Just wanted to make a quick announcement. I might be out of touch for a little while. Maybe a long while.
I've had a long week, and have been thinking about this for a while, and I've decided to quit my job and join the Drepung Loseling Buddhist Monastery in Karnataka, India.
It might seem sudden, but I've actually been considering it for a while. And after the boat sank, it just seemed like it didn't make sense to keep fighting so hard against the universe. So I might not be able to update very often, in fact even less often than I have been lately, since I don't think I'll have regular Internet access.
I've never been a regular practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, but I have always respected the faith and its goals of compassion and simplicity. So I'm ready to take the Bodhisattva Vow and surrender my self to the dharma.
I will be able to get to email now and again, though, after I leave this Sunday. So keep in touch, and I'll do my best to do the same. Thanks to all.
Notes:
Information on the oppression and religious persecution of Tibet
What?
Congratulations. I hear india is a great place. Plenty of work over there for a technologist with Buddhist ideals. Hot in the winter. Wet in the summer.
Here's what's wrong with Buddhism, as I understand it:
1.) The insistence that desiring things leads to pain and suffering is more than a little demented, and it sets a standard for pessimism that is appalling, even for me.
2.) It fails to recognize the fact that joy and happiness are incomprehensible to the individual being without the perspective provided by pain and suffering. Instead, it contends that the desire for happiness leads inevitably to pain, great happiness and great suffering are two sides to the same coin and therefore one and the same, so desire should be abdicated in favor of serenity and peace in the face of all circumstances... or, as I like to call it, a voluntary emotional lobotomy.
3.) By running away from the possibility of fulfillment of worldly desires (or at least the ability to enjoy that fulfillment) because experiencing unpleasantness is just too... well, unpleasant, Buddhists strike me as cowards and quitters, and their ideal of Enlightenment seems to be nothing more than death where the body keeps walking around eating and pooping for a while more before it realizes that the spirit has closed up shop and left.
Have fun in India.
http://www.expedia.com/pub/agent.dll?tovr=2004061503&ps3u=
Your boat sank? How big is it? Do you need help fishing it out?
Quite clear you don't understand it, then, but thanks for the counsel.
Its about experiencing unpleasantness directly instead of experiencing your own self-absorbed opinions about unpleasantness. Which is far more courageous than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. But its a very common misconception, fed mainly by people who read something once and think they get it and then talk like an authority.
The point isn't avoiding pain, the point is avoiding suffering. The point isn't avoiding pleasure, its avoiding the desire for pleasure. The point is not acting like there is some reason that a person has a right to pleasure as opposed to pain. A person living honestly in the Buddhist ideal is not a vegetable or a quitter, but has rather decided to start living life in a direct and immediate way without bullshit rationalizations. Rationalizing your way out of things is a far more cowardly way to live.
So in general I'd say you've got it almost completely wrong. Confusing desire and the experience on the other side of it is exactly what the illusion is all about. Do you really think its the desire that makes life fun? Or is it the thing you are actually desiring? Buddhism's goal isn't to free you from the enjoyment and experience of living, but rather to free you from the expectation that somehow life should always be like that.
Ah.
You do realize that the philosophy that I described is much more consistent with going to India when your boat sinks than the philosophy that you described.
How much water did it sink in? Were you on it? Was it exciting?
Yes, I do, but its the 25th today.
So you're gone then? Awww. Well I wish you luck and fulfillment in all your pursuits, and bring me back something from India please!!!!?!?! It doesn't matter if it's just a rock, or some pictures or whatever :-) I hope you thoroughly enjoy your time there! Send us your address so we can mail you letters!
Well, I guess I waited too long to have you over for dinner.
For you dear, I'll catch the first boat back. (Though you might want to read on... :) )