Sunday, October 17, 2010

Attachment

Pain makes life real. We don't want pain, yet without it there is no gravity to lived experience. We wish more than anything to hold on to life for ourselves and the others that make our life what it is. When there is loss of life we feel the weight, the tragic loss. Yet death is as inevitable as the sun setting and life cannot exist without it. I wonder what is this construct of emotion.....of experience that fosters attachment as the only road to meaning? Is it the fear that if we don't grab hold and cling on then we will be exposed to the truth that there is nothing , a void, no self, no concrete significance and meaning?

This attachment leads us to grief, loss and pain so intense that we proceed to privelege the one over the other....life over death, emotion over rationality, fantasy over reality, (or vice versa; one side over the other). No actual privelege exists in any absolute sense except in out subjective and collective mind states. Take the example of the millionaire who convinces himself that he deserves his unequal share. Ego state or reality?

How to find meaning amidst stark reality? That there is actually no separate self, no ego to feed and nuture, no separateness at all and therefore no inherent worthiness or unworthiness. What will guide us to a meaningful life, a fair and just life? Answering this question provides my life purpose. The thing that all else flows from. Please join me in the discussion. Ask questions, make comments. After all, life's not MEANT to be all serious. If it's a joke, then lets embrace the humour and laugh it up. Can we truly realise our freedom to choose moment by moment while still accounting for constraints and challenges (e.g. trauma, poverty, inquality)? Let's rumble!

1 comment:

  1. ok there feels like there are about sixteen excellent questions here. And the majority of them I don't know the answer to just yet!

    The last question you have - about truly having freedom whist still encountering poverty etc... well I think that freedom and illumination are available in every moment. Hypothetically. But I guess I can only comment from my pretty privilidged life... I think that mindfulness helps me move towards freedom more and more.

    what will guide me to a meaningful life? I guess an understanding of the four noble truths - especially understanding how I create my own suffering.

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