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Shiva Purana (3.4.16) states that Brahma, the creator, helps Vyasa in propagating the path of renunciation in the Kali Yuga, Brihad Brahma Samhita (3.7.21), a Tantra text, considers the path of activity (pravritti marga) as consisting of rajas and tamas qualities, whereas the path of renunciation or inactivity (nivritti marga) consists of sattva quality.
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Adhyatma Ramayana (3.3.32-33) calls those engrossed in the path of activity as those under the influence of ignorance or nescience, and those who practice abstention as those engaged in deliberation of the notion or meaning of Vedanta. Persons engrossed in bhakti (devotion) towards God are said to be possessed of knowledge.
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- From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that we feel pain: It trains us to avoid experiences or stimuli that harm us.
- But that begs the question, why do so many people choose to pursue things that will bring them pain?
- To psychologist Paul Bloom, the answer is that living a meaningful life requires that we choose to take on a reasonable amount of pain.
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- Pain is evolutionarily useful for humans and other animals. It serves as an alarm system that trains us to avoid harm, whether it’s the burning sensation you feel when you accidentally touch a hot stove or the psychological discomfort you experience when you perceive rejection from your peers.
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One explanation for why people willfully incur pain is to enhance pleasure through contrast. Just as darkness is only possible because light exists, we experience pleasure against the backdrop of pain. In order to maximize the pleasure of an experience, you often need a big dose of its opposite. That’s one reason why a dip in the hot tub feels especially good after a frigid winter day, or why a beer tastes extra refreshing after eating a spicy dish.
Another explanation is mastery. We feel a sense of reward when we make progress toward our goals and perform tasks well. So even though a professional boxer, for example, is sure to feel pain in the ring, that pain is likely to be outweighed by the enjoyment of performing their mastered craft. That enjoyment is likely to come, in part, from the boxer entering a flow state, which activates the brain’s dopaminergic reward system.
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Suffering can also provide us with a brief escape from the self. For example, the psychologist Roy F. Baumeister proposed that people who engage in BDSM are primarily interested in escaping from “high-level self-awareness” by temporarily embodying “a symbolically mediated, temporally extended identity.” Similar to a flow state, during which all of our attention and energy is focused on a single task, painful episodes seem to snap us out of our everyday self-consciousness and into something new.
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UNCHOSEN SUFFRNG
Bloom was clear to differentiate between chosen and unchosen suffering. As in all of the examples above, chosen suffering can help us achieve different levels of pleasure and meaning. Unchosen suffering, such as chronic illness or the death of a loved one, might sometimes make us stronger in the long run or give us a sense of meaning, but it’s not necessarily good in and of itself.
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metformin, the first anti-diabetic drug, was an herbal formulation isolated from Galega officinalis
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Gray writes,
“The universe has no favourites, and the human animal is not its goal. A purposeless process of endless change, the universe has no goal.”
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Gray leans heavily on a number of thinkers—Aristotle, Hume—but the minds of Pascal and Spinoza prove most feline. Pascal knew sitting silently in a room is harrowing—pre-smartphone! We need diversions, he knew, endless entertainment and amusements to distract a mind as uncomfortably matched to its environment as our own.
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LONG COVID a new study reveals that 1 in 20 people had not recovered and 42% had only partially recovered when tested between 6 and 18 months after they were infected with covid.
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Spinoza is the most Taoist of Western thinkers. Gray finds solidarity between Lao Tzu and ol’ Benedict in the latter’s notion of conatus, “the tendency of living things to preserve and enhance their activity in the world.” Sadly, our enhancements cost the weight of the world. Despite what we believe, other animals don’t aim to become more human-like, nor did evolution finalize its process with us. Other species have little problem becoming what they are. That’s a uniquely human deficiency.
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PLASTIC WRAPS SINCE 1930S
Humans, Gray writes, find actual fulfillment by applying a “Spinozist-Taoist ethic.” We can actually be happy by being ourselves.
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“A good life is not shaped by their feelings. Their feelings are shaped by how well they have realized their nature.”
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DTHING NADO
dying from stage 4 breast cancer. The best thing to do and also the hardest is to accept things for what they are and let go - accept that you have no control and accept the cards you've been delt. Most importantly remember your brother and make him comfortable and happy with his time left. None of us make it out alive and we'll all eventually go back on our cosmic journey. Hope this helps. Message me if you want.
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heart is full of metta for you, your brother, and your family. Allow the pain to cripple you for now. There is no need to fight it. It will hurt for a long time and that is ok. You don't have to fight the pain. You just have to allow it to be there.
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The mustard Seed and the Buddha is a good story.
When her son died Kisa Gotami went to the Buddha and asked him to perform a miracle to bring back her child. He told her he would if she could bring him a mustard seed from a household where death had never been experienced. She went from house to house to house asking if anyone close to them had ever died. Instead of a mustard seed, she got story after story of loss of loved ones. She finally got the message and went back and became a student of the Buddha and later a teacher herself.
