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cosmolinguistSuffering exists, Buddhism says.
Well, actually, everyone says that (so it's not a bad way to start, methinks) but Buddhism says it too. It's the first of the four noble truths. (There are different ways of putting it, and there's even a special word—dukkha—for it, but you get the idea. I hope.)
Suffering exists because of attachment. Desire. Clinging onto things. As far as I can tell (different ways of putting this, again). That's the second noble truth. Not just material things, mind you, but anything. Things, yes, but also concepts, like money or happiness or whatever. People, springtime, everything. Even your personality, your self.
I'm reminded of one of my favorite movies, in which Diane Keaton, pretending to be in a Russian novel, says, "To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness."
I'm also reminded of the day before yesterday, when I spent the whole evening thinking about how nice it'd be to have a burrito from Chipotle. I could feel that first bite: the soft tortilla tearing in my teeth, the spicy goodness under it. It was hard to concentrate on what I was reading for a while. I love Chipotle's food, and I spend a lot of time lacking from it, so I'm setting myself up for suffering. To love is to suffer, right?
Right. To love, even more than other things (I think), is to suffer.
But better than suffering from lack of love, I say. And thus I love everything; I feel incapacitated by it sometimes.
When I was still in Mankato I caught myself thinking one day about my pink fuzzy blanket. I got it as a high-school graduation present and took it with me to college. It's thin but warm enough even for winter, and I love it and used it all the time. But that still left opportunities for other people to use it. My freshman roommate Sarah lay under it watching movies (Pleasantville, Top Gun, and ... oh, I can't remember the third) when she spent a week being sick. It was big enough to cover two people, which was nice when I had another person to sleep next to. Then I was transported back to my house and saw that Mom had put it out on my bed since I was last here. And that made me smile. Now I curl up with it when I read at night. I'm ridiculously attached to this blanket (though thankfully not as bad as Leo Bloom in The Producers). I am attached to things. I cling to them.
I love a lot of things and people that are 4000 miles away from me now. And when I go visit them in a few weeks, that sentence will still be true. It doesn't help that distance warps things. My family seems nicer from 4000 miles away than from 4000 millimeters away.
My memories, though, are the worst. I think Paul McCartney, when asked what it was like to have been a Beatle, said it was one of those things where you quickly forget all the bad stuff and remember the good things. My childhood is like that (maybe that's why I remember so little! entire years are a blank now!). Distance in time can warp my perceptions as easily as distance in space can.
So sometimes it's awfully inconvenient. I cry for things I miss, things I lack. Even if I know the things aren't what I imagine them to be, even if I can tell myself it's just hormones, I still do it.
I didn't choose to be this way. And maybe this is just part of my sad delusion, but I'm glad I'm not so detached. It might make me a bad Buddhist, but I wouldn't want to stop loving things.
Another movie I like has Nicolas Cage saying, "You are what you love, not what loves you." Which I think is crap, in some ways, but it does remind me that I have no control over what loves me, but am entirely in control over what I love. And while I wouldn't say I am entirely and exclusively defined by what I love, I think it does say something about me. Why else go through your friends' music collections, or ask new people their favorite foods and movies, their political or religious affiliations? The things they like and care about say something about the kind of people they are.
I was trying to write about this for the last couple of days, but I'm glad I didn't, because on my friends page today I found a link to this.
On my bad days I envy the Buddhists their desire to not desire anything. Because it certainly would make things easier for me then, and a little enlightenment probably wouldn't hurt me either. But I don't expect any, not by those rules anyway, because I don't even want to not want anything. I want to want things. I really like wanting things.
Well, actually, everyone says that (so it's not a bad way to start, methinks) but Buddhism says it too. It's the first of the four noble truths. (There are different ways of putting it, and there's even a special word—dukkha—for it, but you get the idea. I hope.)
Suffering exists because of attachment. Desire. Clinging onto things. As far as I can tell (different ways of putting this, again). That's the second noble truth. Not just material things, mind you, but anything. Things, yes, but also concepts, like money or happiness or whatever. People, springtime, everything. Even your personality, your self.
I'm reminded of one of my favorite movies, in which Diane Keaton, pretending to be in a Russian novel, says, "To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness."
I'm also reminded of the day before yesterday, when I spent the whole evening thinking about how nice it'd be to have a burrito from Chipotle. I could feel that first bite: the soft tortilla tearing in my teeth, the spicy goodness under it. It was hard to concentrate on what I was reading for a while. I love Chipotle's food, and I spend a lot of time lacking from it, so I'm setting myself up for suffering. To love is to suffer, right?
Right. To love, even more than other things (I think), is to suffer.
But better than suffering from lack of love, I say. And thus I love everything; I feel incapacitated by it sometimes.
