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Is it as simple as accepting reality for what it actually is?
ravkes
Veteran
I've been trying to figure out enlightenment, Buddhism, reality and really just life in general for the past 1.5 years. However, there have only been a few things that have remained the same: the fact that this body needs food and water to live and that I need to work for a living (whether it be at college or at a future job). I noticed that when I see reality for what it is, just accept whatever is happening right now, that suffering disappears. It's only when I want something to be different that I suffer. It's not like I don't work to help and improve my life situation on a daily basis, but when everything is just accepted life is no longer a problem.
However, why is it so hard to accept reality for what it is? Could it be that we actually create our own suffering and cling to it? Could it be that we take an objective reality and turn it into a subjective monstrosity designed and structured to fulfill our own erroneous interpretations of an already perfect reality, a reality that just is what it is? Is it really that simple?
I'd like to hear your take on this.
However, why is it so hard to accept reality for what it is? Could it be that we actually create our own suffering and cling to it? Could it be that we take an objective reality and turn it into a subjective monstrosity designed and structured to fulfill our own erroneous interpretations of an already perfect reality, a reality that just is what it is? Is it really that simple?
I'd like to hear your take on this.
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Comments
Why is that so hard to accept?
We just don't want to accept it, because we mistakenly believe that it would spoil all our fun.
That's attachment for you.....
We're just playing around like little kids, creating sorrow for ourselves and asking why it happens the way it does when we so obviously do it to ourselves.
I am not telling you that you should view people the way I view people. For you, perhaps you need to view them as stupid right now. That is where you are spiritually, and that is what you need spiritually. I don't believe in stupidity. I think that it is important to understand stupidity, and to understand that it exists, and then to understand how prevelent it is, even to the point where it is almost all that exists. THEN you can understand that there is no such thing. But that can only come with time. If you don't feel it, then it's not what you need right now. It's not about what's true, it's about what you need.
We fear non-existence, we fear being alone and we fear death. So to cover up for this fear, just like the baby craving a feed, we cling to the familiar, 'good' things in this life. On some level, we know it is temporary, but still, it is all we know. So we cling to our bodies, pleasure, relationships, hobbies... and build walls around ourselves to keep all the good things in, and the bad things out.
The truth is we don't exist anyway - not in any solid sense. There is no "I", no eternal "self" that can be preserved. What there is is simply an aggregate of many facets, continually changing, being born and instantly dying, moment by moment. We have nothing to fear from non-existence because that is Emptiness, "Ultimate potentiality" as it was explained to me. We are not alone because we are intrinsically linked to all sentient beings; and death is not the end.
Yes, we create our own realities, and in doing so, we create our own suffering. But even if we intellectually believe this, fear and ignorance will prevent us from truly knowing it. The way to overcome fear and ignorance is to practice, and so we must practice.
Going to go with yes.
Reality precedes one's observation of it, where there is an observer. We don't have a place to question that, really, but then we do question that, as observers. So the observer is the beginning of there being more than one thing going on. When one can think separately from one's own awareness, there is another machine running, and the product of one's observations includes the veil of the ego observer.
Negativity manifests anytime the ego conflicts for the wrong reasons, but other things happen that I think can make the matter more confusing. There is real better and real worse in life, such as having a good meal or having your arm chopped off. I think that is potentially confusing. The former is the more natural choice, by way of the physical mechanics of it. Some things in life suck more than others, but they never suck more than they actually do. So, actuality can be confusing with the way it presents discernible doses of tangible rights and wrongs, such as to create a sense of whether or not to chop the actual limb off, and maybe even make a rule about it. "Thou shalt not cut off limbs where good meals may be had". It compels us in our sense of right and wrong. It builds - it has a crescendo, and then it unleashes in the form of a full-blown conceptual entity (that thinks it's really needed).
