication of this distinction already existing in English, even if there is a tendency to messily equivocate between the two.
You say:
Which, if this is just a semantic argument, then sure. But OP’s conclusion is goal-oriented:
When I think of effective strategies here, I think of developing jhana helmets[1] which would imitate the mind state of blissful-joy-flow state. Although this causes joy-concentrated-collectedness, it’s argued that this puts your mind in a state where it can better notice that aversion/craving are necessary for suffering (note: I’ve only partially experienced this).
Although I think you’re expressing skepticism of craving/aversion as the only necessary cause of suffering for all people? Or maybe just the 99.9999% reduction in suffering (ie the knife) vs a 99% reduction for all? What do you actually believe?
For me, I read a book that suggested many different experiments to try in a playful way. One was to pay attention to the “distance” between a my current state (e.g. “itching”) and a desired state (“not itching”), and it did feel worse the larger the “distance”. I could even intentionally make it feel larger or small and thought that was very interesting. In one limiting case, you don’t classify the two situations “itching” “not itching” as separate, so no suffering. In the other, it’s “the difference between heaven and hell”, lol. This book had >100 like these (though it is intended for advanced meditators, brag brag).
those jhana helmet people have pivoted to improving pedagogy w/ jhana retreats at $1-2k, I think for the purpose of gathering more jhana data, but then it became widely successful
I agree that emotional reaction can make the pain much worse. But I think that if you already are a reasonable sane adult, removing the emotional reaction would reduce the badness maybe by half. Even very experienced meditators can be overwhelmed by pain, if it is strong enough.
Reducing by half is still something worth doing. But I think we already are trying to get people there—the concepts of self-control, “no pain no gain”, stoicism, etc., are well-known even outside Buddhism.