Best Of
Re: Discord
@IdleChater said:
@Bunks said:
Being able to chat in real time with monastics
How do you know they're monastics?
Because I know them in person from the monastery I stay at
Bunks
Re: Letting go of games
@Jeroen said:
A friend on another Buddhist forum recommended to me to not judge too harshly, and try to approach these behaviours with mindfulness and awareness instead of just dropping them immediately. He said, if you judge the behaviour and you turn your back on it, you end up repressing the passion you once had for it. Instead, try and make the whole cycle of thoughts and feelings associated with it conscious.
Recalling this post from the first page of this topic, I do think passion has a lot to do with it. When I was playing the table-top game Ticket To Ride at my cousin’s house, I noticed being pleased whenever I could achieve one of my small goals, and I was positively glowing at my overall victory. It made me feel much more alive.
Noticing these things as I was playing required a bit more awareness than I usually display, so a little bit of concentration. It was a good exercise in mindful playing, but if anything it makes me feel that challenge and victory and gamey fun are part of feeling more alive.
Which puts me in mind of this…
@Person said:
I'll own up to it, its an attachment of mine. Its good to be reminded of the fact that it does add to delusion. Reflecting, I think I've made the decision (at least for the time being) that trying to live in the world and externally letting go of my attachments leads to me living a miserable life. I'm without any interests and still unable to really achieve meaningful dissolution because I do take care of my responsibilities and that requires me to take on the energy of the world to an extent that removes the spiritual rewards of a tranquil emotional state.
I find I can achieve tranquility if given the peace and quiet in extended stretches, but in a way the world becomes rather flat and grey when I do so. Perhaps really letting go of attachments does lead to this, a world without suffering but also without passions. And games are just the thing that puts colour back in.
The argument between my Buddhist self and my gaming self continues…
Jeroen
Re: Letting go of games
It’s definitely true that games still have a draw for me. But that’s what I am doing in this thread, unfolding in detail what it is that draws me, and what my more spiritual side has been telling me about them. I wasn’t really aware of what played with this for me, just that I noticed that even after ten years of not playing games there was still this occasional strong enthusiasm for them, and particularly for role playing games and open-world adventures and strongly story-driven shooters.
I’m kind of hoping that by exploring it, and by making clear the factors that draw me, I can find a release from it — I can find out whether the things that enthuse me have value, or not. The question is whether engaging with games is beneficial in some way. What I was quoting in the “Non-Buddhist quotes” topic yesterday from U.G. about thoughts and them actually being the sum total of your own personal samsara is similar. Games are an exploration of the imagination, all the possible worlds that might be, and as such are an “endless subject”.
I’ve arrived at the point where I found that role playing games satisfied certain needs in me, such as the “need to be needed”, the desire to do good, the desire to explore and be free. In games these things are available in a way that they aren’t in real life. But is that a basic need or some kind of a psychological result of my childhood, some result of a trauma which is as-yet unaddressed or some form of deep-seated conditioning?
I’m toying with the idea of writing a book about it, by now I have a pretty deep understanding of games, and I’ve explored my own perspectives more. It’d be about the history, design, theory and spiritual aspects of games.
Well spotted though, I’ve always enjoyed maker / crafting hobbies. I’ve gone a fair way into pottery and wood crafting in the past but currently lack a good place for a workshop. When I was young I used to love Lego, I had this big basket full of pieces and would make all sorts of things. It was the imagination, making something and then using it in an imaginary adventure with other pieces.
Jeroen
Re: Not attaching to thoughts
From a me-first agenda, arising thoughts remain deeply intertwined in an identity and the self-oriented interests that they reflect.
While such thoughts may feel powerful for the emotional overlay that our identity imparts to them, they are equally hobbled by the same self-limiting interests.
From a more selfless agenda, arising thoughts, not being so tied to a self-identity, are able to unfold with freedoms that better represent the underlying fluidity of all truths.
When meditation allows one to objectively observe all of our data flows without our habituated editing of those data flows getting in thoughts way, then our interactions with life will simply reflect those truths.
Just don't confuse the detachment from thoughts with inactivity, apathy, indecisiveness or with giving it values below or above of what you also are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or feeling.
how
Re: Not attaching to thoughts
If I understand right, in reducing the me-first agenda which attaches to thoughts based on likes and dislikes, thoughts that represent the underlying fluidity of all truths are more able to be identified from among them and chosen?
The story of the monk sitting by the water's edge of a forest lake, calmly, quietly in concentration as if an extension of the embankment. The monk's stillness is an act of safety from themself to all the types of forest animals who come to drink from the lake. It's in acting out of a me-first agenda which sends the animals running back into the woods.
I sit alone at the lake and skip stones across the water's surface to entertain myself while waiting for the animals to show up not realizing that act is what keeps them away. Confused by that me-first agenda which likes to do things and be entertained when waiting around for stillness to show up.
