At class venerable Geshe-la used the “clap” metaphor to illustrate how parts are needed for the sound of the [human hand] clap to arise: a right hand and a left hand. They would represent: internal factors and external factors.
The example is clear that without internal factors taking the collision from the external factors would not produce sound: if you achieved a calm state of mind (internal), a noisy neighbour (external) won’t spark suffering.
But what I’m not so sure about is if internal turmoil really does need an external object to spark suffering. Example: acute depression. If you are deprived of sensory stimulous, your senses are not receiving any information, can still suffering arise?
(DISCLAIMER: I’m not a former student of Nalanda nor other Dharma courses, so those answers might be going to wrong directions)
Arguments for NEEDS external object: we inherently feel, so despite there’s no sounds in our environment the fact of having a body that has processes ongoing (digestion, hormonal flux, electricity currents, micro-organisms in our bowels, and surface of skin) those can silently be tehre as external factors without us realizing, so the clap metaphor still holds.
Arguments for DOESN’T NEED external object: Our mind is a sense itself among the 6 (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body & mind). Senses can produce signals without an external object, just like tinnitus.
Answers
Some snippets from the answers received keeping only the name of the person for privacy.
[…] I feel it could be possible that previous imprints from the relationship to external factors may still be at play. […]— Akia
[…]
Suffering being an English word, just connotes very gross level of suffering which everyone agrees that they dislike, but there are deeper levels which exist within us and we need help to teachings to identify them.
[…]
There are a few examples which I can think of, where it will be purely internal factors as triggers for our suffering. For example, when we experience a nightmare, the fear etc within that dream are completely based on internal factor, which is the mind itself as the source of the nightmare and also the source of the fear.
Another example, can be when coiled rope is seen as a snake and it causes fear within the person. Externally speaking, there is no snake at all, however mind sees the object as rope and all various commentaries are then created by the mind itself. For this example, one can say, rope is an external factor but from the perspective of snake, there is no external snake at all.
[…] one can feel depressed due to sense of hopelessness but if one digs deeper then usually the person is experiencing something the person does not like or not getting what person wanted or wants. So I think it depends from one case to another. But in general terms, for most people, start of depression would be some external trigger.
— Deepesh
What is internal is expressed externally, and what is external is reflected internally. — Chandan
Reflection
My argument FOR “internal-only being possible source of suffering” is shaky when we start to think how that person has reached that point of depression and it’s relation to the external world:
- Either this person has a history of bad experienced conditioned by external factors, therefore conditioned by external factors — even if they are not at play at the moment (yet they effects of which still reverberate, in a way that’s not as a direct sensorial reproduction of those events).
- Or the actual absence of those external factors is what is giving him/her suffering
- Want: Some external factor (company of someone, certain environment, certain diet) that the person might or might not even know!
- Get: Nothing, even if this is in form of sensory deprivation/numbness it doesn’t mean there isn’t unknown attachment acting beneath, hidden underneath the layer of self-confusion depression can produce.
Also from your answers I noticed how internal and external interoperate closely to one another. Not only in the process of sober healthy minded cognition, but also in more subtler states such as: dreams, distortions in the chain of sensation-perception, internal re-enaction of past memories. We trace this division to be able to describe our interaction with the environment easier, so it seems to stay as a conventional division.