loss and desire
thanks to anonymous for her/his comment. i quote:
this is something i constantly struggle with in my buddhism. in general, the point isn't, i don't think, to avoid desire; it's to release it. everything is emptiness, but not necessarily empty.
it always reminds me of the robert frost poem "nothing gold can stay":
a little cheesy, but i think the buddha higgypiggy would say, "yes, of course. so hold onto nothing. enjoy what you have while you have it, but it WILL end. embrace the emptiness of all things around you and know that they will be gone. and that you will one day be gone."
easier said than done. and maybe, per anonymous, not even desirable.
daily dharma: "Again, monks, a monk abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in respect of the Four Noble Truths. How does he do so? Here, a monk knows as it really is: 'This is suffering'; he knows as it really is: 'This is the origin of suffering'; he knows as it really is: 'This is the cessation of suffering'; he knows as it really is: 'This is the way of practice leading to the cessation of suffering.' 18. "And what, monks, is the Noble Truth of Suffering? Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness and distress are suffering. Being attached to the unloved is suffering, being separated from the loved is suffering, not getting what one wants is suffering. In short, the five aggregates of grasping... are suffering."
Mahasatipatthana Sutta
translated by Maurice Walshe
it seems to me that the point is not to avoid suffering by avoiding the desire which is its source, but rather to allow oneself to feel the suffering, to embrace it and recognize that suffering is part of being alive.
this is something i constantly struggle with in my buddhism. in general, the point isn't, i don't think, to avoid desire; it's to release it. everything is emptiness, but not necessarily empty.
it always reminds me of the robert frost poem "nothing gold can stay":
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
a little cheesy, but i think the buddha higgypiggy would say, "yes, of course. so hold onto nothing. enjoy what you have while you have it, but it WILL end. embrace the emptiness of all things around you and know that they will be gone. and that you will one day be gone."
easier said than done. and maybe, per anonymous, not even desirable.
daily dharma: "Again, monks, a monk abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in respect of the Four Noble Truths. How does he do so? Here, a monk knows as it really is: 'This is suffering'; he knows as it really is: 'This is the origin of suffering'; he knows as it really is: 'This is the cessation of suffering'; he knows as it really is: 'This is the way of practice leading to the cessation of suffering.' 18. "And what, monks, is the Noble Truth of Suffering? Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness and distress are suffering. Being attached to the unloved is suffering, being separated from the loved is suffering, not getting what one wants is suffering. In short, the five aggregates of grasping... are suffering."
Mahasatipatthana Sutta
translated by Maurice Walshe
posted by higgypiggy at 8:05 AM
1 Comments:
At a conference I recently attended, someone described the first session of a college course she took on Loss and Mourning. The professor was chomping on an apple during the class, which was odd, and when she finished the apple, she told the class she was leaving to throw the core away and would be right back, but she never returned. Without saying anything, she had created in the students a feeling of loss to examine. The loss may have been trivial, but the student remembered the class 20 years afterward.
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