Best Of
The old death contemplation redux
I’ve been in a reflective mood and revisiting some of my old posts, seeing what new things I would like to add, as a lot of these topics are cyclical. Here’s the original post from 2020:
https://newbuddhist.com/discussion/26453/the-nine-contemplations-of-atisha
To recap, Atisha stated the body was fragile, death was inevitable, and nothing could help. It’s a great meditation for bringing home the immediacy of life, bringing you into the present moment (which is all there ever is). It also focuses you on the spiritual life as the one thing that can possibly help.
But there I think we go astray. Priests since time immemorial have traded upon the afterlife, getting people to do things in today’s world in return for favours in the afterlife. But there is no hard evidence for such things, the mists of psychedelic vision are notoriously fickle and full of illusion. I’m no longer inclined to believe priests, or their asking after real-world payments.
Where does that leave us, with no well defined afterlife or cosmology? Well, it seems to me the result of the death contemplation is to focus on living life. Trade in money for free time, enjoy life, live a little. It may be better to go on a bicycle ride around the forest on a sunny day than to spend time in the office, you never know how many good days you have left.
Jeroen
Re: My Don'ts And Dos
Like so many others:
I dos a lot
I dont's a lot
I stumbles a lot
I gets up
I dusts myself off
What a view from this mountain top
What's that?
Another mountain?
Let's go!
Keep an open mind
Keep an open heart
Presevere
Lionduck
Re: Buddhist quotes
' If all things that came before your eyes were agreeable, and all sounds that met your ears were pleasant, your whole life would be poisoned and wasted'
this is among my favorite sayings, but, embarrassingly, I can not now remember its source. As a matter of fact, I do not even accurately recall precisely how it is worded - the 'poisoned and wasted' part is all I am completely certain about. If anyone can fill in the blanks, I'd be much obliged if they did so.
Fosdick
Re: Letting go of games
This morning, I found myself trying to explain my position on games to a group of older people online who knew next to nothing about games. To my surprise, almost the first thing I found myself talking about was how games fulfil dreams — that for almost every dream there was a game out there — and that they can be a great way to experience stories and myth.
I found myself drawing on my memories of the high points of my gaming life, to explain the reasons people play and the kind of things games teach… the universal game themes of strategy, sequence, tactics, reward and challenge, resource useage. The building blocks of a game experience. And how the real high points have nothing to do with actual gaming but with progressing the story.
One thing a gaming life leaves you with is the memory of having been part of some great stories, of having seen myths play out with your character centre stage. Yes, it’s entertainment, but is it really that different from a book, a theatre play or a movie? It seems to me that this is part of the shared mythological experience of our time, the campfire stories of a technological age.
All this is leaving aside the endless killing of enemies which most games encourage to fill up their game loops, which is deplorable in my opinion. But it is endemic from open-world games such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider to story-driven adventures such as Mass Effect, they all use this paradigm.
Jeroen
Re: No Buddhist Quotes
“There are no impediments to meditation. The very thought of such obstacles is the greatest impediment.”
— Ramana Maharshi
Jeroen
Re: No Buddhist Quotes
“Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code. Keeping it together means keeping conscious at all levels—all planes—with no attachment to any of them.”
— Ram Dass, Be Here Now
Jeroen
Re: No Buddhist Quotes
“Truth gets you high. There is no doubt about it. Lies bring you down. To lie to another person you have to see them as “him” or “her” or “them”, i.e., as an object. Such distance that the act of lying creates turns out in the long run to cost more than the lie gained for you in the first place. Once you understand the workings of karma you see that there is no escape from the effects, both short and long term, of your acts, i.e., acts done in the service of the ego.”
— Ram Dass, Be Here Now
Jeroen
Re: No Buddhist Quotes
“Rain water falling upon the roof of a house flows down to the ground through spouts shaped grotesquely like a tiger’s head. One gets the impression that the water comes from the tiger’s mouth, but in reality it descends from the sky. In the same way the holy teachings that come from the mouths of godly men seem to be uttered by those men themselves, while in reality they proceed from God.”
— Ramakrishna
Jeroen
Re: Buddhist quotes
“To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to go beyond ourselves. To go beyond ourselves is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to free our body and mind, and to free the bodies and minds of others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no- trace continues endlessly.”
— Dogen Zenji
Jeroen
Re: Hello Old Friends
It is not so much that we eliminate desires. Rather, it is that we come to render negative desires irrelevant. We come to not be swayed or controlled by our desires.
Lionduck