[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Joy Vriens]

Benito Carral wrote:

>>>The other one said that happiness is not feeling bad
>>>and  feeling  good  sometimes,  and  a  good  way to
>>>achieve it, she said, is to be entertained.

>>I agree with her, if by being entertained she doesn't
>>necessarily mean superficial amusement.

>    That  rises  the  interesting  question  of  what  a
> "superficial amusement" is.

I was thinking a bit along the lines of Paul Diel's psychology of 
motivation, where superficial amusements would be false or exalted 
imaginations, also called multiple desires, that distract us from the 
genuin motivation to construct ourselves. To construct ourselves is a 
destraction from our basic nothingness, but a worthwile enterprise. If 
you think of exalted imaginations as prapanca, you have a nice little 
cocktail here, with bits of Diel, Sartre and Indian epistemology. 
Superficial amusement. ;-)

>>Anyway,  the construction of our life, the weaving of
>>all  the threads that constitutes our life is nothing
>>else  than  entertainment,  a sort of escape from the
>>nothingness.

>    We  could  even  redefine Buddhist meditation as the
> art  of  being  entertained not matter how bad the show
> is.

Well, as Louis de la Vallée Poussin observes very subtly with his usual 
sense of humour, after begging in the morning and eating their meals 
those bikkhus had to get through their afternoons.

>    It's  quite  interesting  that the Cosmic Award (TM)
> for  being a non-attached, peaceful and wise individual
> is  final extinction (khandhaparinibbaana).

I think that the Cosmic Award (TM) is a life of non-attachment, peace 
and wisdom followed by final extinction (après nous le déluge). I 
couldn't wish myself anything better than that.

> (That's why
> if one is a Buddhist and doesn't believe in rebirth, he
> could  come  to  think  that killing others is the best
> bodhisattvic endeavor, but I'm digressing here.)

I am afraid I was the one digressing, but I think that everything that 
could be said on that subject has been said by now.

Joy