Insight about our fragility and seeking happiness

[Someone here]

Have you started seeing the futility of this grand, bottomless project of trying to make yourself happy and secured? Has it worked? Are you completely at ease, bliss, secured, without fear and anxiety? If not, what's the percentage of progress you made in this grand project over your 10-20-30-40-50 years of lifetime? Do you see the impossibility of this game which is rigged against you?

Why do you even try? Why do you still believe you can make yourself happy, secured, fulfilled permanently? Why not simply acknowledge and accept the utter fragility of yourself?

Happiness and wellbeing is NOT  something you deserve. When did you buy into this bullshit story? Have you lost your mind? Just look at you!

If you were a Greek god with a lifetime of 10 billion years, who knows no physical or mental exhaustion, who possesses immense prowess and can survive even a planetary destruction; it would be rational to claim that such a being has legit high chance of deserving and claiming happiness, well being and permanent security.

On the other hand look at you! How fragile and vulnerable you are! It takes a zillion things in proper place in your environment and psycholology to make a moment of respite for you while a minor little thing like a virus, temperature, gravity, accident, discomforting thought, tough emotion can legit screw you over. It takes like 15-20 years of healthy childhood, education and environment to have a decent, high esteemed self, while only one traumatic event or imagination can plant a deep imprint in you and screw you over badly for life!

Can you simply let go and accept your vulnerability? Can you let go of this impossible project and assumption that you can actually secure yourself? Can you totally accept your fate for having pain, grief, fear, depression as your usual and natural condition and simply stop trying to make it otherwise? Just look at you trying so hard to build and maintain your sand castles in midst of a gigantic Tsunami. See how easy it is to disturb you and your fickle boundaries..

What happens if you simply give up on chasing this impossible dream? You are already bound to be screwed, right? How worse can it be? Maybe a new dimension will open up if you simply give up and accept your fate?

[Tim R]

8 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Are you completely at ease, bliss, secured, without fear and anxiety?

Well that's a stupid goal.

[Someone here]

3 minutes ago, Tim R said:

Well that's a stupid goal.

It is indeed. 

[Thought Art]

5 minutes ago, Tim R said:

Well that's a stupid goal.

Sounds like a reasonable goal to me...

[roopepa]

26 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

Sounds like a reasonable goal to me...

Same. Heaven sounds good to me. Got nothing better to do.

[Tim R]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

completely at ease, bliss, secured, without fear and anxiety

Feel free to add to that whatever your personal utopian life would look like. 

 

And now let's really think this through. 

Is this really what you want? Being completely content with everything that is? Well then why don't you do it right now? Because either you do it that way or you won't be able to do it at all. Whether you like it or not.

Otherwise, your "perfect life" is a highly dualistic enterprise that is bound to fail, for various reasons. 

The first one is this: your desire to change certain conditions in reality so that you can be happy is what prevents you from ever truly being happy. This may not be a problem in the beginning stages of pursuing a good life, but the closer you approach "the perfect life", the bigger and more frustrating this self-contradicting wish becomes. After a certain point, you will have to drop absolutely everything and all desire. But that can't be done, because you desire to do so. You're trapped. Or at least that's what you think. 

Secondly, it's the desire for one thing without its opposite that will make sure that you will be totally frustrated

You want to be at ease? Well too bad you can't know what that feels like unless you also know and feel the contrast of "stressed". Same goes for all the other comforts you think you can have without their opposites. You can't. 

After a while of feeling "at ease, blissful, without anxiety, etc." you won't feel that way anymore. Because you'll get used to it. And then you're right back at where you began this whole thing. 

 

The last dualism is Samsara and Nirvana. Samsara being the world of dualism and Nirvana the liberated world, the blissful world or whatever you think it is.

But the truth is that the perfect life is not to be found in some blissed out state of consciousness where there are no more problems. 

The perfect life is amidst all your everyday life, with all its "flaws". Everything that you want to get rid of? That's part of Nirvana.

 

And reaching the perfect life won't be achieved by getting rid of what you think is flawed, but by realizing that the flawed is the same as the perfect. This simply requires a shift in your thinking as to what constitutes "perfect". 

Edited August 30, 2021 by Tim R

[Someone here]

@Tim R I completely agree with you. Seems like you didn't read more than that one sentence ?

[Tim R]

Just now, Someone here said:

@Tim R I completely agree with you. Seems like you didn't read more than that one sentence ?

@Someone here I did read your whole post! my long ass reply wasn't to that one sentence of yours but to those who think that it's a reasonable goal;

1 hour ago, Thought Art said:

Sounds like a reasonable goal to me...

44 minutes ago, roopepa said:

Same. Heaven sounds good to me. Got nothing better to do.

 

[Consilience]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

Have you started seeing the futility of this grand, bottomless project of trying to make yourself happy and secured? Has it worked?

Nope.

Has it worked? Yes. So much so that I sometimes can’t believe it. Went from walking around lividly angry at the world, to finding moments of true transcendent peace and happiness independent of my current emotional state, whether angry, sad, happy, or blissed out on pleasure. We might call it a higher order equanimity, an equanimity that is the context of all states. One only needs to recognize it as a quality of the true self.

If we do the work of uncovering our true nature, heaven is discovered to be this moment.

