The Root, The All

The Root, The All

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I'm interested in dukkha (suffering) in its broadest sense. In particular, I'm interested in the Buddha's claim that all phenomena are marked by dukkha.

Glenn Wallis, in Basic Teachings of the Buddha, cites the following passage from the Sabba Sutta in the Samyuttanikaya:

This was spoken by the Buddha at Savatthi. I will teach you the all. Listen to what I say.

What is the all? The eye and forms, the ear and sounds, the nose and scents, the tongue and tastes, the body and tactile objects, the mind and thoughts. This is called the all. (27)

Here, the "all" is said to consist of the six senses (or six foci of consciousness) together with their correlative objects. What does this description of the "all" have to do with the universality of dukkha?

In its broadest sense, dukkha is a constitutive feature of every sensation. Every time contact is made between a sense and its sense object, this contact will entail suffering. This is true whether the sensation is pleasant or unpleasant. And it is true whether the receiver is enlightened or not.

All sensory contact entails "suffering" because all such sensory contact unavoidably involves our passive reception of whatever object is given. (This is literally the meaning of the Greek term for suffering, pathos, that belongs to a whole constellation of related words like passive, passionate, patient, pathetic, etc.) The given object will affect us, shape us, and in-form us. We, of course, contribute in complex ways to how the object is received but, however it is received, we must suffer its imposition.

In short, sensation is suffering. Sensation takes place only when a sense is affected, stimulated, irritated, perturbed, or pressed upon. We see only when light perturbs the eye, we hear only when sound perturbs the ear, we think only when thoughts perturb the mind.

It is in light of the constant, relentless pressure of sensation in all its modalities that life is suffering.

Another way to say this: all phenomena (i.e., "all" that arises in experience via sensation) bear the mark of the "three characteristics":

1. annica, impermanence

2. dukkha, suffering

3. anatta, no-self/no-substance

Why do all phenomena bear all three characteristics? One reason is that these three characteristics make sensation (i.e., the "all") possible. Or, in more philosophical language, they are collectively the condition of possibility for sensation.

If sensation didn't constantly fluxuate, then our senses would never register any information about the objects at hand. Information in this sense depends on the constant production of difference and variation.

If sensation did not press and perturb, then no connection would be made.

If our senses weren't open, conditioned, and interdependent systems, then they would not be available for sensation.

Here, dukkha, in its broadest sense, is the condition of possibility for experience itself. It cannot be expunged.

Waking up depends not on expunging this kind of dukkha but on no longer producing all the smoke and friction that result from our baseline resistance to the passing, pressing, and impersonal character of all experience.

Waking up depends on our welcome and willing reception of all three marks of existence as the condition of possibility for l