I find the description “The unsatisfactoriness that arises from craving, aversion, and clinging/attachment to sensations and experiences” a bit hard to understand. But it seems similar to “preference frustration” which occurs when one can’t satisfy a strong desire. Is this the intended meaning?
It seems somewhat plausible that preference frustration is indeed identical to suffering, but I’m not convinced. When I’m suffering from pain it also is the case that I don’t want to be in pain, so a preference is frustrated. However, it also seems that I don’t want to be in pain because I suffer from pain. So in this case, preference frustration would be explained with suffering. This in turn would mean they can’t be identical, since explanation is irreflexive: “x because x” is false for any x.
I would object more directly to your proposal that pain is “an unpleasant physical sensation or emotional experience”. People with depression have an unpleasant emotional experience, but they clearly aren’t thereby in pain. The IASP definition you referred to seems more appropriate: “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage”. Depression feels nothing like tissue damage, so it’s not pain. Since both pain and depression (and other emotional experiences like anxiety) can cause suffering, this is another point for your argument that pain is not the same as suffering.
I wouldn’t say suffering is merely preference frustration—if you’re not attached to your preferences and their satisfaction, then you won’t suffer if they’re frustrated. Not craving/being averse doesn’t mean you don’t have preferences, though—see this reply I made to another comment on this post for more discussion of this.
I don’t know if I would say depression isn’t painful, at least in the emotional sense of pain. In either case, it’s certainly unpleasant, and if you want to use “pain” to refer to unpleasantness associated with tissue damage and “displeasure” to refer to a larger category of sensations which includes both pain and other “unpleasant-but-not-‘painful’” experiences such as depression, I don’t really have an objection—my point is still that suffering is distinct from ordinary displeasure.
I’m not sure I understand this distinction. Say I have a strong desire to eat pizza, but only a weak craving. I have a hard time imagining what that would be like. Or a strong craving but a weak desire. Or even this: I have a strong desire not to eat pizza, but also a strong craving to eat pizza. Are perhaps desires, in this picture, more intellectual somehow, or purely instrumental, while cravings are … animalistic urges? One example I can think of in these terms would be addiction, where someone has a strong desire not to smoke and a strong craving to smoke. Or, another example, someone has a strong craving to laugh and a strong desire to instead keep composure.
Does then craving (rather than desire) frustration, or aversion realization, constitute suffering? This is perhaps more plausible. But still, it seems to make sense to say I have an aversion to pain because I suffer from it, which wouldn’t make sense if suffering was the same as an aversion being realized.
Say I have a strong desire to eat pizza, but only a weak craving. I have a hard time imagining what that would be like.
I think this is likely in part due to “desire” connoting both craving and preferring. In the Buddhist context, “desire” is often used more like “craving,” but on the other hand, if I have a pizza for dinner, it seems reasonable to say it was because I desired so (in the sense of having a preference for it), even if there was not any craving for it.
I think people tend to crave what they prefer until they’ve made progress on undoing the habit of craving/aversion, so it’s understandable that it can be hard for such a person to imagine having a strong preference without an associated craving. However, the difference becomes clearer if/when one experiences intentions and preferences in the absence of craving/aversion.
Perhaps it would be informative to examine your experience of preferring in instances other than e.g. eating, where I think there is more of a tendency to crave because “you need food to survive.” For example, if you’re writing and considering two ways of articulating something, you might find you have a strong preference for one way over another, but I imagine there might be less craving in the sense of “I must have it this way, not another.” Perhaps this isn’t the best example possible, but I think careful consideration will reveal the difference in experience between “desire” in the craving sense and “desire” in the preferring sense.
ETA: Another example I thought of is selecting a song to listen to if you’re listening to music—you might want to listen to one song vs. others, but not necessarily have a strong craving for it.
Does then craving (rather than desire) frustration, or aversion realization, constitute suffering?
No, because craving something results in suffering, even if you get that which you crave, and being averse to something results in suffering, even if you avoid that to which you’re averse.
But still, it seems to make sense to say I have an aversion to pain because I suffer from it
I think it makes more sense to say there’s an aversion to pain because pain feels bad; since suffering is not a necessary consequence of pain, it doesn’t make sense to say that you’re averse to pain because it results in suffering. The causal chain is aversion->suffering, not the other way around.
