Why the Buddha took a feedback alarm for a Cosmic Truth

By Bodhangkur

Let’s be blunt: the Buddha had a brilliant intuition, but—like many brilliant intuitions in the Iron Age—it got immediately wrapped in cosmic tinsel and sold as metaphysics.

He saw suffering (dukkha)
He felt suffering.
He panicked about suffering.
And instead of asking the one question any competent engineer would ask—

“What is the system actually trying to tell me?”

—he decided suffering was the ultimate nature of conditioned reality.

That’s not insight.
That’s a smoke alarm going off and the homeowner concluding the universe is on fire.

1. The Original Mistake: Turning a Warning Light Into an Ontological Revelation

Imagine sitting in a chariot, the axle squeaks, and instead of putting oil on it you announce:

“All wheels are suffering. All rotation is suffering. All forward motion is suffering.”

Congratulations: you’ve founded Buddhism.

Suffering wasn’t a cosmic property; it was a diagnostic notification.
A little flashing red icon.
A system alert.

The Buddha mistook a malfunction signal for a timeless truth.

2. The Real Cause of Suffering (dukkha) Is Boringly Obvious

According to Finn (who actually understands systems):

Suffering = internally generated feedback indicating system malfunction.

Too hot? Pain.
Too cold? Pain.
Too hungry? Pain.
Relationship collapsing? Emotional pain.
Meaning falling apart? Existential pain.

Every organism on earth receives these alerts.
It’s not metaphysics.
It’s maintenance.

But the Buddha rejected maintenance.
He wanted metaphysical absolutes.

So he translated “Your system needs adjustment” into:

“All existence is unsatisfactory.”

That’s like diagnosing every cough as terminal.

3. The Buddha’s Multiplying Causes of Suffering: A Sign of Diagnostic Panic

He gave:

· craving as the cause,

· ignorance as the cause,

· impermanence as the cause,

· birth as the cause,

· contact as the cause,

· aggregates as the cause,

· everything as the cause.

This is what happens when someone hears a beeping sound and starts unplugging the entire house.

When a system’s feedback tone confuses you, you start spiritualizing it.

4. Nirvāṇa: Turning Off the Alarm Instead of Fixing the Engine

The Buddha’s solution to suffering was not functional.
It was therapeutic dissociation wrapped in poetry.

He taught:

· stop craving,

· stop reacting,

· stop clinging,

· stop identifying,

· stop this, stop that, stop everything.

It’s basically mindfulness-powered anesthesia.

Yes, the alarm stops,
but only because you’ve unplugged the speaker, not because the engine is repaired.

Finn’s version:

Fix the malfunction. (Later Buddhism attempts to correct its error with the Noble 8-fold Path.)
Don’t romanticize the warning siren.

5. The Genius of Finn’s Brutal Simplicity

Finn looked at 2,500 years of metaphysical speculation and said:

“You’re overthinking a feedback circuit.”

Suffering isn’t mystical.
It isn’t cosmic.
It isn’t a universal existential poison.

It’s a message.

It’s the body-mind system saying:

“Something’s wrong. Do something useful.”

That may annoy monks, but monks are historically allergic to usefulness.

6. The Irony: If the Buddha Had Understood Feedback, He Wouldn’t Have Needed Buddhism

A Buddha with system literacy would have said:

“All right lads, suffering’s the maintenance signal.
Keep your systems tuned.
Carry on.”

But instead he launched an entire religion based on the assumption that the status LED was a metaphysical insult.

He turned a perfectly normal, biologically mandated error-correction mechanism into:

· a cosmic truth,

· a philosophical absolute,

· a lifestyle brand.

7. Final Verdict

The Buddha’s mistake:

He treated a survival notification as a universal tragedy.

Finn’s correction:

Suffering is just your system saying:
‘Mate, something’s off. Fix it. Up your game!’

When your phone vibrates, you don’t declare
“All phenomena are unsatisfactory!”
and renounce the world.

You check the message.

The Buddha never checked the message.
He canonized the vibration.

The Procedural Theory of Suffering

Finn’s Origin of Suffering

All Finn’s blogs

The Druid Finn’s homepage