TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)faced by all salvation religions: how, in the face of life's seeming sufferableness,
does one demonstrate that life itself is suffering? and how does one move people
to this view? This problem of conviction is probably exacerbated by Buddhism's
radical salvation view which emphasizes complete renunciation. Traditionally,
texts and sermons mention three types of suffering. The suffering of pain (sdug-
bsngal-gyi sdug-bsnga{) and the suffering of change ( 'gyur-ba 'i sdug-bsnga{)
seem intuitively acceptable; one bashes one's thumb and it hurts, or one loses
his fortune or a loved one dies and so one suffers. The third type, compound suf-
fering ( 'du-byed-kyi sdug-bsnga{), is a more bitter pill to swallow. Let us take,
for example, a cup of tea; the ubiquitous fluid that lubricates most Tibetan trans-
actions is, according to this view, nothing but a cup of sin.
Tea is a plant sown in China. When the seeds are planted and the leaves
cut, the insects killed are beyond counting. When bearers come carry-
ing the tea down from Dartsendo, each man carries a load of sixty-two
sections. Since they carry it by supporting the whole load with
tumplines around their heads, the skin on their foreheads is worn away
and one can see the grey of the bone showing through. Yet still they
carry. When they reach Dotok, they load the tea on mdzo, yaks, mules
and so forth. When they travel on, all those animals are made to
undergo the inconceivable suffering of being made to serve with saddle
sores on their backs and cinch sores from the braided ropes underneath.
Also when the tea is traded, it is sold only by deception and barter
which take into account neither honesty or modesty.The tea is traded for merchandise, usually for things like sheeps' wool
and lambskins. In the summertime, the wool consists of an uncountable
quantity of single strands of hair and bugs, such as sheep lice or other
little things. Usually when the wool is shorn with a knife, the bugs'
heads are cut off or they are cut in two. The ones that are inside the
wool come out and are killed. The ones that do not die this way get
twisted up in the wool and suffer a bad death by strangulation. Regard-
ing lambskins, as soon as a lamb is born, it has all its senses. It can feel
pleasure and pain, and it looks out for itself. At the beginning of its life,
a time when it is happiest, it is killed straightaway. Though it be but an
ignorant animal, it rejoices in being alive, and it suffers the experience
of being killed. If one were to regard as well the suffering of the ewe
whose offspring has been killed, it should be seen as that of a mother
whose only son has died.
(Dpal-sprul 1971: 117-8)Such examples are meant to show that if suffering constitutes life itself, it is
because the body is subject to physical pain, life's joys are illusions that come to
an end, and because of life's entanglements, which are created through attach-