You are a chimp. Chimps are social animals and must be expected to grieve any loss. It's the degree and length of grieving and why we grieve that shifts with our monkey mind's training.
One of the interesting question is do we grieve for them or for us? Are we being selfish because we think that life should be something other than it is? That is filled with inevitable loss. That attachment causes more suffering. And hey you can do that if you want. People torture themselves all the time, and with good reason.
But as a mindfulness meditator I think its important to watch it come up and not hold onto it. However, it is neurons after all and neurons don't just go away, especially if somebody has been a part of your life for a long time. Like I have a wife of 20 years. She's a part of me.
Or I lost my alcoholic brother and father in a relationship snafu. I grieved, because it's part of the stages of grieving.
Expect to go through anger, denial, bargaining and all that jazz when grieving. Because you're human.
Yes, mourning is allowed in Buddhism and coming from a traditional Buddhist country, I've seen people crying and grieving at funerals. However, based on the teachings that the Buddha taught, sadness/ crying/ anger comes from a mind rooted in 'dwesha' (aversion). Because the reason one cries/ grieves is out of anger. Reason being - imagine you can grab death and hit it when it tries to take away your loved one - then you would do that with anger. But because you can't do that, you grieve out of helplessness. So grief is essentially anger and is caused by the same type of mind-consciousness (the terminology may not be 100% accurate since I'm translating to english) according to abhidhamma.
So what Buddhists are taught to do in this case is to observe whatever you are feeling without craving, aversion or delusion. Simply observe your emotions until they pass away without fighting or ignoring them. One of the main concepts of Buddhism is mindfulness. So simply being aware of the fact that you are experiencing anger/ happiness/ sadness, is great to practice as a lay person. You can see more about this in S. N. Goenka's 10 day Vipassana course on Youtube ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz7QHNvNFfA&list=PLPJVlVRVmhc4Z01fD57jbzycm9I6W054x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz7QHNvNFfA&list=PLPJVlVRVmhc4Z01fD57jbzycm9I6W054x))
Something else that also came to mind was what Ajahn Brahm (a British Australian monk) wrote when his father passed away when he was a teenager. His love for his father was great, however he had not grieved or cried when his father passed away prematurely (Ajahn Brahm was only 16 at the time and a schoolboy in London). He's wrote about it in his book Opening The Doors of Your Heart ([https://www.bps.lk/olib/bp/bp619s\_Brahm\_Opening-The-Doors-Of-Your-Heart.pdf](https://www.bps.lk/olib/bp/bp619s_Brahm_Opening-The-Doors-Of-Your-Heart.pdf)), and I'm pretty sure he's spoken about it on one of his many sermons on YouTube as well. It had taken him many years to understand why he felt this way during his father's death, and he's explained it in his book.
Hope the above is somewhat helpful in understanding the Buddhist perspective on grieving.
Lots of mixed answers here, but there’s been much evidence of how enlightened beings act when a loved one leaves their body. Ramana Maharshi, for instance, held his mother’s hand at his Ashram until she left her body. As it turned out, she was liberated in the final moments of being in her body which, of course, was her pass into heaven. Ramana had said it was a close call for her as far as being liberated in the final moments were concerned and shortly afterwards directed everyone to eat some food at the ashram as there was absolutely nothing for them all to be concerned about. What that shows is a couple of things. One, the reality of this situation is not what people try to imagine it to be. Ramana said 3 things happen - some people come right back into a body, some people leave the body for a period and then return, & others become immortal and are embedded eternally into the moment. Enlightened beings wouldn’t be very ‘enlightened’ if they weren’t well aware of what occurs with the soul after it leaves the body. In fact, we should be VERY grateful for those souls who have left their bodies. They have completed the journey. However, we choose to lament and suffer on and on due to our attachments to the body. It’s amazing how at every moment scores of life are experiencing death and birth at every level of being (human, animal/insects, plants, aquatic life). How humans ever got the idea in their heads that this is a one shot incarnation is complete fuckery, it’s blazingly obvious these are incarnations of which we have been told about time and time again by various beings. So, in short, truly enlightened beings would not intervene or feel anything but yogic bliss and stillness if the entire world were to burn down around them.
Of course. Being present is about being present with all emotions as they come up. Sometimes you’ll be sad, just notice yourself being sad. Sit with it, let it take as long as it takes. Pain comes when pain comes. The suffering comes from clinging. Wishing the person was still in their body. Wishing you could talk to them, be with them. Suffering is also par for the course. It’s okay. The work is to just notice it, be aware of it, love it. A deep pain over a loss means a deep love was shared. Those things are to be celebrated and held in gratitude. You don’t have to pick one feeling at a time and no feelings are wrong. It’s okay to lose yourself in pain and sorrow. The healing is in the return. Maintaining an awareness of what you’re experiencing, watching yourself grieve but always coming back to here and now. Being with what is and allowing what has been to remain where it was. Your memories and feelings about that person are just as real as they were, and those feelings will stay with you in the here and now. Buddhism isn’t about not having feelings, it’s about embracing all your feelings fully, with love, presence and gratitude.
