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by cousin_it 4514 days ago
> The beauty of the world and the morality of what happens in it are utterly orthogonal. You're conflating those things

He's right to conflate these things. Suffering is not beautiful.

2 comments

Suffering is not beautiful.

Suffering is.

Accept.

Beauty is.

Accept.

not Beauty also is.

Accept.

And Buddhists don't think it is, in the sense that you mean beautiful. They think that it is unavoidable. And they (also) think you can learn to avoid it.

I don't agree with the ur-parent that Buddhism thinks that if you can clear away the illusions of everyday life that you will see beauty. I think it believes that if you clear away the illusions, then you will see clearly, and that this is something worth doing because it will end your suffering, no matter who you are and what is happening to you.

But it's also believed by most Buddhists that this rarely happens, that it takes many many lifetimes for it to happen to anyone. So they also believe that helping reduce the suffering of all other sentient beings is one of their missions.