When I was still in Mankato I caught myself thinking one day about my pink fuzzy blanket. I got it as a high-school graduation present and took it with me to college. It's thin but warm enough even for winter, and I love it and used it all the time. But that still left opportunities for other people to use it. My freshman roommate Sarah lay under it watching movies (Pleasantville, Top Gun, and ... oh, I can't remember the third) when she spent a week being sick. It was big enough to cover two people, which was nice when I had another person to sleep next to. Then I was transported back to my house and saw that Mom had put it out on my bed since I was last here. And that made me smile. Now I curl up with it when I read at night. I'm ridiculously attached to this blanket (though thankfully not as bad as Leo Bloom in The Producers). I am attached to things. I cling to them.
I love a lot of things and people that are 4000 miles away from me now. And when I go visit them in a few weeks, that sentence will still be true. It doesn't help that distance warps things. My family seems nicer from 4000 miles away than from 4000 millimeters away.
My memories, though, are the worst. I think Paul McCartney, when asked what it was like to have been a Beatle, said it was one of those things where you quickly forget all the bad stuff and remember the good things. My childhood is like that (maybe that's why I remember so little! entire years are a blank now!). Distance in time can warp my perceptions as easily as distance in space can.
So sometimes it's awfully inconvenient. I cry for things I miss, things I lack. Even if I know the things aren't what I imagine them to be, even if I can tell myself it's just hormones, I still do it.
I didn't choose to be this way. And maybe this is just part of my sad delusion, but I'm glad I'm not so detached. It might make me a bad Buddhist, but I wouldn't want to stop loving things.
Another movie I like has Nicolas Cage saying, "You are what you love, not what loves you." Which I think is crap, in some ways, but it does remind me that I have no control over what loves me, but am entirely in control over what I love. And while I wouldn't say I am entirely and exclusively defined by what I love, I think it does say something about me. Why else go through your friends' music collections, or ask new people their favorite foods and movies, their political or religious affiliations? The things they like and care about say something about the kind of people they are.
I was trying to write about this for the last couple of days, but I'm glad I didn't, because on my friends page today I found a link to this.
Everything feels better with a little love up in it. A phone call ends best with “love you.” So does prayer. A friendship without love is just ride-sharing. Food made without love “tastes of window” (™ Gabriel Garcia Marquez). A marriage without love is just laundry. Ego without self-love is just a personality disorder. A job without love is, well, just a job. And sex without love is not much more than swollen pink bits slapping together until someone has a bus to catch.I agree. It's quite a process to ignore my upbringing by taciturn Minnesotans, but I'm working on that and I'm having fun doing it.
On my bad days I envy the Buddhists their desire to not desire anything. Because it certainly would make things easier for me then, and a little enlightenment probably wouldn't hurt me either. But I don't expect any, not by those rules anyway, because I don't even want to not want anything. I want to want things. I really like wanting things.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 02:21 am (UTC)For instance, its damned hard to live where I do and not have a vehicle of some sort. But I buy vehicles off eBay for $400 (which, besides getting me a vehicle, gets the seller some money and helps the environment by keeping it out of the junkyard), not $30,000 BMWs.
I think the only posessions I have that might be called "excessive" is I have quite a bit tied up in computer equipment. I also have a fairly nice, not high end but not Walmart either, DVD player and surround sound system, and a few hundred DVDs and CDs to go with it. And within the next year I intend to have me a HDTV.
But other than that, so long as I have a pillow to lay my head on, some food to eat, and some wine to drink, I'm happy. I could even do without clothing, but the police would have something to say about that...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 09:14 am (UTC)I have quite a bit tied up in computer equipment. I also have a fairly nice, not high end but not Walmart either, DVD player and surround sound system, and a few hundred DVDs and CDs to go with it. And within the next year I intend to have me a HDTV.
See, those are most of the things I think are cool! Can I come live at your hosue? :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 09:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 12:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 06:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-21 05:17 am (UTC)I toyed with the idea of not wanting things a while ago, I even made a go of it, and in a sense I still live a little by it. But I've tempered it a bit, I do want things, I do love and care about things, but I try to be mindful that I want all of something, love and care about all of it, including the fact that my relationship with it may be fleeting and may be out of my control. Wanting something for everything that it is makes me want less things, I'm not so keen to own things when I consider that the cost of it requires me to work, and that having the thing will mean I'll have to make space for it in my life, and accept that there's a chance one day I wont have it or want it.
I don't think you have to stop wanting things to stop suffering for it, you just have to want all of it. I've found that wanting things like this is good; it feels more rewarding, they don't cause me any pain, and I'm better at finding the things I really want in life.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-21 08:41 pm (UTC)Like this: I try to be mindful that I want all of something, love and care about all of it, including the fact that my relationship with it may be fleeting and may be out of my control.
I know what you mean, but I never thought of saying it (or even thinking it) like that before, and it makes me feel good to now be able to think Want all of things!, because I think that is a good and helpful way of looking at my attempts to balance wanting things with the trouble things can bring me.
In summary, I think you are very cool. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-22 09:13 am (UTC)I think you are very cool. :-)
That works out well, I feel the same way about you. :)