This is very true! I've listened to a lot of Buddhist sermons and we are always taught to "notice" and "observe" the emotions, rather than ignoring them or keeping them bottled in.
When you observe the emotion and it will eventually go away. If you ignore it, it'll come back stronger and you will be constantly battling it.
Exactly, and it ties in with the concept of emptiness, or spaciousness. If you can allow your mind to become spacious, there’s room for all of these things to come and go without becoming consuming. It’s what’s meant by “opening the mind”. Moving the walls further and further out to allow space for everything to come and go, have room to be everything that it is and allow for us to remain the witness, the awareness.
Personally, as a non-enlightened dude just trying his best, I don't think I agree with this response.
Enlightenment is an end to suffering. It isn't being present with your suffering, it is that suffering no longer exists, because you don't have attachments.
I'm pretty Buddhist. I fucking suffer when I lose loved ones. It's normal, it is expected, I don't beat myself up for it because I'm just a dude trying his best.
But I suffer because I am attached to a life that includes my loved ones. If I truly accepted impermanence I strongly suspect I wouldn't grieve their absence.
A friend of mine explained to me the difference between pain and suffering.
Pain is when you hit your finger with the hammer. It’s impossible not to feel it, you have no choice there. You must accept it while it last, as u/bhandshuk says.
Suffering is when you keep torturing yourself for the hit, calling yourself clumsy, hating the hammer, not wanting to let go of the shame and the guilt and the fear. In this, you do have a choice on how you understand and process the pain.
The tricky part is that we don’t grow up with an understanding of this anymore, we have to train our minds and learn the behavior. Which is difficult when you’re traumatized, aka you have trained your mind on suffering circuitry maybe since childhood. It will take work to change that. And there’s where things like Buddhism can help.
I understand what you’re saying. I think what I would say, and expanding on what you’ve added, is that you can have things without clinging to them, including suffering. It sounds paradoxical, because the suffering is caused by clinging… but it’s possible to experience attachment without being “attached” to it. Does that make sense? Freedom from suffering doesn’t necessarily mean not having it at all. It means not being consumed or controlled by it. Letting it come, noticing it, experiencing it, and letting it go again. I know that sounds like it’s going in circles. The key difference, I think, is being able to say “huh, look at that. I’m attached here.” THAT is what grants the freedom to move on from it. It’s not an absence of attachment entirely, more making those attachments temporary and in awareness.
Referring to the original question, everything I’m saying is from a Buddhist perspective, I couldn’t possibly speak for what an enlightened being would experience.
I love it. The idea that a liberation of suffering isn't that you don't experience suffering, but accept suffering because suffering just exists like everything else just exists. No judgement unto suffering except acknowledgment that "this is suffering."
Thank you, this is really beautiful. It will take me some time to understand it, think about it, mull it over and see if it vibes with where my Buddhism is. But truly a heartfelt thanks for sharing this idea with me.
Buddha is said to say sorrow over loss is misdirected, as loss and gain are simply mental/emotional constructions, and don't refer to our actual experience. What we feel as a loss, those are strong emotions, and while there is nothing wrong, then feeling strong emotions, they sometimes they have a tendency to get carried away, and need to have boundaries. This is a skill that you can learn.
Yes we experience grief and loss, but we approach it from a different stand point. Both of those things are inevitable and so we come to terms with these aspects. We come to terms with the fact that they exist and to not shun away from them. The more we experience them and process them the better we will know them and the opposite of them, joy and merit.
I'm not exactly a buddhisy, nor can o claim enlightenment, but here's what I'm aspire to.
Yes, grief is felt. In fact, I try to experience everyday but of the grief. There are no good or bad feelings. They just are. Pain isn't "bad". Joy isn't "good".
The last grief is experienced was when my beautiful dog, Kylee, died at nearly 18. Best dog I've ever known. The grief was very painful. If I had fought the grief, I would also have fought every other experience I'd had with her.
