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How to intergrate into daily life.
Hello everyone..this is my first post on here. I have recently read a lot in regards to Buddhism and have been practicing meditation mostly daily for the past few weeks. I really do like a lot of the message that is Buddhism, such as overall compassion, leading a life that is more beneficial to oneself and therefore more beneficial to those around you. I have read on the eightfold path, the four noble truths etc. I have read various Buddhist meditation techniques and I have mainly practiced mantra meditation and watching the breath as well separately.
The things I seem to have questions about is..why does the information I read in regard to Buddhism seem to make me feel depressed? I can't make sense of the ideas of detatchment, dispassion, emptiness etc. I live a very "normal" western life, I go to work, school, I have family and friends, I'm in a relationship, I own material items, play music..etc. What's hard for me is..I don't understand how to intergrate the teachings of the Buddha, even those described above, into my daily life. I don't see how "attachment leads to suffering" would cause me to live a "happier, more fulfilling life". It seems that any notion of "life" is simply unsatisfying and represents the fact that one has not yet achieved enlightenment. Please someone explain how the Buddhist teachings lead someone like me, leading a "modern" western life to a happier existence. Any response is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
The things I seem to have questions about is..why does the information I read in regard to Buddhism seem to make me feel depressed? I can't make sense of the ideas of detatchment, dispassion, emptiness etc. I live a very "normal" western life, I go to work, school, I have family and friends, I'm in a relationship, I own material items, play music..etc. What's hard for me is..I don't understand how to intergrate the teachings of the Buddha, even those described above, into my daily life. I don't see how "attachment leads to suffering" would cause me to live a "happier, more fulfilling life". It seems that any notion of "life" is simply unsatisfying and represents the fact that one has not yet achieved enlightenment. Please someone explain how the Buddhist teachings lead someone like me, leading a "modern" western life to a happier existence. Any response is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
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I'm also a new member and I don't know much about buddhism, but I can give you my opinion. Either you are deadset on achieving nirvana (which means sacrificing everything) or the value of buddhism will be "just" as a "middle way". You can view it as a way to attain balance. It's all about looking at what life you have and what scenarios cause you fear and pain.
When you lose something really dear to you everything becomes doom and gloom. But theoretically, if you weren't as attached to that thing or person or place before you lost it, it wouldn't hurt as much right?
It's up to you which level of Buddhism you wanna go.
Some forummer here wanna be a monk , some even wanna go living a hermit monastic life in a monastery in China. Some are just happy to do some basic meditation to ease life stresses.
It's your life. You choose.
Keep the precepts to get in the routine of doing no harm. This is not only for your well-being and the well-being of others, but it helps keep your mind clear and blameless as well.
Reflect in your life on all the things that you like to do and the discomfort you feel at the thought of not being able to (watch TV, eat foods you like, have sex, etc.); of all the things you seem to want that are not reality-based (to live forever or have your body look a certain way, be able to hold onto things like a girlfriend that may leave you, want a job or to be liked that's not really your choice, to avoid having to interact with people you nevertheless have to work with, etc.).
That's the suffering we all have... expectations/desires that make no sense in light of reality, or we have little or no control over; that's what it's about. Defeating or extinguishing these desires takes time, because they have a root of Ignorance that precedes thought itself and that just being "told" the truth doesn't change (you know life ends, but you still want to stop aging and live forever regardless).
Try to cultivate the opposing parts of the precepts, i.e. not just not-killing but compassionate thoughts and acts toward all life. Not just not-stealing but giving and helping out of generosity. These bring happiness to the mind! This is the active purification of the mind through cultivation of sila (morality).
Finally learn and practice insight-meditation (Vipassana, or whatever else works). The things that you learn about the mind and how it works, as well as bodily sensations and other sense-impressions, build a foundation of wisdom that replace the Ignorance that causes unrealistic desires and attachments.
Good luck!
Keep up your breathing meditation and you'll notice that some days concentration comes easily, and other days the mind is flooded with distracting thoughts. Notice how those thoughts bring out an emotional reaction. Happy thoughts bring feelings of excitement or pleasure, negative thoughts and memories bring feelings of stress and worry.
When you gently bring the mind back to the breath, you're cultivating concentration and weakening the habit of distraction. The ability to do this is detachment. The capacity to stand apart from the wave of emotional impulse and actually choose the most beneficial response, is a unique human attribute. Detachment is a freedom of the mind, and a skill we can train to become better and better.
You meditate. And from your meditation, you learn to observe. And from your observation, as you go about your daily life, you learn to open up to all that you are feeling (that we normally don't attend to or even deliberately repress). We start to see the action-reaction chain of events, and at some point, we go "ah-hah!". Increasingly, we observe attachment, rather than getting hooked by it.
I read a story about the Dalai Lama touring a Catholic monastery that supported itself making cheese and fruitcake. They gave him a sample of cheese to taste. He had really wanted the fruitcake, and they gave him cheese ... and he broke out into that infectious laugh he has as he told the story. He thought it was so amusing that he had a preference. You see ... he was not "hooked" by his attachment. If this doesn't make sense, continue with your practice, and it will at some point. Took me several years to start to see it.