@ Markus:
I cannot say that this has been my understanding beyond a shred of doubt, but I have had glimpses of pure awareness in meditation. The silence where all consciousness of the body and mind has vanished and just awareness remains is difficult to describe; it can only be experienced. This type of witnessing consciousness is not all that difficult to attain, and is the beginning of awakening. Everything else is, as I said, mental gymnastics.
Self-Realization (aka enlightenment, nirvana, etc) is the state wherein all duality (good/bad, pleasure/pain, moral/immoral etc) ceases to be real. In that state, while the body can feel disease, pain etc, the self-identification with it has stopped permanently.
Personally, I prefer not to spend my energy in seeking an explanation for all that seems wrong with the universe (why does suffering exist at all?, why is there disease and death? etc); rather, I prefer to transcend the very idea that there is an entity such as "me" that suffers. Once that is a permanent understanding, there is no more suffering. Everything that is experienced through the senses just is. One can still engage in work in society for alleviating the suffering of others, but one realizes that the noblest welfare work is to rid others of the false idea that the body is the Self.
The Eastern philosophy systems are inherently practical. They are based on a Guru-student relationship because the Guru is a human being like yourself who is recognized to have attained Self-realization, and can help point you to it. That's much more effective than reading scripture. It's like jumping into the pool with your instructor present to guide you and encourage you, vs. learning to swim from a book . And it's been my personal experience that when you find such a teacher, realization is dramatically accelerated.
All Eastern spiritual systems say that even to be born is suffering. So it's all relative shades of suffering, really, whether one incarnation suffers from poverty, while another from terminal disease, and a third from chronic anxiety and a troubled marriage despite being a billionaire.
The law of karma does offer an explanation for why we encounter the circumstances we do in our lives, but then how does it matter that you know the reason for suffering? Isn't it much better to make efforts break free from the very illusion of samsara (the wheel of birth and death) and to help others to do so also? That is what the bodhisattvas and the yogis teach. |