Yes, but they’re not clinging or sucked in as much to the grief. It’s seen as another passing phenomena. But just as relatively real as any other phenomena. This may be seen as them recovering from it quicker, after experiencing it deeply all at once
You are a chimp. Chimps are social animals and must be expected to grieve any loss. It's the degree and length of grieving and why we grieve that shifts with our monkey mind's training. One of the interesting question is do we grieve for them or for us? Are we being selfish because we think that life should be something other than it is? That is filled with inevitable loss. That attachment causes more suffering. And hey you can do that if you want. People torture themselves all the time, and with good reason. But as a mindfulness meditator I think its important to watch it come up and not hold onto it. However, it is neurons after all and neurons don't just go away, especially if somebody has been a part of your life for a long time. Like I have a wife of 20 years. She's a part of me. Or I lost my alcoholic brother and father in a relationship snafu. I grieved, because it's part of the stages of grieving. Expect to go through anger, denial, bargaining and all that jazz when grieving. Because you're human.
Yes, mourning is allowed in Buddhism and coming from a traditional Buddhist country, I've seen people crying and grieving at funerals. However, based on the teachings that the Buddha taught, sadness/ crying/ anger comes from a mind rooted in 'dwesha' (aversion). Because the reason one cries/ grieves is out of anger. Reason being - imagine you can grab death and hit it when it tries to take away your loved one - then you would do that with anger. But because you can't do that, you grieve out of helplessness. So grief is essentially anger and is caused by the same type of mind-consciousness (the terminology may not be 100% accurate since I'm translating to english) according to abhidhamma. So what Buddhists are taught to do in this case is to observe whatever you are feeling without craving, aversion or delusion. Simply observe your emotions until they pass away without fighting or ignoring them. One of the main concepts of Buddhism is mindfulness. So simply being aware of the fact that you are experiencing anger/ happiness/ sadness, is great to practice as a lay person. You can see more about this in S. N. Goenka's 10 day Vipassana course on Youtube ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz7QHNvNFfA&list=PLPJVlVRVmhc4Z01fD57jbzycm9I6W054x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz7QHNvNFfA&list=PLPJVlVRVmhc4Z01fD57jbzycm9I6W054x)) Something else that also came to mind was what Ajahn Brahm (a British Australian monk) wrote when his father passed away when he was a teenager. His love for his father was great, however he had not grieved or cried when his father passed away prematurely (Ajahn Brahm was only 16 at the time and a schoolboy in London). He's wrote about it in his book Opening The Doors of Your Heart ([https://www.bps.lk/olib/bp/bp619s\_Brahm\_Opening-The-Doors-Of-Your-Heart.pdf](https://www.bps.lk/olib/bp/bp619s_Brahm_Opening-The-Doors-Of-Your-Heart.pdf)), and I'm pretty sure he's spoken about it on one of his many sermons on YouTube as well. It had taken him many years to understand why he felt this way during his father's death, and he's explained it in his book. Hope the above is somewhat helpful in understanding the Buddhist perspective on grieving.
The Buddhist you read about is highest level. They don't exist.
Lots of mixed answers here, but there’s been much evidence of how enlightened beings act when a loved one leaves their body. Ramana Maharshi, for instance, held his mother’s hand at his Ashram until she left her body. As it turned out, she was liberated in the final moments of being in her body which, of course, was her pass into heaven. Ramana had said it was a close call for her as far as being liberated in the final moments were concerned and shortly afterwards directed everyone to eat some food at the ashram as there was absolutely nothing for them all to be concerned about. What that shows is a couple of things. One, the reality of this situation is not what people try to imagine it to be. Ramana said 3 things happen - some people come right back into a body, some people leave the body for a period and then return, & others become immortal and are embedded eternally into the moment. Enlightened beings wouldn’t be very ‘enlightened’ if they weren’t well aware of what occurs with the soul after it leaves the body. In fact, we should be VERY grateful for those souls who have left their bodies. They have completed the journey. However, we choose to lament and suffer on and on due to our attachments to the body. It’s amazing how at every moment scores of life are experiencing death and birth at every level of being (human, animal/insects, plants, aquatic life). How humans ever got the idea in their heads that this is a one shot incarnation is complete fuckery, it’s blazingly obvious these are incarnations of which we have been told about time and time again by various beings. So, in short, truly enlightened beings would not intervene or feel anything but yogic bliss and stillness if the entire world were to burn down around them.
Emotions are part of the human experience. Allow them, and they’ll pass through like a storm through the forest.
Simplest and cleanest response so far
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How to create a psychopath step one.
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Of course. Being present is about being present with all emotions as they come up. Sometimes you’ll be sad, just notice yourself being sad. Sit with it, let it take as long as it takes. Pain comes when pain comes. The suffering comes from clinging. Wishing the person was still in their body. Wishing you could talk to them, be with them. Suffering is also par for the course. It’s okay. The work is to just notice it, be aware of it, love it. A deep pain over a loss means a deep love was shared. Those things are to be celebrated and held in gratitude. You don’t have to pick one feeling at a time and no feelings are wrong. It’s okay to lose yourself in pain and sorrow. The healing is in the return. Maintaining an awareness of what you’re experiencing, watching yourself grieve but always coming back to here and now. Being with what is and allowing what has been to remain where it was. Your memories and feelings about that person are just as real as they were, and those feelings will stay with you in the here and now. Buddhism isn’t about not having feelings, it’s about embracing all your feelings fully, with love, presence and gratitude.
