Not chasing pleasure nor avoiding pain

Jeroen

One thing that I recently read in Nisargadatta’s book I Am That is that “desire is the memory of pleasure, and fear is the memory of pain”. I’ve for a long time held with a kind of stoicism, of neither chasing pleasure nor avoiding pain, but instead being like a tree and letting the sunshine and the rain come and go as they please.

Now I don’t know where this attitude came from, I haven’t been exposed to real stoic philosophy at any point in my life, but somewhere in my childhood it came to me that this was the way to be in life. This basic enduring has sometimes been good for me, it has kept me from chasing sex or being easily addicted, but it has also had downsides, like when my knees started playing up and I didn’t go see a fysio for a year.

In enduring the sunshine and the rain, and not being easily moved, I have found a kind of wisdom about the passing nature of things. I have been a witness to good events and bad, and have found that with patience personal happiness tends to return.

person

I'm in the same camp. I've been looking at this through the Big 5 personality lens lately. Like introversion/extroversion another personality spectrum is emotional stability/neuroticism. I'm an introvert, but I recognize that all things have strengths and weaknesses. I'll never be an extrovert but in order to flourish and prosper in this world I need to develop some extroverted skills.

Likewise as someone who falls on and cultivates qualities of emotional stability there are pros and cons like you mention. Taking things in stride vs not taking care of problems. I think the attitude that helps me be more proactive is self compassion combined with a longer term outlook. Future me will be happier if current me takes steps now to address problems. Obsession or perfectionism hasn't been an issue, my natural temperament I think provides some immunity.

Jeroen

Yes, self compassion, and necessity. I act on things which are needful. Shopping, vacuum cleaning, medical supplies, banking, taxes, garbage disposal.

Jeroen

@Jeroen said:
In enduring the sunshine and the rain, and not being easily moved, I have found a kind of wisdom about the passing nature of things. I have been a witness to good events and bad, and have found that with patience personal happiness tends to return.

Happiness for me has tended to be about giving attention on the good things in life, and just letting the bad things come and go, taking note of them without letting them take over. That way, the good things get bigger in your optics, and the bad things become more bearable.

Nothing lasts, as Terence McKenna said — nothing lasts. And that is good, that the old and out-dated makes place for the young and the new. It is an engine with which Mother Nature keeps fitting things together in working systems of plants and animals.

And so it is that many problems solve themselves with time. Being aware of the world around you can tell you which things are likely to resolve on their own, and which require intervention.

Jeroen

I came across a passage in Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now which was about awareness and coming to inhabit the body, which made a lot of sense to me. He says that when you give attention to the inner body - feeling the body from the inside as it were - you eventually come to make contact with the body’s inner energy field, which leads you to a contact with limitless Being.

Now that makes a lot more sense to be than being told “you are not the body” and then ending up rejecting the body. After all, the body is the locus of our awareness, it is our temple on Earth. Rejecting it would lead to a kind of disembodied being. It makes more sense to me to give attention to feeling the body truely, to inhabit it fully first.

Here is a practice he gives…

You may find it helpful to close your eyes for this practice. Later on, when "being in the body" has become natural and easy, this will no longer be necessary. Direct your attention into the body. Feel it from within. Is it alive? Is there life in your hands, arms, legs, and feet -- in your abdomen, your chest? Can you feel the subtle energy field that pervades the entire body and gives vibrant life to every organ and every cell? Can you feel it simultaneously in all parts of the body as a single field of energy? Keep focusing on the feeling of your inner body for a few moments. Do not start to think about it. Feel it.
The more attention you give it, the clearer and stronger this feeling will become. It will feel as if every cell is becoming more alive, and if you have a strong visual sense, you may get an image of your body becoming luminous. Although such an image can help you temporarily, pay more attention to the feeling than to any image that may arise. An image, no matter how beautiful or powerful, is already defined in form, so there is less scope for penetrating more deeply.
The feeling of your inner body is formless, limitless, and unfathomable. You can always go into it more deeply. If you cannot feel very much at this stage, pay attention to whatever you can feel. Perhaps there is just a slight tingling in your hands or feet. That's good enough for the moment. Just focus on the feeling. Your body is coming alive. Later, we will practice some more. Please open your eyes now, but keep some attention in the inner energy field of the body even as you look around the room. The inner body lies at the threshold between your form identity and your essence identity, your true nature. Never lose touch with it.

person

The world doesn't have to be either/or. If a technique makes sense to you that doesn't necessarily mean it is the one true path and others are inferior.

From a Madhyamika perspective the purpose of the Buddha's negating approach is so you don't then cling on to a subtler form of self reification.

marcitko

@Jeroen said:
I came across a passage in Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now which was about awareness and coming to inhabit the body

I've done this practice on occasion and found it to be very regenerative and restorative. Kind of like really resting deeply while being awake. Hallelujah, no phones necessary!

Sometimes, I think when sufficiently and successfully refocusing from the gross suffering/impurities/mundane mind, the sense of the "inner body" registers similarly or the same as a sense of love.

Jeroen

@marcitko said:
I've done this practice on occasion and found it to be very regenerative and restorative. Kind of like really resting deeply while being awake. Hallelujah, no phones necessary!

Sometimes, I think when sufficiently and successfully refocusing from the gross suffering/impurities/mundane mind, the sense of the "inner body" registers similarly or the same as a sense of love.

I’ve been trying it the last few days, but I’m finding that my body feels more restored when I don’t give it any attention at all, and just get myself lost in doing something like gardening.

We just had our first snows of the year… the air temperature has been below zero for most of the day. The snow is melting on contact with the ground but we had some sustained flurries.

I found this exercise helpful too…

Conscious breathing, which is a powerful meditation in its own right, will gradually put you in touch with the body. Follow the breath with your attention as it moves in and out of your body. Breathe into the body, and feel your abdomen expanding and contracting slightly with each inhalation and exhalation. If you find it easy to visualize, close your eyes and see yourself surrounded by light or immersed in a luminous substance -- a sea of consciousness. Then breathe in that light. Feel that luminous substance filling up your body and making it luminous also. Then gradually focus more on the feeling. Y ou are now in your body. Don't get attached to any visual image.

Lionduck

When we chase pleasure, we find the pleasure we thought we we chasing is an illusion, a mirage, ephemeral, fleeting, smoke in the wind.
When we think we are avoiding pain, it wraps around us, smothering us.
When we are in the Middle Way, a true pleasure arises from within and pain is defused, disbursed fading to vanish as if morning mist in the sunlight.
We are neither enraptured by pleasure not tormented by pain.
It is not that we do not feel pleasure or pain. We do. But they are as wind buffeting us as if a cork upon the sea. Rather than being buffeted by these winds, we are as upon a sailing vessel and they are winds which enable us to navigate the vast sea.

Peace to all

Jeroen

Thanks @lionduck …

I came across a lovely passage in Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, where he talks about inner nonresistance to what is, and thus being in tune with the present moment. It gave me a bit of a lift, it was like just accessing a higher frequency of being where a lot of problems had resolved and dissolved.

When you react against the form that Life takes at this moment, when you treat the Now as a means, an obstacle, or an enemy, you strengthen your own form identity, the ego. Hence the ego's reactivity. What is reactivity? Becoming addicted to reaction. The more reactive you are, the more entangled you become with form. The more identified with form, the stronger the ego. Your Being then does not shine through form anymore – or only barely.
Though nonresistance to form, that in you which is beyond form emerges as an all-­encompassing Presence, a silent power far greater than your short­lived form identity, the person. It is more deeply who you are than anything in the world of form.