The struggle exists but is not inherently real = the final realization

It Is What It Is

Many translate impermanence as being not real. This is not accurate, and often unhelpful.

Best thread ever

@@TravisCBarker I wasn’t exactly referring to impermanence, though dependent arising does come into play. I more so was referring to attachment, which is always a struggle even if it changes forms. What I meant was that the struggle does not exist outside of our perception so it does not inherently exist. But we cannot live outside of our perceptions so it it is very much real in a conventional way and is still something to be faced.

True. My understanding is that in wiser times, childbirth was, as are ALL a painful "titual" of a life transition. In the case of boys (Confirmation/Bar Mitzvah, etc.), this transition is rarely conscious or deliberate, as it once was. Indigenous peoples, as Joseph Campbell discusses, the boy is "taken" from the mother by the "community of men" and is put through a painful ordeal, for a period of time. The reality of the ritual as the beginning and painful cutoff of the former as identity, en route to the inclusion (transcendent- boy + adolescent en route to manhood) of the former, with waning identification with that part. Natural Childbirth keeps the rhythm of push and push, and is inherently painful, and the culture's potential role is to support the transition to, at minimum a "healthy" adolescence. We must meet people where they are. Taking stock reveals the level of our individual /collective pain and suffering.