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Reality for Real

lamaramadingdonglamaramadingdong Veteran
edited March 2013 in Buddhism Basics
Just going through the channels on TV this morning and saw everything from gloom and doom (sequestration, global warming, man swallowed by giant sinkhole) to how to buy status, happiness, security, beauty and health for 3 easy payments (plus shipping and handling). I began to think about what it must have been like at the time of the Buddha up until really around 100 years ago. We have the ability to know what’s happening anywhere in the world from anywhere in the world whenever it’s happening, but it feels to me that it leads me away from reality rather than toward it. I just realized that much of my practice is used to try to see around all the “stuff” that gets thrown at me posing as “reality”.
How about the rest of you?

“The trouble with the world isn’t that people know too little, but that they know so much that just ain’t so.”
Mark Twain

blu3reeriverflowInvincible_summer

Comments

  • TheswingisyellowTheswingisyellow Trying to be open to existence Samsara Veteran
    Reality is the bread that you eat. Other people's "reality" is quite conceptual and I would agree with you these distractions are a move away from reality, not towards it.
    All the best,
    Todd
  • riverflowriverflow Veteran
    Media is an extension of the mind. And the majority of that media (internet, TV, radio, print, etc.) is deliberately geared to over-stimulate the mind, leading to the desire for even more stimulation. The greater the exposure, the more it feeds the monkey mind, desire, anger, and often helplessness.

    Of course, most people can't do entirely without these forms of contact, and they do have their good uses too. As for myself, I find it helpful to reduce the quantity of media exposure and also try to be mindful of the quality of the media I do expose myself to.

    And even for all that I have left behind (I've not watched TV since 1993 nor listened to radio since the late 90s, I didn't own a cell phone until a couple years ago just for my job, and I've never had any of those hand-held gadgets), there is still the internet and all it brings, for good and for ill. We don't realise just how saturated we are by this environment and the mental clutter it helps to produce. I do know that I am certainly happier for having less needless intrusions like that in my life.

    I must have been a cat in a past life.
    Theswingisyellow
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