There’s a wrong idea about the end of suffering. Probably wrong. I mean, maybe some people don’t suffer. I don’t know anybody like that. Spiritual suffering is unnecessary, though. I have the recipe for eliminating it, and it works. An audio recording of my long answer to a question, in a live Q&A session organized by Jessica B. three years ago. (Thanks Jess!) Monthly Q&As I’m doing Q&As like this monthly now. I don’t usually go on at such length! The next one is Saturday, September 21st, at 10:30 a.m. Eastern / 7:30 a.m. Pacific. Links Web links for some topics mentioned: The “complete stance” acknowledges the inseparability of nebulosity and pattern. It’s formally analogous to some Buddhist conceptions of enlightenment, in which you recognize emptiness and form simultaneously. Meaningness: the book. It’s free online, only about 20% written, and apparently useful in its current form. Vividness, my take on Vajrayana Buddhism Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Dechen “Meeting Naropa’s Dakini”: an improbable story, on my site Buddhism for Vampires, that is as true as I could make it. In the audio, I misremember the title as “Meeting Tilopa’s Dakini”; she appeared to both Tilopa and Naropa (as well as to me). Marpa, founder of the Kagyü School of Tibetan Buddhism The charnel ground and the Pure Land. In the recording, I refer to the Pure Land as “the god realm,” which is inaccurate. In some versions of Buddhism they’re more-or-less the same thing, but not in Vajrayana. “Misunderstanding Meaningness Makes Many Miserable”: In the recording, I say that Meaningness does not address suffering in general, only spiritual suffering specifically. This web page explains that briefly. The book offers a method for ending what could be called existential, cosmic, or spiritual suffering. The whole book explains the method, with periodic, increasingly difficult summaries. The first is “Accepting nebulosity resolves confusions about meaning.” “The novel that I wrote the first quarter of” is The Vetali’s Gift. It’s now about 40% done, and free online. Maybe I will finish it before I die. The scene in which “the hero’s girlfriend is dying horribly” is “Love and Death.” Transcript Jess: What does it look like to feel shock, despair, et cetera, and still maintain the complete stance? David: Right. I can give a Buddhist answer to this and I can give a Meaningness book answer to it. There’s a connection, and they’re also not the same thing. So you’ll get some sense of that, maybe, out of my two different answers. So, some versions of Buddhism make a big deal out of suffering and say that Buddhism has the answer to suffering, and that if you do Buddhism right, then you won’t suffer. That might be true; I don’t know. I’m pretty skeptical. In the traditions that I’ve practiced Buddhism in, that’s not really the line. And my experience— I don’t have an experience of not suffering. I would say that meditating and practicing Buddhism does seem to lessen suffering and it changes your relationship with it. I’ll tell a couple of stories that are relevant, and then do a theoretical thing. So, my former teachers, Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Dechen, about 10 years ago their sixteen year old son got tongue cancer, which is a really unusual thing. His tongue was surgically removed, which was horrifying. Unfortunately, they didn’t catch it early enough, and it metastasized, and he died slowly over the next nine months or so. I wasn’t there for this, so this is second hand; but what people who I know well said about what they observed was that Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen were obviously devastated. And that it was as horrifying for them as it would be for anyone. And at the same time that there was a clarity and spaciousness and acceptance in the way that they dealt with the situation, practically and also with their own suffering, that seemed