[Buddha-l] Re: The Buddha, an 'emotional weakling'? What are the "joys of living"?

[Stefan Detrez]

Dear Benito,

You wrote:

>    The  two  emotional  unwholesome roots are greed and
> hatred,  and  any  activity  promoted  by  them  is not
> conductive to liberation.


I don't expect liberation, especially when I see what amount of effort it
takes to attain it. In fact, some suffering can lead to joy - like, for
instance, walking many miles to find the store that sells the item you want.

You may think this is some kind of laziness. Well, it IS a kind of laziness.
I won't ever attain enlightenment for the simple reason that I am happy with
what I am, and OK, I suffer from time to time, but that sporadic suffering
in various intensities has learned me that I don't have to surrender (as in
the word 'islam') to some age-old precepts or submit myself to voluntary
psychotherapy to see, 'passati', that no matter how deep the excrement is
you're in, there will allways be a spotless piece of toilet paper to wipe of
the dirt. I think that's basic optimism.

> Maybe the wisest thing is to learn to live with one's
> > own  temper  and enjoy life, even if you don't always
> > get the movie you like to see.
>
>    I  don't  know  what  you mean with "live with one's
> temper  and  enjoy  life,"  if that means not trying to
> transform  defilements or indulging in greed and hatred
> from  time to time, that's not wise at all, just a show
> of attachments in action. Many people try to enjoy life
> following  such  an  approach, but nobody seems to have
> succeeded in it.


With temper I mean the way you respond to all kinds of experiences in your
life. Some are devastated when they loose some money, others can still laugh
when they get involved in a non-fatal car crash. You can try to change self
destructive ways of responding, but you won't be able to change the whole
gamut. In this sense, your response to various types of suffering is
character related, so it will take genetic engineering or psychopharmaca to
come to terms with the operating system that running on someone's hard disk.
The Dhammapada's first verse already says that the way you see things
depends on your emotional outlook. If you're an emotional type of person,
that characteristic will 'impress' itself on your experience.
I can say my character is very stable, and even in the deepest of suffering
I've found that the only thing to do is to wait for it to go away. There's
no rationalizing or no emotionalizing
that will speed up the process of eliminating suffering. It's like when you
are very ill and you can just stare into space, thinking nothing, waiting
patiently for the suffering to go away. That's what I do when I suffer: wait
patiently as a passive acceptance of this momentary intensity of suffering.

   Anyway I try to follow the dharmic approach:
>
>            Thus,  there  is  sensual  eating  and  wise
>         eating.  When  the  body  composed  of the four
>         elements   suffers  the  pangs  of  hunger  and
>         accordingly  you  provide  it  with  food,  but
>         without  greed,  that is called wise eating. On
>         the  other hand, if you gluttonously delight in
>         purity  and  flavour,  you  are  permitting the
>         distinctions  which  arise from wrong thinking.
>         Merely  seeking  to  gratify the organ of taste
>         without realizing when you have taken enough is
>         called sensual eating (Huangbo Xiyun).


I eat for nutritional and aesthetic reasons. They both are fun. I love to
indulge so much that I'm so full that I can't properly think from the blood
in my stomach. It's a kind of natural stonedness. And when I can't have it,
I eat and enjoy what I get.
If you feel too easily tempted by 'sensual eating', I suggest you only eat
nutritional food that you don't like to eat, so you won't get attached to
its tastiness.

   Then,   in  relation  with  salsa,  you  could  also
> remember the seventh _uposatha_ precept, "the avoidance
> of   song,   dance,   and   other   forms   of   public
> entertainment."


I'm not a monk, and neither a Buddhist. Go to Thailand and try NOT to hear
music, not to see people dance and do NOT especially watch the Thai TV
shows.

   As  I  said  in a previous post, bodhisattvas try to
> use   their  resources  serving  others  not  indulging
> themselves   in   personal   gratification,   which  is
> characteristic  of  pratyekabuddhas, and quite contrary
> to the Mahayana spirit.


Say, if personal gratification is so kilesatic, how come you post so many
posts to the Buddha-L? It seems that you somehow experience lust to want to
post and get responses. How do you deal with this issue?

Stefan

   Best wishes,
>
> P.  S. You could also read master Xuyun's autobiography
> to  understand  better how great Chan masters use their
> time.  Well,  now  that  I think about it, maybe you're
> right,  they  probably  "anxious(ly) attempt to escape"
> samsara  and  help  other to do so, someone should told
> them.
>
> --
> Benito Carral
>   Asturias, Sepharad (Spain)
>
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>



-- 
Born, never asked.

- Laurie Anderson
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