I find the description “The unsatisfactoriness that arises from craving, aversion, and clinging/attachment to sensations and experiences” a bit hard to understand. But it seems similar to “preference frustration” which occurs when one can’t satisfy a strong desire. Is this the intended meaning?
It seems somewhat plausible that preference frustration is indeed identical to suffering, but I’m not convinced. When I’m suffering from pain it also is the case that I don’t want to be in pain, so a preference is frustrated. However, it also seems that I don’t want to be in pain because I suffer from pain. So in this case, preference frustration would be explained with suffering. This in turn would mean they can’t be identical, since explanation is irreflexive: “x because x” is false for any x.
I would object more directly to your proposal that pain is “an unpleasant physical sensation or emotional experience”. People with depression have an unpleasant emotional experience, but they clearly aren’t thereby in pain. The IASP definition you referred to seems more appropriate: “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage”. Depression feels nothing like tissue damage, so it’s not pain. Since both pain and depression (and other emotional experiences like anxiety) can cause suffering, this is another point for your argument that pain is not the same as suffering.
I wouldn’t say suffering is merely preference frustration—if you’re not attached to your preferences and their satisfaction, then you won’t suffer if they’re frustrated. Not craving/being averse doesn’t mean you don’t have preferences, though—see this reply I made to another comment on this post for more discussion of this.
I don’t know if I would say depression isn’t painful, at least in the emotional sense of pain. In either case, it’s certainly unpleasant, and if you want to use “pain” to refer to unpleasantness associated with tissue damage and “displeasure” to refer to a larger category of sensations which includes both pain and other “unpleasant-but-not-‘painful’” experiences such as depression, I don’t really have an objection—my point is still that suffering is distinct from ordinary displeasure.
I’m not sure I understand this distinction. Say I have a strong desire to eat pizza, but only a weak craving. I have a hard time imagining what that would be like. Or a strong craving but a weak desire. Or even this: I have a strong desire not to eat pizza, but also a strong craving to eat pizza. Are perhaps desires, in this picture, more intellectual somehow, or purely instrumental, while cravings are … animalistic urges? One example I can think of in these terms would be addiction, where someone has a strong desire not to smoke and a strong craving to smoke. Or, another example, someone has a strong craving to laugh and a strong desire to instead keep composure.
Does then craving (rather than desire) frustration, or aversion realization, constitute suffering? This is perhaps more plausible. But still, it seems to make sense to say I have an aversion to pain because I suffer from it, which wouldn’t make sense if suffering was the same as an aversion being realized.
I think this is likely in part due to “desire” connoting both craving and preferring. In the Buddhist context, “desire” is often used more like “craving,” but on the other hand, if I have a pizza for dinner, it seems reasonable to say it was because I desired so (in the sense of having a preference for it), even if there was not any craving for it.
I think people tend to crave what they prefer until they’ve made progress on undoing the habit of craving/aversion, so it’s understandable that it can be hard for such a person to imagine having a strong preference without an associated craving. However, the difference becomes clearer if/when one experiences intentions and preferences in the absence of craving/aversion.
Perhaps it would be informative to examine your experience of preferring in instances other than e.g. eating, where I think there is more of a tendency to crave because “you need food to survive.” For example, if you’re writing and considering two ways of articulating something, you might find you have a strong preference for one way over another, but I imagine there might be less craving in the sense of “I must have it this way, not another.” Perhaps this isn’t the best example possible, but I think careful consideration will reveal the difference in experience between “desire” in the craving sense and “desire” in the preferring sense.
ETA: Another example I thought of is selecting a song to listen to if you’re listening to music—you might want to listen to one song vs. others, but not necessarily have a strong craving for it.
No, because craving something results in suffering, even if you get that which you crave, and being averse to something results in suffering, even if you avoid that to which you’re averse.
I think it makes more sense to say there’s an aversion to pain because pain feels bad; since suffering is not a necessary consequence of pain, it doesn’t make sense to say that you’re averse to pain because it results in suffering. The causal chain is aversion->suffering, not the other way around.