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In terms of the renunciates, they let go of physical possessions as well as family, work and community — they wandered around owning nothing but their clothes and begging bowl, having left home, family and so on behind.

Whether there is any hope of “living the holy life while attempting to conform to the societal mold”, I think we have to see for ourselves. It’s a question of what we can let go of.

You can choose not to buy a sailing boat, not to have a second home, not to go on holiday even. Those luxuries are the easiest targets for simplifying one’s life. Then there are more difficult ones, such as not having a family, a car, or your own home, but instead living as a caretaker or a hermit. These big things do tend to let you focus more and more on the inner world.

I think every person’s life offers its own possibilities for voluntary simplicity, and its best to start small.

There are these phrases you come across in the sutra’s, “the holy life has been lived” for example. If you read more widely you will see that in ancient India around the time of the Buddha it was a thing, that certain people would renounce, and would become wandering sannyasi. Mention of this goes back in the Veda’s to the second millennium BCE.

Saṃnyāsa in Sanskrit nyasa means purification, sannyasa means "Purification of Everything". It is a composite word of saṃ- which means "together, all", ni- which means "down" and āsa from the root as, meaning "to throw" or "to put". A literal translation of Sannyāsa is thus "to put down everything, all of it".

It is something that has somewhat gone out of fashion, in todays materialistic society very few people choose to give up work, to lay down all burdens. But those people who study the Buddha’s words and would learn from him do follow in the footsteps of those ancient renunciates.

So maybe it is a good idea to see what we can lay down today? Living a life of voluntary simplicity is perhaps as close as we can come to living the holy life as they did in the time of the Buddha.

I suppose you are what you eat. He has lived and continues to live in a world of spy vs spy. It's where his attention and time is spent. If you think people are watching you, you act in a way that reflects that. If you act in that way, people may pick up on that and act in response to that.

It's a good lesson in why practicing 4 Brahma Viharas produces good for you and good for others.

Yes @how I like that, “giving it space.”
Its about being kind isn’t it?
This tendency to take things personally and stew for hours just needs some TLC Spaciness and big hugs.

I actually used to hate my own limitations but I’m learning to accept them and maybe they may just fly off offa their own accord.

I’ll see.

I watched The Joker a couple of nights ago, found him portrayed in a surprisingly sympathetic manner as a man with mental health issues, basically schizophrenia. It shows you what could happen to a man with these conditions if all the things around him go wrong.

But it also casts the Batman / Joker conflict as a class struggle between the rich (Batman) and the underclass of Gotham City (the Joker). The Joker shows how Arthur becomes a bit of a hero figure to the disaffected who seek to rebel against the wealthy and powerful. The clown masks worn by his followers to me almost feel like a reference to Anonymous and the V for Vendetta masks they use.