Saṃsāra: underrated??

Not everyone knows that Buddhism has multiple hell realms. Avīci is the worst. It has been described as Buddhist superhell. How can you get into Avīci, you ask? Simply commit one of the Five Heinous Acts.

1. Kill your mom

2. Kill your dad

3. Kill someone who has achieved enlightenment

4. Maliciously cause a Buddha to bleed

5. Or, cause a schism in the community of Buddhist monks and nuns

Any one of these actions generates so much negative karma that you are reborn in the superhell Avīci once you die. You remain here in 3.4 quintillion years and experience suffering the whole time. Worse, this is no ordinary negative karma that you have earned yourself. We’re talking about Anantarika-karma, which prevents you from achieving any stage of enlightenment, and cannot be counterbalanced by the normal positive karma you get from doing good deeds.

Meanwhile, there is a famous zen koan that goes like this: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”. It is usually interpreted to mean that you should seek enlightenment within yourself and without overly depending on external figures. But you probably should not actually kill him if you meet him on the road, due to the Avīci thing. There is an incredible poem about this situation by adzolotl on tumblr which I will reproduce here:

Don’t ever kill the Buddha if you meet him on the road
For the karma you’d acquire would be quite a heavy load
And it might take countless aeons for your spirit to atone
So if you should meet the Buddha, best to leave the guy alone

Don’t ever kill the Buddha if you see him eating rice
Though some koans may suggest it, this is dubious advice
He’s a busy bodhisattva with no time to transmigrate
And if he were less enlightened he’d be reborn quite irate

Don’t ever kill the Buddha if you find him in the park
It’s a temporary thrill and then the punishment is stark
And a year or three quintillion in Avici isn’t fun
So don’t ever kill the Buddha; simply put, it isn’t done

I liked it so much I tried adding my own stanza. It’s not as good as Adzolotl’s, sorry:

Don’t ever kill the Buddha even if his back is turned
As in taking such an action you’re the only one who’s burned
The consequence is worse than being reborn an iguana
Because when you’re stuck in Avīci he’ll be laughing from nirvana

If you think Avīci doesn’t sound fun, you may be interested in how you can opt out of the whole “cycle of death and rebirth” thing altogether. Well, that cycle is called Saṃsāra, and there is a hack to escape it. All you have to do is fully understand the nature of reality, become enlightened, and achieve nirvana. Upon physical death, an enlightened being is not reborn into any realm but instead enters “parinirvana”.

I am somewhat nervous to write the rest of this post, and I request that anyone in the community of Buddhist monks and nuns avoids reading it. What follows may shock you, while I hope not to cause a schism in your community, I can’t discount the possibility. Understand that the stakes are fairly high for me – one schism and I’m spending the next year or three quintillion in Avīci. That may be the punishment that all substack bloggers deserve, but it’s one I hope to escape.

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Enlightenment seems tempting. An escape from all suffering, as well as an escape from the saṃsāric cycle. What’s not to like? I’ve been curious about enlightenment for my last several lifetimes, but I’m not so sure you should actually go for it.

I originally wrote something to explain why enlightenment might not live up to the hype, but I asked ChatGPT as well, and what it wrote ended up being way better. I guess I’ll just paste ChatGPT’s answer here, no sense in making you guys read my boring words when a robot’s are better along every dimension.

Aight, here are the top three reasons you might think twice about chasing Enlightenment:

1. Goodbye, Samsara’s Drip: Enlightenment means stepping away from all the juicy highs and lows of desire, attachment, and struggle. If you’re vibing with the rollercoaster of life, losing that could feel mid asf.

2. No More Rizzing: You transcend ego and individuality, which sounds great… until you realize you can’t flex your unique charisma anymore. Who needs ultimate truth when you’re gorilla-coded in your own lane?

3. Too Based to Care: Achieving Enlightenment might make you too chill to enjoy the chaos. Some people live for the grind, André—you can’t go Pro Gamer in Nirvana.

No cap, it’s all about what hits different for you. Stay in Samsara or vibe higher? Tough call.

(Sorry for how it talks, my zoomer sister uses my ChatGPT account and it got stuck like this.)

I admit that enlightenment seems to confer a level of nonchalance that the rest of us can only dream of, but isn’t the dreaming what makes life fun? I think the feeling you get when you’re in highschool hanging out with your crush would be considered suffering in Buddhism, and certainly it comes from desire which enlightenment frees you from. But it’s in situations like those where I feel most alive.

Or take this video by hudson on tiktok:

I can’t quite explain it, but this video evokes in me a sense of yearning for a certain vibe, the vibe of dancing and having fun and being silly with your friends. And I find the yearning for the vibe almost as enjoyable in its own right as the vibe itself. Is yearning not part of what we were made to do? Why would I seek freedom from it?

Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” starts like this:

Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

The main character’s flaw is his “morbid longing”. Longing, which is just yearning by another name. I never made it much farther in the book than this paragraph, but I assume that he comes to accept his yearning as part of him and not look at it as a personality flaw. What’s so wrong about having a heart that longs for the picturesque anyway?

Okay, that’s freedom from desire. But what about freedom from suffering? No one likes suffering, so that seems like a pretty big plus.

On the other hand, I feel like suffering is actually not so bad in small doses. After all, people sometimes deliberately seek out suffering. Suffering can create a sense of contrast that makes the non-suffering parts of life all the sweeter. One time I was doing a difficult (for me) hike, and was out of water, and baking in the sun, when I came across some people who gave me some gatorade. And I remember drinking that gatorade and thinking I hadn’t had anything that tasted as good as that for a long time. And it added up to making the hike a very enjoyable memory and I would even attempt it again. Would I have that fond memory without suffering?

Not to mention, music is thought to be partially about tension and release. Is that tension not a very small form of suffering? “good time” by carbine is one of my favorite songs, and I love how it builds up tension for almost the whole track and then completely fails to properly release it at the end.

And what about spicy food? I don’t think anyone can deny that spicy food is suffering. But if suffering is so bad, why can’t I resist a bowl of spicy ramen?

Maybe if I could try the suffering-free lifestyle for a bit, I would realize that I’m just coping right now and would never want to go back. But I’m not sure. I love how desire and suffering focus my mind and motivate me to action. I want humanity’s collective Saṃsāra to propel us to other planets and stars. Enlightenment may be the result of understanding the nature of the universe, but it’s our restless hunger that will let us explore it.

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Nirvana and Avicii were also gamechanging musical acts. Where is our gamechanging act called “Samsara”?? I’m actually surprised this isn’t a thing.