Insomnia, Procrastination, Star Wars, Buddhism

[dr_tectonic]

It's 4 in the morning and I can't sleep because my throat hurts. Can't get at the owie spots with lidocaine; can't take more ibuprofen yet -- it hasn't been 4 hours yet, and I've got heartburn, which might be first signs of overdoing it with the advil.

Today I filed away a huge number of emails from my inbox. Go me! One thing I noticed, going through them, is that there were a whole bunch of LJ threads that I meant to comment on that I never got to. My apologies to everyone (especially drdeleto) that I never responded to; at a certain point, I just... run out of steam for debate.

We had a lovely running landspeeder battle in Jeff's Star Wars game this evening. Lots of fun, but I overdid it a little and was just wrung out by the end. The problem with not eating anything for several days is that I'm functioning just fine, but I don't have any reserves. I had a coughing fit in the car on the way home and almost burst into tears about it, because I just couldn't cope. But everything was much, much better once I came home and snuggled with Jerry for a few minutes.

Buddhism holds that desire is the root of all suffering. This is a dumb idea. It's the root of some suffering, sure, but I'm not currently awake with a sore throat because of an unfulfilled desire. It's because things aren't working the way they're supposed to. My body is using pain as a signal that something is wrong. Likewise, hunger pangs aren't the signs of an unseemly desire to feast, it's because you don't have enough goddam food. Pining for a Lexus? Suffering caused by desire. Miserable because it's too cold, even though you're sleeping on a steam grate? Suffering caused by not having adequate shelter. The former can be alleviated by letting go of the desire; the latter cannot.

And I think that I have run out of coherency now.

Comments

Re: dude. . . shakes head

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

Good question. What works in my favor is that these explanations come from practicing Buddhists who either are Tibetan buddhists or learned from them. The downside is this might have been "Americanized" for easy absorbtion. However, the style of Buddhism you mention is what I hear about from most academic sources--but when it comes to actual practice, Tic Nat Han is one of the most famous teachers and says most of what I say here (only better, and in more detail). So I'm mostly going off of what people have told me more than what I've read from the more academic sources.

I know that formal Tibetan buddhism involved more traditional practices than what I learned--to be a Tibetan buddhist there is a lot of formalism that Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche dropped for American consumption. But in his opinion, this teaching was the core--he calls it Shambhala.

Remember there is Theravada (which is what Tibetan buddhism is) and Mahayana buddhism. Mahayana is more of a religion, Theravada more of a philosophy and monastic path. I'm not sure how that relates to this disagreement, though.

On the quote, one last thought: remember that the ultimate ideal of Buddhism is the boddhisatva. So returning to earth to help others reach enlightenment is better than just leaving earth entirely upon attaining enlightenment. So while existence is bad, etc., is a theme, it's clearly not such a strong theme that the best of us should just leave it as soon as possible.

Re: dude. . . shakes head

[psyclonic.livejournal.com]

I have heard amazing stuff about Tic Nat Han; I should go read...

I think Beemer's question and your reference to the split between the religious approaches applies in that one should consider the source when one hears a teaching. I forget where I read this (prolly Campbell) but most (inter/intra)religious differences occur among the priest-types, who are primarily concerned with religious law. The monk-types, OTOH, are primarily concerned with spiritual experience, and among all religious orders they concur on the nature of experience via mediatation/contemplation.