Avoiding suffering to come

What this passage does

The pāda's central diagnosis. To one who discerns, even pleasure is suffering (2.15). Vyāsa then frames the teaching like medicine: disease, cause, health, remedy (Woods p. 135); Woods' running head compares the Buddha's four noble truths. On Philipp Maas's view that sūtra and bhāṣya are one work, this frame is Patañjali's own. Here come the first two parts: future suffering (2.16) and its cause (2.17).

Learning goals

• Explain why, to one who discerns, even pleasure counts as suffering, using Vyāsa's three kinds and the conflict of the guṇas.
• Lay out Vyāsa's four-part frame of medicine and which sūtras fill each part.
• Explain why only future suffering can be avoided, and what causes it.

The argument, step by step

1. To one who discerns, everything is suffering: through change, anguish and conditioning, and because the guṇas conflict.
2. Vyāsa: like medicine, this teaching has four parts: what is to be avoided, its cause, release, and the means.
3. What is to be avoided is suffering not yet come; past pain is spent and present pain is already felt.
4. Its cause is the joining of seer and seen.
5. Knowing the cause gives the remedy, as with a thorn: do not tread on it, or put a shoe between.

The sūtras

1. 2.15 pariṇāmatāpasaṃskāraduḥkhair guṇavṛttivirodhāc ca duḥkham eva sarvaṃ vivekinaḥ
   To one who discerns, everything is nothing but suffering: through the sufferings of change, anguish and conditioning, and because the movements of the guṇas conflict.
2. 2.16 heyaṃ duḥkham anāgatam
   Suffering that has not yet come can be avoided.
3. 2.17 draṣṭṛdṛśyayoḥ saṃyogo heyahetuḥ
   The cause of what can be avoided is the joining of seer and seen.

Study

2.14 stated the ordinary moral view: good action brings joy, harmful action sorrow. 2.15 turns it over: "To one who discerns, everything is nothing but suffering: through the sufferings of change, anguish and conditioning, and because the movements of the guṇas conflict." Vyāsa introduces it by asking how that can be shown (Woods p. 132).

His reasons are specific. Pleasure in objects is bound up with attachment and leaves a store of karma; he quotes a saying that there is no enjoyment without harm to some creature (Woods p. 132). The suffering of change is that enjoyment increases craving instead of satisfying it. Whoever seeks pleasure this way is like a man who, afraid of a scorpion, is bitten by a snake (Woods p. 133). The suffering of anguish is aversion toward whatever blocks pleasure, and the karma it builds. The suffering of conditioning is that each experience leaves impressions that seed more of the same. Under all three, the guṇas, the strands of all nature, are always in conflict, so no state rests. Who notices? Only the discerning. Vyāsa's image is the eyeball, which feels a thread of wool that would go unnoticed on any other part of the body (Woods pp. 133–134).

Then Vyāsa sets the frame for the next eleven sūtras (Woods p. 135). As medicine has four parts, disease, its cause, health and the remedy, so this teaching has four: the round of rebirth with its pain, which is to be avoided; the joining of nature and self, its cause; the final ending of that joining, release; and right insight, the means. Woods' running head compares the Buddha's four noble truths.

2.16 fills the first part: "Suffering that has not yet come can be avoided." Past pain is used up. Present pain is already being felt. Only pain still to come can be avoided (Woods p. 139). 2.17 fills the second: "The cause of what can be avoided is the joining of seer and seen." Vyāsa's example is the thorn (Woods p. 140). There is a foot that can be pierced, a thorn that pierces, and a remedy: do not tread on it, or tread with a shoe between. Know all three and the pain is avoided.

Readings differ more in tone than in substance. Some modern readers find 2.15 bleak and soften it into 'life has ups and downs'. Vyāsa means it fully, and his purpose is diagnostic: he names the condition so that it can be treated. On Philipp Maas's view that sūtra and bhāṣya are one work, the medical frame is Patañjali's own; on the older view it is the commentator's.

For practice, these sūtras redirect effort. Nothing can be done about pain that is spent or already here, so attention goes to the conditions of pain that has not yet come. And the cause named is a joining in seeing. The world and pleasure are not blamed. That makes the cure a matter of seeing, which 2.18–2.26 set out.

For discussion

1. What are Vyāsa's three kinds of suffering in 2.15, and how might each apply to an ordinary pleasure?
2. Why does Vyāsa say only the discerning feel this, like an eyeball feeling a thread?
3. Why can only future suffering be avoided, and what does that imply for daily practice?
4. In the thorn example of 2.17, what corresponds to the foot, the thorn and the shoe?
5. How does the four-part frame of medicine help you read 2.16–2.26 as one argument?

A common misreading

2.15 is often read as world-hating pessimism. It is a diagnosis set inside a cure: Vyāsa follows it at once with the four parts of medicine, which end in release and its means (Woods p. 135).

A practice for the room

The thorn. Sit comfortably while the teacher reads 2.16 and 2.17. For three minutes each person recalls one trouble that keeps coming back in their life, mild enough to hold lightly. Silently they name the foot (what in them gets hurt), the thorn (what hurts it) and one possible shoe (a change that would come between them). Close with a minute of quiet. Nothing is shared unless someone wishes to.