 

[Someone here]

20 minutes ago, Tim R said:

The perfect life is amidst all your everyday life, with all its "flaws". Everything that you want to get rid of? That's part of Nirvana

Love that bro.. Fucking shivers across my spine. 

Edited August 30, 2021 by Someone here

[Someone here]

6 minutes ago, Consilience said:

Nope.

Has it worked? Yes. So much so that I sometimes can’t believe it. Went from walking around lividly angry at the world, to finding moments of true transcendent peace and happiness independent of my current emotional state, whether angry, sad, happy, or blissed out on pleasure. We might call it a higher order equanimity, an equanimity that is the context of all states. One only needs to recognize it as a quality of the true self.

If we do the work of uncovering our true nature, heaven is discovered to be this moment.

 

Good for you and happy to hear ?

[roopepa]

6 minutes ago, Tim R said:

my long ass reply wasn't to that one sentence of yours but to those who think that it's a reasonable goal

Believe it or not, I actually agree with both of you. There is no external "goal" of a blissful state. It's about recognizing the bliss that's already available.

[The0Self]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

If not, what's the percentage of progress you made in this grand project over your 10-20-30-40-50 years of lifetime?

Having more happiness is of such immaterial concern that it's not worth talking about and never comes up.

[Someone here]

16 hours ago, The0Self said:

Having more happiness is of such immaterial concern that it's not worth talking about and never comes up.

LOL. 

You only care about happiness. You don't care about anything else. Entirely 

[The0Self]

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

LOL. 

You only care about happiness. You don't care about anything else. Entirely 

Obviously, by definition. But I was directly answering your question, not making a general claim;  you entirely misunderstood my point:

Imagine being so imperturbably happy, at peace, and overflowing with causeless joy, that you no longer dream of wasting time thinking about getting more of it, since at any time, you can have as much of it as you want.

If you think that’s not possible, well you’re simply about as far off as you could possibly be. Happiness is your nature and your birthright.

Q: "...what's the percentage of progress you made in this grand project..."

A: Immeasurably vast; total.

If you are uninterested in as much bliss as you want, any time you want it, that's perfectly fine -- I can totally understand and respect that. Maybe you genuinely don't care about it, and that seriously is great! But IF the only reason you're uninterested is that you believe it's not possible for you? Well, all I'm doing is suggesting that's simply a false belief.

Edited August 31, 2021 by The0Self

[James12345]

18 hours ago, Tim R said:

The last dualism is Samsara and Nirvana. Samsara being the world of dualism and Nirvana the liberated world, the blissful world or whatever you think it is.

 

There is no life in nirvana, just the moment, not being identified with the thoughts. You move with the moment therefore there is no movement nor you. If you want name the feeling as bliss, you can however as soon as you name it, it aint nirvana, because with naming And labeling self is still there because it comes from the so called mind. 

[Someone here]

@The0Self I understand where your coming from. So many things happened to me recently . I realized for the first time that I am infinite and full of joy. The rest of the world to me is a theme-park (perfect organized but utterly soul-less point-less). But it's hard to maintain that causeless joy all the time. For every up there is a down. For every high there is a low. 

[taotemu]

"Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder." - Henry David Thoreau

The traditional Chinese thought that perpetual joy / happiness was a pathological state.  Kind of like mania or insanity.  Balance is the ideal.  Compassionate detachment.  In the West we are addicted to external things to try and make us happy.  It doesn't.  It can't.  But we chase after this Disney induced psychosis and try and keep feeding the Hungry Ghosts of our soul.  Misery is the result. 

[The0Self]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

@The0Self I understand where your coming from. So many things happened to me recently . I realized for the first time that I am infinite and full of joy. The rest of the world to me is a theme-park (perfect organized but utterly soul-less point-less). But it's hard to maintain that causeless joy all the time. For every up there is a down. For every high there is a low. 

Wise; ^^ that is true in a sense — but get this, it is for that reason that the real power comes with the ability to produce as much joy (or bliss; peace; etc) as you want at any time. You don’t need to maintain anything! Also, there’s wholesome joy that has no cost in the way you describe — in fact it invigorates you further. And the following may be a bit harder to accept: even the lows can be appreciated and even enjoyed, in a way, for what they are, basically every bit as much as the highs.

Edited August 31, 2021 by The0Self

[taotemu]

20 hours ago, Tim R said:

But the truth is that the perfect life is not to be found in some blissed out state of consciousness where there are no more problems. 

The perfect life is amidst all your everyday life, with all its "flaws". Everything that you want to get rid of? That's part of Nirvana.

And reaching the perfect life won't be achieved by getting rid of what you think is flawed, but by realizing that the flawed is the same as the perfect. This simply requires a shift in your thinking as to what constitutes "perfect". 

This is perhaps the most profound thing I have read in a LONG time. 

I realized this in a deep, deep way a few years ago.  This life is IT.  There is nothing to do, other than just living my life.  Enlightenment is this breath, this moment, this pain, this suffering, this joy.  Enlightenment doesn't make those things go away.  It just changes how they are seen and experienced.  When we can see the flaws and suffering as part of the beauty of this life, then we are free of Samsara.  Desire ends and we are liberated.