Can we be more creative, less reactive in our solutions (instead of renounce/escape)?
Everything you love you will lose - is there another way to meet this besides detachment/stop loving?
- Learn to savor it more so that loss becomes more of a price worth paying
- Love what is mortal, hold it close to your bones, let it go
- Instead of : Don’t love what is mortal (seek only the immortal) because you’ll lose it, don’t hold it close, so you won’t have to feel the pain of having to let it go
- It must be worth losing if it is worth something (the most meaningful things must be worthy of losing in order to enjoy having them)
- Instead of : Don’t love what is mortal (seek only the immortal) because you’ll lose it, don’t hold it close, so you won’t have to feel the pain of having to let it go
Desire causes so much pain. Longing aches. Not getting what we desire is disappointing, and so is getting what you desire and not feeling satisfied, the object of desire not living up to your expectations, the pain of disillusionment when it's not enough, and satisfaction is fleeting. When the pain caused by desire becomes unbearable, renunciation is alluring.
The problem is of course that desire also fuels our vitality. Fuels creation. Action. Progress. Compassion. Love.
We have to realize that desire, just like everything else we try to renunciate plays a positive role in our wellbeing when it's healthy.
I was too many times burned by desire's fire, but moving too far from it, I froze.
Trying to renounce desire is yet another example of when we try to eliminate a source of suffering by swinging to its' opposite extreme, which ends up becoming an equal and even greater cause of suffering, in the case of desire - apathy, numbness, dullness, loss of motivation.
It's not desire, but our relationship with it that makes us suffer. We could instead change what we desire, so that we want what's actually healthy for us. To learn to choose things that will contribute to our long term wellbeing, rather than instant gratification. And to become more comfortable with lack so that we don't reach for unhealthy things to fill an inner void. So that we don't chase things like hungry ghosts, we can learn to deeply savor what we have, cultivate awe and experience the preciousness of what is fleeting to reduce the habituation that keeps us stuck on the "hedonic treadmill."
The problem is of course that desire also fuels our vitality. Fuels creation. Action. Progress. Compassion. Love.
We have to realize that desire, just like everything else we try to renunciate plays a positive role in our wellbeing when it's healthy.
I was too many times burned by desire's fire, but moving too far from it, I froze.
Trying to renounce desire is yet another example of when we try to eliminate a source of suffering by swinging to its' opposite extreme, which ends up becoming an equal and even greater cause of suffering, in the case of desire - apathy, numbness, dullness, loss of motivation.
It's not desire, but our relationship with it that makes us suffer. We could instead change what we desire, so that we want what's actually healthy for us. To learn to choose things that will contribute to our long term wellbeing, rather than instant gratification. And to become more comfortable with lack so that we don't reach for unhealthy things to fill an inner void. So that we don't chase things like hungry ghosts, we can learn to deeply savor what we have, cultivate awe and experience the preciousness of what is fleeting to reduce the habituation that keeps us stuck on the "hedonic treadmill."
To cling and crave is to live and desire to continue living. Look at desire closely: it is growth itself. There can be nothing inherently wrong with this, and yet there it is in the second truth. Perhaps we think that we must transcend our nature, but perhaps we are mistaken. Perhaps clinging itself is not the problem or the origin of anything. Perhaps we do not completely understand why we were made. We can explore this together since we are people together, who suffer together and who want to understand all of this. Let’s call “clinging” cohesiveness. The body coheres. The universe is set up so that coherence— the ability of the constituent parts of any material whole—is the basis of both stability and growth. The universe grows because things fit together. Atoms cohere and we get molecules. Waves and particles cohere so we get light. Bell’s Theorem—Einstein’s spooky action at a distance—teaches us that this coherence is so important that it seems to bypass distance and time. Coherence = connection.
So clinging itself, cleaving itself cannot be the problem any more than water is the fundamental problem in a potential flood or air the original problem in a hurricane. So, our first answer to the initial question why do we cling? arrives. Answer: because we are made of the universe and the universe is clinging-in-action. The universe doesn’t cling: the universe is clinging. There is no entity called “the universe” without the immediate mutual inseparableness of all things. The universe did not get it wrong.
Since we are made of exactly the same things as the world, since we are the world and are included in the world, we did not get it wrong either. Lips to speak, to kiss, to want further and further kissing, to want to continue to exist, to survive: in this we are like everything in the universe, everything in a universe that is born and dies and thus thrives. So it seems that there is nothing inherently wrong with clinging itself.
So our second question must be: Where did our clinging go wrong? The problem, it seems to me, is of identity rather than of clinging itself. Just as the first noble truth teaches us that suffering can never disappear but that our relationship with it must change, so too clinging can never disappear since it is part of life and life is who we are. Can you picture a completely enlightened life in which clinging is still a part? Can you picture a sage-ful life in which ignorance is still present? You should be able to do that. It is salutary.
We cannot transcend desire or clinging. It is only another desire that desires to do that.
So clinging itself, cleaving itself cannot be the problem any more than water is the fundamental problem in a potential flood or air the original problem in a hurricane. So, our first answer to the initial question why do we cling? arrives. Answer: because we are made of the universe and the universe is clinging-in-action. The universe doesn’t cling: the universe is clinging. There is no entity called “the universe” without the immediate mutual inseparableness of all things. The universe did not get it wrong.
Since we are made of exactly the same things as the world, since we are the world and are included in the world, we did not get it wrong either. Lips to speak, to kiss, to want further and further kissing, to want to continue to exist, to survive: in this we are like everything in the universe, everything in a universe that is born and dies and thus thrives. So it seems that there is nothing inherently wrong with clinging itself.
So our second question must be: Where did our clinging go wrong? The problem, it seems to me, is of identity rather than of clinging itself. Just as the first noble truth teaches us that suffering can never disappear but that our relationship with it must change, so too clinging can never disappear since it is part of life and life is who we are. Can you picture a completely enlightened life in which clinging is still a part? Can you picture a sage-ful life in which ignorance is still present? You should be able to do that. It is salutary.
We cannot transcend desire or clinging. It is only another desire that desires to do that.