Table of contents
No headersPila - October 24, 2011
Blissful awareness of reality is a state described by Hindu teachings in the phrase sat-chit-ananda (reality-awareness-bliss.) However, consider the first noble truth of Buddhism, the concept of dukkha (suffering or dissatisfaction - a "fundamental unsatisfactoriness of all conditioned existence" in terms used by Stim at the outset of this project), and satchitananda may seem to be a distant, perhaps unattainable notion. People are generally familiar with the aha-moment, or a situation of grokking to use Heinlein’s term, and the idea of epiphany: in each of those moments one feels an uplifting glimpse of truth. Are those moments exceptions in mundane life where dukkha is – as Buddha described – a more continual factor? How is it possible that suffering and dissatisfaction may lead to a blissful awareness of reality?