Does a Buddha Still Experience Mental Pain?
Let me first correct something I may have said before. If I once described a Buddha as “someone whose mental pain has disappeared,” that was not precise. Becoming a Buddha does not mean that mental pain vanishes completely. Wisdom is closer to knowing why suffering arises, which suffering can be released, and which pain must be accepted as long as one lives as a human being.
To understand this, we first have to examine the relationship between pain and attachment. Mental suffering grows when we cling to something. Does that mean a Buddha is someone who clings to absolutely nothing? It is not that simple. A Buddha is a wise person, and wisdom regarding suffering means not undergoing suffering that need not be undergone. If foolish attachment is causing pain, a wise life consists in recognizing it as foolish attachment, releasing it, and no longer producing that pain.
Wisdom is not a state in which all pain disappears. It is the ability not to create suffering that need not be endured.
Yet not all pain disappears in that way. This is where a viewer’s question about abortion enters. Imagine how heartbroken a person who values life would be if she had to abort the child in her womb. I am a man and have never carried a child, but if my wife and I had to abort the child in her womb, I too would suffer. It would be extremely difficult simply to call that feeling attachment and put it down.
Is Cherishing Life Also an Attachment?
Then do a Buddha and an arahant remain unattached even to life? The attitude of cherishing life is connected to the first of Buddhism’s Five Precepts, refraining from killing. But this cannot be reduced to the command not to kill. Beneath it lies ahimsa, the principle of nonviolence: do not inflict violence on other living beings.
The question therefore returns in another form. Upon becoming a Buddha, must one cease clinging even to the thought that life is precious? To pursue this question, we must first ask what separates life from nonlife. Breathing cannot settle the matter because many living things do not breathe. Is a virus alive? Once we ask exactly where the boundary between life and nonlife lies, the problem is no longer simple.
Beneath the precept against killing lies ahimsa, nonviolence toward all life.
Buddhism is a path that breaks concepts apart. Every concept we use is a conditioned formation made by human beings. The distinctions between life and nonlife, self and other, humans and dogs, wolves and dogs, ants and humans, and viruses and bacteria are not lines clearly engraved into nature. Human beings distinguish and define things in ways meaningful to us and grasp them through language and concepts. When this is understood deeply, no concept can remain an absolute object of attachment.
We See from Inside the Well of Living Beings
That does not make the principle of cherishing life meaningless. Ahimsa represents the standpoint of a living being. Because my life matters to me, I think it better not to treat another life carelessly. This is a view arising from inside the well of living beings. I have never been nonliving. I divide life from nonlife and say that living beings should not be harmed, but the boundary begins to shake as soon as I ask what counts as life.
We must hold together two facts: every concept is made by human beings and is therefore not absolute, and a human being nevertheless lives as a human being. Would it not be strange for me, a human, to speak as if I had escaped humanity? I live as a human, a primate, a mammal, and a living being. Moving down those levels, I carry the limits of each. I express this by saying, “A Buddha is an elementary school student who knows that he is an elementary school student.”
No one can be told to understand a jellyfish’s standpoint completely and live like a jellyfish. Nor can anyone fully understand a dog’s standpoint and live like a dog. I am a living being and a human, and I live inside my well. It is difficult to become a being that has completely escaped that well. What I can know is that the sky I see from the well is only the sky seen from a human standpoint, not an absolute sky.
A Buddha is not someone who is no longer an elementary school student, but an elementary school student who knows that he is one.
Can We Live Wisely Without Any Attachment?
From the standpoint of a Buddha who has broken concepts apart, nothing can be a completely absolute object of attachment. But can we live wisely with no attachment whatsoever? Can we have no feeling at all that the life in the womb is precious? When my mother is sick, I take her to the hospital, care for her, and work to pay for treatment. Can anyone say that this too is attachment and should be abandoned? If a knife pierces my body, does the pain disappear when someone says, “Do not be attached”?
We cannot live without every form of attachment. What matters is knowing that I am an elementary school student. A Buddha also hurts, because a Buddha is human, a primate, a mammal, and a living being. We can learn that releasing needless attachment reduces anguish. But that does not mean erasing every feeling and pain that arises from living as a human and a living being. Some of it must be embraced as part of life.
A Buddha also hurts, because a Buddha too is human, a mammal, and a living being.
