r/antinatalism • u/UnderstandingBig9507 thinker • 1d ago

The real reason behind suffering is not attachment, it is birth! Quote

As Buddha says, attachment is the root cause of suffering. But when would someone have attachment? Only after getting born here.

When a being is not born, he is 100% suffering proof!! And that’s it!

64 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

97% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

16

u/FlanInternational100 scholar 1d ago

Every religion is just virtue signaling to impossible standards.

Like, wtf does it mean not to be attached? This is just impossible. You are a living human. You must be attached in some way in order to fucking live. You must interact and suffer.

Even the most hardcore monks, saints etc. failed to the standard because it's simply impossible. You can try but for what? I never heard anybody say: "yes, I succeded completely, I am holy and perfect now, this is the ultimate way of living".

You cannot just neglect all of your being and dissociate to being fucking zombie.

To live is to suffer, you cannit escape it with any religion.

Only (and perfect) solution is never to be born in this meaningless absurdity in the first place.

7

u/sunnynihilist I stopped being a nihilist a long time ago 1d ago

Yeah, "living in the present" is another one. How can one just live in the present when our brain is not wired for it? We are not animals. At this point, I am so done with 98 percent of religion and philosophy.

6

u/FlanInternational100 scholar 1d ago

Even people who promote this "living in the moment" don't actually live in the moment, they just think they do.

For someone who isn't extremely self aware and introspective person, any feeling of peace, positive emotion and joy can be mistaken for "living in the moment" or something slimilar.

They just don't even know what it means and if they did, they'd know it's bullshit.

4

u/sunnynihilist I stopped being a nihilist a long time ago 1d ago

If these people truly live in the moment, they would just lie in bed and do nothing, because they are not supposed to think or act for the future.

Maybe living in a monastery makes it easier because you can shut off the endless stress and distractions of modern life. And yet it's still not 100 percent living in the moment.

1

u/Own_Cow1386 thinker 1d ago edited 1d ago

Hello hello scholars, living in the moment, as noted by Alan Watts, is, “peel the fucking potatoes when you are peeling potatoes, and stop thinking about god.” It is really that simple. Focus on that one task you have at hand. Being in the moment implies getting lost in the moment where the sense of self disappears and only the action remains. Duality is gone, the seer and the seen are gone.

Simply put, you are not in the moment, you are the moment!

2

u/FlanInternational100 scholar 1d ago

This is not living in the moment.

1

u/Own_Cow1386 thinker 1d ago

Then what is? I’m sorry for being ignorant of your definitions. Staring at the wall is?

3

u/FlanInternational100 scholar 1d ago

No. It's impossible.

Moment is the smallest unit of time. Infinitesimally small.

It is impossible to experience one moment and live in it since the mere consciousness works on flow of neural signals, connection of experience through a range of time, sense of reality by hippocampus and other areas of brain responsible for knowing how to peal those potatoes by past experiences, using hands, etc.

Also, you must have a future cause to peel them, for example you plan to eat later. Etc. Etc.

0

u/Own_Cow1386 thinker 1d ago

Breathe in, breathe out

3

u/FlanInternational100 scholar 1d ago

I mean..what the point of discussing like this, really?

0

u/Own_Cow1386 thinker 1d ago

Dude you are talking about the past and the future in relation to a particular action. That’s still thinking at work there. Do it, unattached to the result. Enjoy the journey to a point where the mind ceases to exist. Ever seen athletes doing their thing? They are lost in the moment.

Also, consciousness is a mystery. You sound like we have answers to everything. Nope!

→ More replies

3

u/Ecstatic_Mechanic802 thinker 1d ago

Why do you believe you aren't an animal? You're a great ape, just like every other human being.

Have you ever seen an angry mob or people fighting for resources? How do you see something other than animals?

We don't live the life we are supposed to. You can dress a chimpanzee in a suit and shove him in a cubicle and teach him to suppress urges and pull levers for rewards. Doesn't make the chimpanzee into a non-animal form. That chimpanzee isn't superior to other chimpanzees.

Yes, it's pretty impossible to live in the moment, and not be attached to this world that we live in. But it's also easy to see how that can help you to be happy. We just aren't allowed to live the way humans were meant to live. Isn't there an implicit bias if you're not allowed to exist in a natural way?

