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Thursday, December 4, 2008
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This was supposed to be a blog about extracting every ounce of pleasure from life, but it seems to be, in fact, largely a dream journal with notes on baking, Trader Joe's, and celebrity chefs.
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2008
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December
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- Open Letter to Authors of Nonfiction Monographs an...
- Me, Elsewhere
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- Making Milk Drinkable
- Happy Solstice!
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- Yay! The Suburbs called today!
- A note about The School.
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- Oh, car. You had better keep running.
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- Pop obsessions.
- Why the 4th graders were weird.
- Today's theme.
- Being silly. Being sleepy.
- Being skeptical.
- Have you heard of Anne Lamott?
- This quiz cracks me up.
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- In which the days have themes.
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December
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About Me
- kStyle
- ESL teacher, Buddhist, New Englander, and ENTP
7 comments:
Heard of her but haven't read her.
Hard to say whether the temperament is what's responsible, given that I share that lack, if you will. Though I think of myself as even-tempered, I doubt that others would agree. Anyone paying even a modicum of attention quickly realizes that I am not a drama queen, I'm just not . . . quiet.
I could argue that the same thing that draws you to buddhism reduces the need for a deity, given buddhism's emphasis on determining what IS.
Maybe you've just been making karmic progress through your lifetimes. ;-)
You're very rational, though, and Anne Lamott seems not to be very rational.
Well, thank you for the karma compliment! I also think that what initially drew me to Buddhism is the same thing me to Aristotle: the middle way. The golden mean. Christianity is all-or-nothing. I can dig the Hinduism, though, because it accepts all gods as being part of the Big Divine, which is sort of agnostic, if you think about it.
Oh crap, maybe I'm just afraid of committment!
Not so much afraid of commitment as wary about what it means, what it's likely to bring, etc. I think many people interpret commitment (whether to a person or a deity) to mean security of some kind, but I don't think there's security in anything.
You're even more of a Buddhist than you know, my friend.
Do tell!
The idea that there is no security in anything is basically the first noble truth:, All life is suffering' or, less dramatically, Life involves suffering. Why? Birth, illness, aging death, sorrow, separation from our pleasures: In a word, CHANGE.
The second noble truth tells us why that is: All suffering arises from "craving." We want our material pleasures, we don't want things to change, we want SECURITY from decay and despair.
The next 2 truths tell us what to do about it. Basically, live simply & honorably and cut off craving and attachment when they arise.
And with that: I am off to seek the worldly pleasures of an afternoon movie & greasy popcorn as a reward for finishing my papers. Suffering, here I come!
Well, there's suffering, and then there's suffering. Movie + popcorn is the kind of suffering behind which I can get. Or, in the case of the popcorn, around which I can get, quite literally. Unless you put butter "flavor" on it, or pop it with oil. Air-popped, with NO flavorings, pls!
I think attachment is the difficult one, because any kind of relationship involves some kinds of attachments, I think. But that's a longer meditation.
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