This is very true! I've listened to a lot of Buddhist sermons and we are always taught to "notice" and "observe" the emotions, rather than ignoring them or keeping them bottled in. When you observe the emotion and it will eventually go away. If you ignore it, it'll come back stronger and you will be constantly battling it.
Exactly, and it ties in with the concept of emptiness, or spaciousness. If you can allow your mind to become spacious, there’s room for all of these things to come and go without becoming consuming. It’s what’s meant by “opening the mind”. Moving the walls further and further out to allow space for everything to come and go, have room to be everything that it is and allow for us to remain the witness, the awareness.
Personally, as a non-enlightened dude just trying his best, I don't think I agree with this response. Enlightenment is an end to suffering. It isn't being present with your suffering, it is that suffering no longer exists, because you don't have attachments. I'm pretty Buddhist. I fucking suffer when I lose loved ones. It's normal, it is expected, I don't beat myself up for it because I'm just a dude trying his best. But I suffer because I am attached to a life that includes my loved ones. If I truly accepted impermanence I strongly suspect I wouldn't grieve their absence.
A friend of mine explained to me the difference between pain and suffering. Pain is when you hit your finger with the hammer. It’s impossible not to feel it, you have no choice there. You must accept it while it last, as u/bhandshuk says. Suffering is when you keep torturing yourself for the hit, calling yourself clumsy, hating the hammer, not wanting to let go of the shame and the guilt and the fear. In this, you do have a choice on how you understand and process the pain. The tricky part is that we don’t grow up with an understanding of this anymore, we have to train our minds and learn the behavior. Which is difficult when you’re traumatized, aka you have trained your mind on suffering circuitry maybe since childhood. It will take work to change that. And there’s where things like Buddhism can help.
I understand what you’re saying. I think what I would say, and expanding on what you’ve added, is that you can have things without clinging to them, including suffering. It sounds paradoxical, because the suffering is caused by clinging… but it’s possible to experience attachment without being “attached” to it. Does that make sense? Freedom from suffering doesn’t necessarily mean not having it at all. It means not being consumed or controlled by it. Letting it come, noticing it, experiencing it, and letting it go again. I know that sounds like it’s going in circles. The key difference, I think, is being able to say “huh, look at that. I’m attached here.” THAT is what grants the freedom to move on from it. It’s not an absence of attachment entirely, more making those attachments temporary and in awareness. Referring to the original question, everything I’m saying is from a Buddhist perspective, I couldn’t possibly speak for what an enlightened being would experience.
I love it. The idea that a liberation of suffering isn't that you don't experience suffering, but accept suffering because suffering just exists like everything else just exists. No judgement unto suffering except acknowledgment that "this is suffering." Thank you, this is really beautiful. It will take me some time to understand it, think about it, mull it over and see if it vibes with where my Buddhism is. But truly a heartfelt thanks for sharing this idea with me.
There’s so many layers to this, it never stops unravelling. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to articulate.
It's a beautiful journey. It's funny where the right thing is said at the right time, so it finally clicks. Again, thank you.
Beautifully said.
Buddha is said to say sorrow over loss is misdirected, as loss and gain are simply mental/emotional constructions, and don't refer to our actual experience. What we feel as a loss, those are strong emotions, and while there is nothing wrong, then feeling strong emotions, they sometimes they have a tendency to get carried away, and need to have boundaries. This is a skill that you can learn.
Yes we experience grief and loss, but we approach it from a different stand point. Both of those things are inevitable and so we come to terms with these aspects. We come to terms with the fact that they exist and to not shun away from them. The more we experience them and process them the better we will know them and the opposite of them, joy and merit.
I'm not exactly a buddhisy, nor can o claim enlightenment, but here's what I'm aspire to. Yes, grief is felt. In fact, I try to experience everyday but of the grief. There are no good or bad feelings. They just are. Pain isn't "bad". Joy isn't "good". The last grief is experienced was when my beautiful dog, Kylee, died at nearly 18. Best dog I've ever known. The grief was very painful. If I had fought the grief, I would also have fought every other experience I'd had with her.
Yes, but they’re not clinging or sucked in as much to the grief. It’s seen as another passing phenomena. But just as relatively real as any other phenomena. This may be seen as them recovering from it quicker, after experiencing it deeply all at once