Re: Not attaching to thoughts
The human condition seems predicated on a self-serving dominance of thought, whose primary purpose has been the maintaining of its own rulings' storyline. This is a description of a coup of the mind where our thoughts have been habitually promoting themselves above all of the incoming data available from all of our other sense gates.
Meditation simply offers a level playing field where a potential reversal of such power imbalances can occur with no one sense gate getting preferential support in seeking dominance over another.
Neither attaching, rejecting or ignoring our thoughts,
a sleeper can awaken to an equanimity beyond the limits of it's former attachments.
how
Not attaching to thoughts
I was writing this morning and it occurred to me that if you can manage not to get attached to your thoughts, and instead can just let them come and go, you will have achieved almost total detachment. The reason thoughts are so fascinating is because your thoughts contain everything you ever experienced or imagined. It is the sum total of your personal samsara.
But understanding that thoughts are not really wholesome, that they are something to be handled with care and caution and a measure of distaste, like a dangerous snake, can help you keep your distance. You may note when you start doing this a tendency for attention to get caught up in clicks and movements within the body.
Jeroen
Re: Feeling like you are a “good person”
@Jeroen said:
@Shoshin1 said:
One man's meat is another man's poison
I think the terms good and bad are relative ..Doing a good deed for one sentient being may be causing harm to another...
Do no harm or try to do the least harm possible...
Also having the the right 'intent' when performing an action...
I guess in a sense good can be seen as being 'skilful'...There is a difference between feeling like a “good person” and doing “good deeds”. It is certainly culturally determined, and there is a difference between children’s culture and adult’s culture.
Doing no harm can also be done by doing as little as possible. The Taoist story of the farmer and his “perhaps” is also very relevant, good or beneficial things are often not so easy to discern.
For example in IJmuiden in the Netherlands, where my mother grew up, they built a large steel works, which was intended to help make the country independent in the manufacture of large steel objects. It did that and supplied work for a lot of people, but they are now discovering that the emissions from the works have negatively impacted the lifespans of people living in the area.
So in a way I can sympathise with the wise for being cautious in taking action.
There's the story cast about in spiritual and self help circles that illustrates this point as well.
A young boy came across a butterfly cocoon and brought it into his house. He watched, over the course of hours, as the butterfly struggled to break free from its confinement. It managed to create a small hole in the cocoon, but its body was too large to emerge. It tired and became still.
Wanting to help the butterfly, the boy snipped a slit in the cocoon with a pair of scissors. But the butterfly was small, weak, and its wings crumpled. The boy expected the insect to take flight, but instead it could only drag its undeveloped body along the ground. It was incapable of flying.The boy, in his eagerness to help the butterfly, stunted its development. What he did not know was that the butterfly needed to go through the process of struggling against the cocoon to gain strength and fill its wings with blood. It was the struggle that made it stronger.
You may have heard a variation of this story before. I came across it in Frank Dupree’s book Metamorphosis. It’s a reminder of the fact that while it’s hard to watch those who we are close to struggle, often the best help we can provide is to do nothing. By intervening, and shouldering the burden ourselves, we rob those we care about of the opportunity to grow and get stronger.
As a parent, as a friend, or as a spouse, the instinct to help is hard to resist. We see our kids struggling at school, interacting with other children, or falling behind on the playing field, and we want to step in and save them from hardship. We want to offload their pain onto ourselves.
By doing so, however, we’re eliminating the circumstances that the people we love need for their own personal development. It’s instinctive, and understandable, to want to help. But often the best course of action is to wait and, like the butterfly, let the process unfold on its own terms and timeline.
As Robert Tew once wrote, “The struggle you’re in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow. Don’t give up.”
Sometimes the best gift we can give is to stand on the sideline, shouting encouragement, but allowing the process of growth to run its course.https://www.lifeandwhim.com/first-moments-blog/2018/the-struggle-makes-you-stronger
person
Re: Is it negative karma to let my cat go outside?
"I hate cats.....
(pause)
....They're a dreadful waste of good fur".
I personally despise the fact that they kill indiscriminately.
A domestic cat, in a loving home is never hungry.
And never without toys to play with.
yet they go and kill or injure for some unknown reason we call instinct, and play and toy with the victim.
A completely hypothetical and entirely speculative comment, but I would bet that IF hitler ever WAS reborn in the animal realm - he'd be a cat....
One of the greatest causes of song-bird population decline - is the domestic cat.
Feral cats, scavenge in bins, and find food in the easiest way possible - by raiding dustbins.
The domestic cat needs reining in.
federica
Re: Feeling like you are a “good person”
I think in some cases one must curtail relativism, namely when it concerns doing damage to other people. But in a lot of cases people are quite happy adjusting to different circumstances, and one man’s good is another man’s evil indeed. I think tolerance is the important take-away in a lot of these cases, so that people can sit and eat together… if that makes sense.
Jeroen