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“If you can’t run, walk, if you can’t walk, crawl, but whatever you do, keep moving forward.”
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Death has occurred, your beloved is dead. Don’t move in thinking. Don’t do anything, because what can you do which can be of any help? You don’t know. So be in ignorance. Don’t bring in false knowledge, borrowed knowledge. Death is there; you be with it. Face death with total presence. Don’t move in thinking because then you are escaping from the situation, you are becoming absent from here. Don’t think. Be present with the death.
Sadness will be there, sorrow will be there, a heavy burden will be on you – let it be there. It is a part – a part of life and a part of maturity, and part of the ultimate realization. Remain with it, totally present. This will be meditation and you will come to a deep understanding of death. Then death itself becomes eternal life.
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Grief is a process, everyone deals with it slightly differently. Just allow yourself to feel. Don't try to fight it. All you can really do is be there for him, be present, and remember, death is not the end.
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believe that our culture does not know how to deal with these things. Even very smart and knowledgeable people don't know what to say. They are very afraid of death themselves and I feel like often they think"At least it's not me.". The only things I want to say is that I know overwhelming pain myself; hell on earth in fact. The only things that helped were "Tonglen Meditation" (Pema Chodron explains this on youtube for example; there are several videos there). Or I would meditate for 1 hour before sitting with him, and try to give him the felt sense that there is something transcendent, some sense of peace, some place to go even in the midst of hell, some thing, even if you can't define it, to trust.
I feel stupid for giving any advice, because I know pain and injustice can become so accute and horrifying that nothing seems to help. But these two I feel can provide some relief.
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All suffering ends, this is the way out:
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EXITENTIAL DISTRESS
Consider the following three cliff notes for the anxious animals that we are. The irony: to achieve them you need to stop trying to achieve them—another paradox cats have no issue embodying.
- Do not become attached to your suffering, and avoid those who do.
- Forget about pursuing happiness, and you may find it.
- Beware anyone who offers to make you happy
Beginningless basic space itself, primordially nonexistent illusion, is the seed of all phenomena, the buddha nature, and virtue.
It is known as the essential base of all.’
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What is the meaning of life? This question has caused thinkers to wax poetic for eons. Viktor Frankl believed that suffering provided meaning; Joseph Campbell thought each of us brings our own meaning, and that the question itself is meaningless; for Woody Allen it required finding “an antidote for the emptiness of existence.” For Douglas Adams, it was quite simple: the final answer is 42 (and he likely didn’t mean Jackie Robinson).
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dad is 92. He has outlived his wife who died about 4 years ago, and he has outlived all of his siblings and most of his relatives. Pretty much everyone he knew in his life who was older than he was had died.
He lives in an apartment in a retirement village where he is provided with 3 meals a day if he wants. He usually wakes up around 5:30 or 6, and gets the local paper and the Wall Street Journal from the shelf outside his door. He gets a cup of coffee and makes some breakfast and sits down for about an hour and a half and reads the papers cover to cover. He then does exercises like lifting 10 pound weights, knee bends, sit ups, etc. Then he goes for a 3 mile walk, every day except Saturday and Sunday.
He comes back home and takes a shower. Then he has about an hour before lunch during which he usually sits in his favorite chair, turns on the TV on CNN and takes a nap.
In the afternoon, he reads books, usually on current events, current political figures, or historical novels. He has lost the sight in one eye, so he reads pretty slowly. He's always been an avid reader, but with only one eye, he tires quickly. He alternates between napping and reading. He may also run some errands, or go to a doctor's appt, of which he always has one or two every week. He still drives to the grocery store or short trips near where he lives, but for trips to the doctor, he uses the transportation services offered by the retirement village.
Religiously at 4pm he makes a martini and sits down and enjoys life. He's a happy drunk! After he's halfway through his martini, he always says, "Isn't life great!" and he really means it. He's enjoying himself. Sometimes he'll invite a couple of friends over to enjoy a cocktail with him. He often arranges dinner reservations with friends that live in the retirement village. He has certain people that he meets on certain days of the week for drinks or dinner.
After dinner, he's on his ipad playing Words with Friends with my brother and I. He checks where we are with the Find my Friends app. He does Soduko or a crossword puzzle too. He loves puzzles. He has CNN on the TV most of the time, and it's turned up about twice as loud as it would be if I were listening to it. He may watch NOVA on PBS, or some other show on NatGeo or the History Channel.
He's got his routine and he loves it. It helps organize his day, especially since he lives alone. He does the above every single day. He gets a little bent out of shape when something happens to disrupt his routine. He's still very active, and very mentally sharp.
I think because of the walking and exercise, he's going to be one of those who lives to 110. At least I hope so!
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The researchers discovered that people with a sense of purpose were much less likely to die from all-cause mortality. More interestingly, those without meaning were more likely to die of cardiovascular disease.
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