The Budhha Ascetic

lobster

I wish I was more of an ascetic.

Meals per day, more than one ❌
Dharma partying ? ❌
Pretending obeying the precepts involves fish murder ? ❌

Beating myself up ✔️✔️✔️

Maybe I could aim for a Buddhist Aesthetic ...

Which way are you middle wayers inclined?

person

I aim for better everyday...ish. A semi yearly 1% improvement compounded over the course of a life makes you 100's of a percent better of a person (or lobster) than wherever you were when you started.

Shoshin

Which way are you middle wayers inclined?

Just to go with the flow ( and trying to keep afloat) of the ever-changing middle way...and observing the stop signs along the way...

Do no harm (unless it's a @lobster then it's fair game )

No pinching ( a hard one for a @lobster to do...)
No sexual misconduct please I'm British ( well I was born there)
No lying or gossip ( unless posting on @lobster threads...)
No intoxicants (apart from becoming high on the ever so potent sweet nectar of the Dharma-lotus... found growing in the vacant lots of the mind)

Vimalajāti

The butter drama is difficult. No one knows if it's butter or margarine, and this causes much hullaballoo.

@lobster said:
Which way are you middle wayers inclined?

45 degrees, generally. Makes it difficult to drink my tea in the morning.

federica

@Vimalajāti said:
The butter drama is difficult. No one knows if it's butter or margarine, and this causes much hullaballoo.

The Buddhist are intelligentsia. They just know.....

45 degrees, generally. Makes it difficult to drink my tea in the morning.

Lucky you. At least you have an angle you're working on. I'm sometimes so laid back, I'm horizontal....

Vimalajāti

@federica said:
The Buddhist are intelligentsia. They just know.....

I used to be a "nu atheist" in the tradition of Dawkins, Hitchens, &c.

I have this saying about when I was that way, if you forgive the language gap:

You're un religieux, you accept everything told to you! A sheeple! You're a sheeple!
Me? I'm a skeptic. I "know."

I'm a skeptic. I just "know." Gets me every time...

Why? I read skeptical literature.

I suppose Buddhists "know" because they read Buddhist literature.

Go figure.

@federica said:
Lucky you. At least you have an angle you're working on. I'm sometimes so laid back, I'm horizontal....

It must be very hard for you to drink your tea in the morning!

There is a saying:

Once I thought I had it bad because I had no shoes. Then I met a man with no feet.

That's a fake Buddha quote for you.

lobster

Asceticism which comes easier to certain Stoics, yogi, hermits and some Buddhists who practice Noble Silence.

Noble Silence for me includes restrained behavour, control of emotions and is a valuable asset.

Ascetism is a form of retreat also ...
https://en.dhammadana.org/sangha/dhutanga.htm