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Kickle said:
I have accomplished many things with desires and I've failed many things with desires, but never have I been able to do so without being affected by them.

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Kickle said:
I mean, how far do you go before giving up? How do you know it's time to stop pursuing?

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deCypher said:
I dunno, I feel like we're just arguing semantics here.  The emotional feeling of sorrow is distinct from the desire to change the past IMO.... I can intellectually realize that changing the past is impossible but this won't necessarily affect my feelings of loss. 

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Cups said:
There is an ocean of difference between intellectually recognizing something and integrating that recognition into your life.

The best example of this is of course death.  We can all intellectually understand that we will inevitably die.  Even so, death anxiety has been the cause of more suffering than any other factor in human history IMO.

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Where have I disagreed with this? 

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intellectually realize that changing the past is impossible but this won't necessarily affect my feelings of loss.

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deCypher said:
It just seems very unlikely to me that a human can TOTALLY escape feeling negative emotions... what I can see is someone who upon hearing of the death of his grandmother feels the natural reaction of grief/sadness/anger and then using his understanding that all things are impermanent and that the past cannot be changed is able to transmute these feelings into a satisfactory, quick catharsis; as opposed to lingering on them for years afterward.

Maybe I'm just overly pessimistic. 

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Something I've realized while thinking about this thread is that it isn't desire in and of itself that's the problem.  After all, as the Dalai Lama says "You must have desire for buddhahood."

Rather, it the fixation on changing the unchangeable which is the issue.

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A huge problem I have with buddhism or any of the eastern religions really is that they tend to create zombie cultures.  Let's face it every majority buddhist country is a shit hole from many points of view.  The people may be happy to be oppressed by various regimes...but I'd still rather live here.

Almost all of the major scientific and cultural advancements have come from the west.  Furthermore these monks and other "serious" practitioners hole up in monasteries and completely cut themselves off from the world to do what they do.

As many people have noted if the entire world did that the world would not work as we know it.

All that said....

The current reality we're living as you describe a few posts up from here obviously is not working either.  We've got a double digit percentage of the population on anti-anxieties/anti-depressants not to mention a huge number of drug addicts and alcoholics. 

I guess what I am rambling my way to is the idea that I am trying to find a middle path...from the middle path.  A "new" understanding which takes the best of impermanence and no self etc without discounting the best of western life along the way.

That's the plan anyway.

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Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and be employed as a deliberate device. It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result, of course, may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne); but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost super-human degree of self-consciousness and masterful control.

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