7.15.18 Greetings to everyone on this Actualized.org Community Forum
Out of darkness, into the light. From the grossest ignorance into the bliss of transcendental realization. So once upon a time there was a Phable. Has anyone read Lois Lowry's book "The Giver"? More or less The Giver was the only one in the entire tribe who saw in color, and everyone else only saw in black and white. He was the repository of emotions for the tribe. The Giver felt all the emotions that the Tribe would not or could not feel. That is a good description about how I feel about my role in life. I am a storykeeper. I have kept a journal of my entire journey over the last 18 years.
7.17.18 Buddha said what?!!!
So Buddha is translated as having said something along the lines of "Attachment to desire is the cause of all suffering. Abandon desire, abandon suffering!" And so that is quite the conundrum. However with some thought we can realize that total lack of desire is not lack of suffering either because if you refuse to breathe, drink, eat, if you don't move enough not to get bedsores, or if you refuse to defecate and urinate away from your body far enough so that you don't get sick from your own biological excretions and if you fail to move your body out of harms way if such circumstances arise, then you will suffocate, die of dehydration, starve, your flesh will dissolve, the stench will be unbearable and you will not avert harm... so total lack of desire is not total lack of suffering either.
But lets say that you just maintain the basic human biological processes at their most simple level, only that which is absolutely required for maintaining homeostasis, and you just sat there at the most simple level, then you would not suffer very much altogether, you would have very few responsibilities or demands upon one. Many of the burdens that we associate with life in the modern world would not be yours.
But in the modern society we have many vain and preposterous desires in addition to this most basic human maintenance. And every new desire added onto the basic foundation of actual human "needs" requires effort and energy to manifest and these desires will bring suffering if one does not gain them. Inevitably if one does no emotional alchemy then one gets angry to the same degree that they had desire for the thing denied. The vain desire itself, the striving, seeking, plotting, planning, struggling, conniving, the disappointment at not achieving ones desire, & the anger that follows are all energetically expensive. One must digest extra food to do all those extra activities. And if one is thwarted then it constitutes a tremendous waste of energy all together, and the anger and frustration can actually be detrimental to a person on their own. Not only did one not get what one wants, but one is afflicted and degraded by the entire process on a number of levels.
Every desire we can surrender gives us energy to do something else. The fewer desires one has, the less the external environment can control and manipulate a person. The 5 Regulative Principles of Religious Life are generally : no illicit sex, no intoxication, no gambling, no meat eating, and no stockpiling or hoarding of gold. If one follows these principles one will have alot of time to meditate and to do service.
There is a story I heard about Alexander "The Great" when he was marching around conquering the world. At a certain point he met a man sitting beneath a tree in a loincloth. Alexander stopped his army and went and sat with the man. Alexander asked the man if there was anything that Alexander could give him or do for him. And the man said, "No, I am fine the way I am am. There is nothing that I need." And Alexander was astounded at this and he said, "You know what? I am the master of all I survey but you have something that I want. I have the extent of my entire empire but you have inner peace." I don't know if this is a true story or not but all in all its a good allegory to illustrate this sort of Buddhic reasoning I am describing.