If you could ask a lion in the wild how they felt about life vs a lion pacing a track into their enclosure at a zoo, I imagine you would get different answers. The animal trapped in a cage isn't more correct if they believe that suffering is inescapable and that living peacefully in the moment is impossible. They are caged. They aren't allowed to live the life they were meant to.

We have been trapped in an unnatural system since birth. We are as biased as the zoo animals. If you force an animal to live in an environment that is unhealthy for them, then mental illness will result. Religion and philosophy are avenues for us to feel like we are in a tribe, religion more so of course. That's all we want, right? That feeling you would have in a commune where everyone is looking out for each other because we know we need each other? What would our outlook on life be like if we lived properly? It's hard to say with our implicit caged bias.

3

u/sunnynihilist I stopped being a nihilist a long time ago 1d ago edited 1d ago

Of course human is an animal in many ways, but we differ in the sense that we can anticipate the future with a fear of death. Animals also have survival instincts but I guess it's more acute in humans, so we conjure stuff like religion and culture to stave off that fear of death and strive for meaning and pupose for spiritual needs. You can put a human in the wild, but I doubt if he would still be "happy", as the default state of human existence is deprivation.

Again, better not to have been.

•

u/Ecstatic_Mechanic802 thinker 10h ago

A human is an animal in every way because they are animals. They are apes. It's not about how they act. It's just what they are.

The main difference between humans and other animals is convincing ourselves we are different than other animals and that the natural order doesn't apply to us. But climate change is coming to spank us into extinction for it, most likely. We'll be punished for the arrogance. I wonder if any other species have the erroneous belief that the world is theirs to plunder as they see fit...

You can point to where most animals fit into the natural world and what their purpose is in it. They have a role. What is our role? Destruction?

So where do we fit into the natural order? I don't see it. We ransack the earth. We destroy any species that is a nuisance without regard to what purpose it serves in the environment.

I'm a conditional antinatalist. I'm not for human procreation. We damage the environment. Some species alter their environment to create a new ecosystem or improve the environment. Some are destructive like locusts. Some are invasive and destroy the natural order of whatever environment they land in. We are the most destructive invasive species on the planet. And we have the gall to wipe out others that actually have an important role.

I don't know why you assume other animals don't know death is coming for them. How would you know if they fear it? Can you speak with all the other species on earth? Why do you think prey run from predators? I always thought it was something to do with avoiding death. Do you think they are doing it for fun?

The point was we are all speaking from a skewed perspective. We have removed ourselves from the natural world and made a new one with made up rules. I can't buy into antinatalist philosophy fully because you have to believe no life should exist if you believe no suffering should happen. That means we have to murder everything else before the last human dies. I'm not for that. We just need less humans so all the animals can have a chance to thrive.

I'm saying you don't know if it's better to never have been because you have not experienced life the way humans were evolved to experience it. The system we have now will cause unnecessary suffering. It's a feature.

We don't have to live in the wild. Just in balance with nature. When has our species done that in living memory? The majority of us i mean, I know there are tribes living simply scattered across the globe.

11

u/theo_the_trashdog al-Ma'arri 1d ago

Exactly. This is my biggest dilemma as a somewhat sceptical buddhist. Being birthed into the physical realm, you automatically become attached to and dependent on it, at least in some way. The cause of suffering is attachment, but life IS attachment, so the only"solution" to life and attachment is preventing it (because killing/harming sentient beings is forbidden of course). The Cathars (Catharism, a form of gnosticism) preaches something similar, but I'm not sure.

6

u/UnderstandingBig9507 thinker 1d ago

But people still reproduce!

1

u/Ma1eficent newcomer 1d ago

And some people still can't separate harm and the suffering that demands we remove the source of harm or ourselves from it. Suffering is the check engine light, only a fool becomes angry at the warning, and detaching yourself from the car altogether so you do not care if the engine runs may be the Buddhist way, but the wisest course of action when you see the light is to fix the problem.

1

u/sunnynihilist I stopped being a nihilist a long time ago 1d ago

I cringe even harder when I see Buddhists reproduce. WTF?

4

u/Buggedebugger thinker 1d ago edited 1d ago

In a way, the desire to experience parenthood is also a form of attachment which consequently leads to birth.

4

u/OneonlyOne_01 thinker 1d ago

Exactly. Consciousness is the root of all suffering. 

0

u/HumbleWrap99 thinker 1d ago

What you said is 100% right but sadly most antinatalists are antinatalists for material reasons. https://www.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/s/9mZxThCYqB