And then it is interpreting everything and adding its veil to everything, because it has all sorts of rules about what can and cannot happen, and what must and must not be upheld. Falsehood in ego can always be found, such as to even think it needs to be there. But the anatomy induces a real experience that precedes any ego upon it - that is not a concept, but somehow also winds up facilitating "a conceptual operator for an actual being". There will not be falsehood in actuality, but there will be falsehood in the ego upon it. I think ego obscures reality with pre-fab needs, and disagreeing with reality sucks. When the "pre" goes with the real and not the ego, it hasn't gotten to sucking yet.
So the Buddhist is about to be eaten by a lion, and he reaches out and grabs a strawberry. And what is that strawberry doing there? I think it just happened to be there. Was any of this what he asked for? I don't think so.
Cheers, WK
Your proof here? I disagree.
Cheers, WK
Reality does NOT precede one's observation. We observe, and create the reality we chose to create.
Things are as they are, because they are as they are.
We impose our own reality on things.
MarkMe, I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this, but it sounds like gobbledygook.
It makes absolutely no sense at all.
You seem to talk as if your Ego is a separate entity from you. it does this, then does that.
Not so. It's all 'you'.
there is no separate you from it.
Where is 'It', anyway?
if it were separate, you could not possibly control it or determine what it does.
But your ego - that is, 'you' - is under your own control.
Every time we put something of ourselves, "outside" of ourselves, and refer to it in the third person, we disassociate ourselves from the ultimate task of being responsible for it.
The buck stops with you.
Your Ego is for you to contain and direct.
Your ego IS in fact, your sense of self. The ego can be transcended, along with the idea that there is a 'you'. 'You' do not actually exist. There is no concrete self. 'I' is an illusion.
We are the universe looking at itself.
Ultimately if you can live life intelligently and accept whatever comes you're good, that's the tough part.. the actual letting go and accepting lol
I want to test all these zen masters/spiritual teachers haha.. see if they actually live up to the bs they spew out
All is well.
#TheJourney: You're abs.right too. It's all perspective, different ideas within the whole.
P
Maybe you don't have to accept reality because you choose central heating, antibiotic and digital communication over perpetual cold, hunger and death at 35.
See you asked for this, I'm not being mean or cynical, it's just that blanket statements about 'reality' tend to steer me towards this particular avenue of thought. So anyway, we don't accept reality, we create reality..
Would be no problem for a speck of Infinite Mind to die off but the body it is stuck in is run by extremely selfish genes which have been concerned with their own replicative existence for billions of years on this planet.
Genes and IM, it's kind of a symbiosis I guess. Who knows what else has jumped onto/into this biological bandwagon of the living body?
Life throughout all universes quantum and macro: It's a trip man! :clap:
Anyway, getting stuck in the body with these genes doing their things with hormones and survival circuitry causes great distress for the IM.
As a byproduct of this stress comes delusions like the ego and the urges to kill or be killed and memories (individual and collective subconscious and conscious) which help all that along.
Buddhism explains something about how IM has ***forgotten*** it's origins and been distracted by the material world (including the body). THAT'S what Enlightement is about: getting back to its roots (I hesitate to say 'our' or 'my' roots because that's part of the ego illusion).
That's the best I can do given the single cup of coffee I allow myself in the AM.
"Much happier" kinda puts a limit on the desperation coefficient I guess. Gotta get going. No time to Google now. :hair:
A hard question to answer, and who will accept this responsibility? Is it as simple as throwing resources at the poor or helping to build structure, empowering and educating the ones who need?
Not sure of your meaning.
Anyway, HAPPINESS is goal of Buddhism according to "my" genuine native-born Tibetan Dogzchen Lama.
Gotta go with any place that's HAPPIER! HAHAHA!
So if it were up to me, I'd institute an education program aimed on educating people who are poor about how stupid it is to have kids if you can't even support yourself. Throwing some condoms instead of resources at them would help more.
Personally, I will not have kids. That will help with the population problem, then I would use the excess money that I earn to help educate poor people to have less kids. If everybody did this, there would be more resources and room for the world to change. Instead we're going in the opposite direction.
I guess I was reminding interested parties that first world people think poor people have terrible desperate UNHAPPY lives compared to us here in the west with all our advantages which result in an apparent shortage of happiness.