"no suffering" ??? wtf does that mean
right now this post is just a copy paste of some notes i scribbled from a convo i had with my dad about finally precisely understanding/contextualizing his no-suffering claims that i've been confused about for a long time.
i wanna clean this up, then also expand on this for a more general audience (bc of course my dad already knows a lot of relevant context/ideas bc i talk with him about some of these things) but still these convo notes might act as a semi-decent overview of some things.
2025 08 18
this is prob not super relevant to the theory/writing, this is more personally relevant, it's more a byproduct of the whole [sufficiently decently coherent unconfusing theory/understanding], it's just allowed me to contextualize a personal specific subquestion
i cant Simply explain it to nondumb people rn (i Can simply explain it but it'll probably the equivalent of 1-2 college courses or a long book)(btw yes i mostly agree with "if you cant explain it simply you dont get it", but just dont make the misconception of [simple but exactly correct and rigorous] vs [oversimplified where now youre just saying merely-approximate things and/or wrong things]. i think it takes way less effort to do the latter) but its okay cuz i think we'll have science/tech in the near future to scale this up
[ recall tanha ]
[ introduce abiding centerlessness like how i've introduced it in tweets/notes but Slightly bit more elaboration ]
critique: youre not explaining it simply response: no, i cant rly do that, [the answer is easier than the question] [physics textbooks, einstein/maxwell discoveries' equations are easily summarizable in less than half a page] [but what you rly need is not just the final equation but the full understanding of the equation, the "answer" is often not just the seemingly-final conclusion but rly more like everything else that isnt that, which requires you to traverse all the blindspots/edge-cases/dead-ends/misconceptions] (cf. some chris sentences maybe) [thats why its sometimes good to read the original papers / that's why you need practice/tinkering/grappling]
I think my happiness/suffering to my dad is the same as my dad to let's say like the 100 happiest people if we ranked them
like let's say 10^2 to 10^6 from me to my dad, and i think same from my dad to other ppl that do exist (im referring to people in abiding centerlessness + further)
(( so like the first diagram (mental) was me to my dad, my dad to abiding centerlessness people ))
[ somewhere id like to insert nick tweet about 0-3 3-4 ]
and so an important thing to note is that abiding centerlessness people still have tanha (cf. nick tweet implying that you still suffer, its just that the tanha cant rly catch anywhere (insert the actual tweet))
but, lots of very nondumb trustworthy people who are having phenomology where feel like it's an objective appropriate label to say they're ""100% no suffering"" (this includes my dad (although he's like less trustworthy lol just because not very rigorous/robust))
so it's like wtf . they still had a sense of self when saying that surely youre not as happy / not as low-suffering as abiding centerlessness people
(( sidenote: my lowconfidence theoretical guess rn is that this is a more macro tanha structure or smth. (low confidence hypothesis, but i dont feel the need to resolve the nuance Right Now (insert tweet)) ))
critique: "no but me before i started i thought i was always happy no bad days [...]" response: no, you think im talking about darren, but the very-nondumb trustworthy people im talking about are actually also experienced/advanced meditators so theyre aware of the darren. (also btw introduce nick hypomanic slightly above darren, literally the opposite of depression disorder, he was literally hypomanic and happy all the time and he thought he was super happy no bad days etc (i think) but then he realized Wow the body can store so much pain/trauma/tangling wow i suffer so much actually) i think youre talking about darren/nick.
(( could maybe be good to insert tweets abt like. surprisingly more to go (sasha meditators meme, nick (?), etc) ))
so, update to: lots of very nondumb trustworthy advanced meditators who are aware of the darren/nick levels who are having decently precise/nuanced/rigorous phenomelogical reports of experience (not just emotions and colloquial language of valence (which have a lot of subjective variation between colloquial blurry semantic mappings)) where they feel like it's an objective appropriate label to say they're ""100% no suffering""
final diagram:
me / normal people darren ("i dont feel stress") trusting don't worry nick before meditation (hypomanic) (**) blissbrah post about 100% suffering gone [ idk what happens here ] nick now (abiding centerlessness) buddha, jesus, etc
(( also btw sidenote: there's still "work" to do after abiding centerlessness, probably feels incredibly trivial if we could sidebyside compare the valence/etc but its also really nontrivial, hence that for some schools, abiding centerlessness is actually surprisingly the beginning (and not at all the end) ))
also it's kinda cool that there are simpler techniques (fetters inquiry)(seems simpler compared to nick path etc) to get to () it seems (still working on exploring this, but it seems) you dont need the 10-40hz sensory clarity to get to () cuz all the ppl who get to abiding centerlessness largely used the same path (10-40hz sensory clarity) (? is this true) but to get to fetters inquiry it seems like you dont need that, it seems like there are much quicker (and still safe!) paths (im referring to fetters inquiry)
so it seems like meditation is the only empirically reproducible path
two ways, luck or lots of research n good practice
critique: "i dont think i was lucky" response: no but i think thats part of the luck equation, like if you werent lucky youd be able to robustly empirically reproduce this in others. like okay lets make a luck scale from autist savant 7yo chess GM to [>10000 hours grinding bc terribly untalented beginner who is also terribly confused (ie bad at learning and metalearning (***))] you werent lucky w learning (as much luck as the autist savant 7yo chess GM) but you were lucky w the metalearning (insert diagram). like perhaps you still had to put in effort to become a GM, but you were alr talented/lucky enough to know the exact muscle you need to use to install/download the skill all the way to native fluency
(***) dude wtf i get so confused when i say learning metalearning metametalearning
anyway so the main crux/conclusion of the whole thing is . i think he's after 2nd path, between 4th path
more speculative / less objective part of the convo:
it will be easier bc of science n tech
ppl r researching tanha is the cause of dukkha
"i still think it requires a skill" but okay heres the saving grace -- I think because it's more of an undoing than a doing, it doesnt. Because with things like music tennis golf drawing etc. you sort of have to download/install an additional thing whereas with the happy maxing/meditation all you're doing is stopping doing things.
(cf. wystantbs tweet thai food fists falling, cf. its our nature to be like christ / we were made in the image of god / we were designed to connect w god, thats the one thing we're designed to do)
"yeah but i still think the undoing requires a skill to stop doing it" Yes I fully agree, super super super super agree, (cf. i rly hate endgaining, cf. chris https://chrislakin.blog/p/being-present-is-not-a-skill?utm_source=publication-search#:~:text=Once%20you%20have%20a%20moment%20of%20full%20presence%2C%20you%20may%20be%20tempted%20to%20think%20%E2%80%9COh%2C%20I%20get%20it%20now!%20Being%20present%20is%20so%20simple!%20Just%20be%20present!%E2%80%9D) but actually I only agree on this part for paths that are not yet assisted by technology, which is every available path we have as of 2025, but i think, and this is just speculation, but i think we'll be able to do it wide-scale without skills/learning because of science/technology