Best Of

One of our inclinations is to clamp or tighten around our pain. Relaxing into it is a constant unfolding.

Metta to all our efforts … [applause becomes gently more]

@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…

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.