u/Fuzzy-Fee-6026

I don't remember much else. I only know that I saw this mod on the letspartythefunishere channel and that at the end there's a link to a YTP of this "Tesco" ad meme.

Considering two Buddhist concepts, a dilemma emerges that seems to require an additional concept in order not to contradict either of them. The first is the understanding that the cessation of suffering comes from cutting off what conditions desire, which implies meditating on its impermanence. Since the mind becomes attached to desire, the understanding of reality (namely, the Three Marks of Existence) necessarily unfolds by incorporating additional notions into its repertoire; notions opposed to those that have already been consolidated. For example, in the practice of Aṣubha Bhāvanā, the mind initially regards the body as perfect, admirable, and the source of the resolution of problems, but by meditating on an opposite notion that evokes dispassion, the mind comes to understand that the body enters into decline and that there is no essence within it (Anatta), and consequently that it is impermanent. This idea is inherent to any process of contemplation, because even when one practices only Vipassana or Zazen, one observes how mental volitions change and disappear, and it is this perception—previously unknown and counterintuitive—that expands one's repertoire and reveals impermanence to oneself.

The second concept is a logical consequence of the following line of reasoning: since the five aggregates that form the illusion of a permanent "Self," resulting in desire (tanha), are not generated by karma but by the consequences and convergences of all conditioned actions (interdependence), and since every formation (Sankharas, the category to which the khandhas belong) is impermanent, Nirvana (the absence of suffering) is the destiny of every karmic formation in some rebirth. This is not a counterintuitive idea, because a desire does not cease through the result of an action, but precisely through abandoning or canceling it, which would make the notion of the same type of suffering existing eternally a violation of the law of impermanence.

Even if the idea of a fixed individual responsible for their actions is illusory, that which generates the illusion is considered Sankhara, being conditioned, composite, and a mechanism that shapes all others in a specific and unique way. The idea of non-Self (Anatta) merely states that there is no thing possessing a universal essence, allowing for various interpretations of how something conditions another thing, all of which may be correct, but it does not say that every perception is false and can therefore be converted into another. For example, one may say that the desire associated with hunger arose from a sensory stimulus (smell), but this does not mean that the smell will have the same effect on every person, nor that it will continue to produce the same side effect throughout one's life.

Thus, assuming that this formation cannot be eternal (according to the second concept described) and that it can only be canceled by adopting a notion that contradicts the one already established, necessarily by indicating its exact opposite (according to the first concept described), how can the desire generated by a particular illusion of a Self be naturally corrected if volitional formations (abhisaṅkhāra) do not undergo direct consequences in the same way that conditioned formations (sankhata) do? For example, even though conditioned formations such as the body deteriorate over time, or undergo simple alterations such as increasing or decreasing in temperature through external agents, volitional formations (those that condition, the abhisaṅkhāras) appear to depend exclusively on one's own effort, adding information to one's repertoire. The problem is that we can easily conceive of someone remaining attached to their form forever, and even if this is not actually possible, the mere fact that they may die without learning and be reborn not under exactly the same conditions would already imply a change in their repertoire between death and birth. How would this repertoire change and be canceled if there were neither effort nor learning?

One form of natural learning would be to pay for one's actions directly—that is, not through effort, but through shock—a condition similar to the Kabbalistic concept of experiencing a psychological reflection in the afterlife; for example, feeling one's own anguish without any means of redirecting it toward another external feeling would be necessary for the soul to learn its consequences. This could even make sense given the passage in the Kutūhalasālā Sutta in which the Buddha explains that just as the wind carries a flame through the air, desire functions as fuel for the mind that has left the physical body. This would suggest (perhaps due to my own misinterpretation) that a formation may be conceived in isolation from another, which would fit with the Jewish notion of confronting one's own mind when it can no longer be directed toward something else. Even so, this perspective is based more on faith than on formal logic, which would make the explanation potentially prone to misinterpretation.