Fight or Flight?
Yesterday was a rollercoaster day. Went through pretty much every emotion possible. Professional satisfaction of a good days work, joy at hearing the good AL results of friends and students, sadness and reflection at a funeral, the joy of reunion and friendship at a party, and a bit of disappointment thrown in later on. I slept at 3am and woke up at 6 bc my dog was throwing up, so I rehydrated her and made sure she was alrite. Bit of a scare bc we had just put pesticides to kill off the termites that morning, and I was worried Teq had gone and eaten some of it. Happily enough that was not the case and she threw up probably bc she ate some oily chips last night, the silly girl. Couldn’t sleep after that so I pottered around a bit and did some reading in the balcony. I’ve never noticed how quiet Colombo can be, all i could hear was birds chirping and doing their morning thing. It was a perfect time to philosophise, so I did just that.
I was born a Bhuddist back in ‘84. From the time I remember I thought it a super religion bc it let me do pretty much what I wanted, no rules besides the pansil which were fairly leniant too. My first doubts emerged when my Great Grand Mother passed away in ‘93, thought to myself, “bugger, what’ll happen to her? I’ll probably die sometime as well, no more ddm, no more voice in my head!” Saying bye to the voice in my head was the biggest fear I had, saying bye to the Cogito. In order to find out what happens after death I asked my elders and betters, and they said that you’re reborn, but ideally you don’t want that to happen. I was like wtf!! If there’s any chance for my cogito to remain I’m jolly well planning on keeping the bugger going! After that I began to grasp Bhuddist Philosophy but never quite liked the idea of trying to stop the cycle of birth. My argument at the time was that life isn’t all suffering, it’s good fun most of the time, but you got to put up with some shit in order to enjoy the good stuff; fair deal in my book. So I needed something solid to back up my theory and justify my lack of attraction towards Nirvana. I got an idea when I was about 15, it went something like this. How did the population increase from 1 Billion to 6 Billion in 100 years? (nono, I’m not asking where babies come from, we all know it’s that damn stork) Where do the surplus souls come from? And the elders said ah it comes from other universes, planets etc. I wasn’t convinced, possible but not plausible. So I kept the whole idea of rebirth on hold for the time being. My little understanding of Kant somewhat justifies this. He says we can’t have knowledge of things that are beyond the realm of our experience, beyond the bounds of sense as he calls it. (It’s incredible how little I remember of what I learnt in undergrad). We can’t experience life after death, so it’s silly to pretend to have knowledge about it. I’m not a big fan of faith, possibly to my detriment, and now there’s very little I cling to beyond what I “know”. I still base my life around that, I don’t exactly know what’ll happen when I die, so i’m going to just try and live my life well, to the fullest and not harm others in the process.
Anyway, how does all this relate to yesterday? Well yesterday was a perfect example of a day with everything, a bit of sorrow, a bit of a joy, a bit of disappointment. Life, relationships, passions and pretty much everything else works on that template. So, to avoid the bad things do we run away from it all and thus give up the good parts too? Or do we bite the bullet and fight it out? Sometimes it’s very tempting to run away, it’s the easy way out. I think Bhuddism seems to suggest we run away, it seems cowardly, but it’s the right thing to do sometimes, and sometimes the only thing to do. I’m not convinced yet about Bhuddism, but I may have got a bit closer the last few weeks.
I’m not an expert on the matter, so my two cents probably might not count… *but* I’d advise you to read up more on buddhism.
Buddhism doesn’t advocate running away from anything. I think it’s more about learning to deal with everyday circumstances. The whole “life is suffering” is kinda misinterpreted. Life has its ups and downs, but when we try to have more ups than downs, we end up putting more stress on ourselves and then suffering.
Anyway, you’ve pretty much grasped most of the basic idea, in my opinion. As a religion, buddhism might’ve become something that today advocates being good to attain Nirvana in a later life. But I think the teaching of The Buddha was that you can achieve Nirvana in this life itself. Who is to say that you will be reborn as a human? It’s all about making the most of the opportunity you get.
But that’s my opinion, heavily influenced on my own reading and discussions so far. Since you have the time, you ought to drop by the Narada center and find out more.
Comment by Dulan — August 19, 2005 @ 7:04 am
You do kinda make sense in a weird way u know…I had to read it twice to get what u were talking about.but anyway…..
The buddhist view of life is different to what u n I percieve as ‘good’ and ‘bad’…Actually technically Buddhism doesnt approve much of what we percieve as good…they are the same worldly things that you are supposed to get away from….
am I making sense right now?!!well basically I think we all have a long way to go in understanding true buddhist philosophy..
Comment by Savi — August 19, 2005 @ 5:37 pm
to add my two cents,
buddhism like all other religions is a result of our inability to accept the reality - that there is only one life with nothing afterwards, that there is no objective way to distinguish good from bad., etc.
when one doesn’t want to face truth one runs away and live in a fantasy world called religion (buddhism included)
Comment by sittingnut — August 19, 2005 @ 8:55 pm
Interesting views,
Dulan: Thing is, if you look at the big picture of Bhuddism it sort of is about running away. If we end the cycle of birth we won’t have to suffer. I get the idea from Bhuddism that life isn’t particularly great after all, as Savi said, everything that we consider “good” is impermanant and in that sense unreal. My cousin is a meditating forest monk and I asked him what then is permanant? what is real? He said something along the lines of realising the true nature of life and achieving Nirvana is the only reality :S Or at least that’s how I interpreted it. So maybe it’s not running away from life but from realising that it is a tad over-rated and saving yourself the trouble
Savi: Heh I must apologise for putting you through that twice. My writing isn’t particularly clear at best of times (heh you ought to see my handwriting, no wonder teachers never liked me too much) and when I’m confused about some issue all hell breaks lose.
Sittingnut - I agree, it’s most plausible that once we die thats it, zilch. But again thats most plausible, nothing is impossible. Religions act as an incentive, the whole heaven and hell business gives us an incentive to lead good lives this time around, or face the wrath of hell. So Jesus, Mohammad, The Buddha etc. were probably clever chaps who found a way to make the rest of us be nice for the best part of our lives.
Comment by ddm — August 20, 2005 @ 8:41 am