There are times when an abortion is unavoidable even though the baby in the womb is immensely precious. We cannot tell someone not to hurt then. Nor can we command her to sever that feeling at once. When a mother, father, sibling, or closest friend dies, we may miss them, ache, and grieve. If a person entirely without such feelings is called a Buddha, what use is that Buddha? Such a person could not understand our suffering and anguish at all.
A Buddha Who Cannot Understand Pain Is a Psychopath
If one merely says that everything is a concept and therefore life and nonlife should not be distinguished, one becomes unable to understand another person’s pain. We commonly call a person who cannot understand others’ emotions a psychopath. While studying Buddhism, one can sometimes begin to feel like a psychopath. By trying to escape concepts, erasing every distinction beyond a certain point, or sinking into the stillness of deep concentration, one may eliminate conflict and make the mind quiet. But does that help us live? That is not a Buddha.
This is why we need “neither form nor non-form.” We must not be bound by forms, but we must also escape the thought that we must never be bound by forms. Those who study Buddhism deeply sometimes become bound by the idea that they must not be bound by forms. A beginner must first work to free oneself from forms. The next step, however, is to go beyond non-form as well. One must not become trapped by the concept that concepts must be discarded.
Do not be bound by forms. Then free yourself even from the thought that you must never be bound by forms.
At that point, I see my place again. I am an elementary school student, a human being, and a resident of my well. I cannot turn away when my neighbor, mother, sibling, or friend suffers. If the child in my womb is infinitely precious, I must acknowledge that preciousness. That feeling should not be treated as proof that one lacks awakening.
The Fact That Not Everything Can Go My Way
A person cannot make everything go according to one’s will. We should be grateful for what is given while understanding that life does not obey us. I want my mother to live long, but she dies when her time comes. I may wish to live happily with my wife for a lifetime and die together, but I may die first or she may die first. Sometimes a child dies before the parents. We may hope to remain healthy for life and then develop cancer one day. Life and nature do not move according to my wishes.
It is therefore natural to suffer before an unavoidable choice such as abortion. It also hurts to let go when letting go is necessary. Feeling that pain does not mean one is not a Buddha or lacks wisdom. Wisdom does not consist in transcending the human condition and becoming a being without emotion.
A person cannot make everything go according to one’s will. Pain also arises in the process of accepting that fact.
Even the Knowledge of the Exhaustion of Defilements Is Not the Essence of a Buddha
Some may say that even if the other five higher knowledges attributed to the Buddha are ignored, the knowledge of the exhaustion of defilements alone truly belongs to a Buddha. But even that is not the essence of a Buddha. The entire story that establishes the six higher knowledges as supernatural abilities is fiction. A Buddha is not a being who erases all pain through supernatural power.
A Buddha is someone who tells a person to release the things that need not be clung to and that create needless torment. When one’s father dies, one can grieve for a day, two days, three days, or four. But will one remain caught for a month, a year, two years, ten years, or thirty years, endlessly repeating that one’s father has died and firing arrows at oneself? People sometimes do such unwise things. Bound by the thought that things must have turned out differently, they fire a second, third, and hundreds more arrows into themselves.
After the first pain, do not keep firing a second, a third, and countless further arrows into yourself.
Pain Is Natural, but the Arrows Can Stop
In the end, the heart of being a Buddha is wisdom. A Buddha is not a being who has escaped pain completely. If one has no pain at all and neither emotional empathy nor rational sympathy, whom could one help? Because we live as humans, animals, and living beings, we feel concern for other life. Because I know it hurts when I am hit, I try not to strike others carelessly. That is the standpoint of a human and a living being.
If something like abortion happened to me, I would suffer too. That suffering would be natural. Yet because a person cannot make everything go according to one’s will, some things must be relinquished. When there is no choice but to relinquish them, one has to do so. It is all right to hurt for a while. What one should not do is use that pain to keep firing a second, third, hundredth, thousandth, millionth arrow into oneself.
You may hurt. But do not grasp that pain and keep firing new arrows into yourself without end.
This is Buddhist wisdom and a wise life. A Buddha is not a transcendent being who feels no suffering. A Buddha knows human limits, accepts unavoidable pain, and knows how to stop the unnecessary suffering added on top of it.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.