Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Who is the Enemy?
Above, the Dalai Lama talks about what is a fundamental goal of every religion - that we learn to love and serve others by becoming less obsessed with our desires and preferences. That command over our own thoughts and actions is the road to being happier more of the time, suffering less, and causing less suffering.
It is not at all about becoming Nobody. On the contrary, realized people always have a large energy field, or presence. It is about becoming who we really are, not who we were told to be. Insofar as we practice "self-denial" we are giving up our pleasures or desires. We are denying our addictions and distractions, our delusions - relinquishing them - and becoming more fully human - the women and men we actually want to be.
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Don't you think as an extension of the "me" generation( I'm talking to myself) that one often spends a lot of time explaining their own pain...the ultimate delusion - to prove their existence?
ReplyDeleteOh my yes. Maybe there are more of those in the Unitarian church I belong to. Educated upper-middle-class Baby Boomers tend to think they should be happy, as we should, with our affluence and relative security. And life's fundamental unsatisfactoriness is read as depression. Thank you. I also started to read the article in the Sun that you suggested, but couldn't access the rest of it. Very interesting, though.
DeleteOn this giving up our pleasures or desires, oh how they rotate! So, I ask Linda Ruth if I can sew an O'kesa and we start talking precepts- nothing hard and fast, but I go hard and fast, so I stop drinking and stop eating meat. Next thing, it's our farm elder's birthday-73 and she's still harvesting every, every, every day (she has an essay in a new book called The Hidden Lamp:Essays from Awakened Women-Linda Ruth does, too!) and we go to an Italian place that we sell veggies to. What do they throw at me? Crab and champagne and wine! What do I crave? Monastic purity. What's next to renounce? Monastic purity. Hilarious life.
ReplyDeleteWhat luck, to have so many growth opportunities. (sardonic emoticon)
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