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laserpig said:
Deff, I would love to hear you elaborate on that. All is transitory, to be sure, and in that sense insubstantial, but I sense that you're referring to something deeper.

It has occurred to me that much of my difficulty may be coming from the fact that I actually do believe in the world. If you could catch me off-guard so as to get a totally honest answer, and asked me about the solidity and factuality of the outside world, I would respond in a knee-jerk fashion that yes, the world is real, it is out there, and it is in some sense, serious business.

How does one garner perspective on experience, except through more experience? What in your life has led you to be at peace with the perspective that all of this is somehow illusory?

I have meditated on the void which surrounds and underpins all manifestation, but there I stopped. A friend of mine once hit me with the phrase "void is form, form is void," and I have yet to come to terms with it. Is this of the nature of what you are talking about? That somehow even things with shape and weight and color are just as empty as pure spacious nonexistence?

Or am I simply confusing things? (Out of desire, no doubt.)

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laserpig said:
Each of us is subject to desire. We desire our next meal when we are hungry, we desire affection from other humans, and we desire justifications for positive self-image. Without desire, I doubt very much that any one of us would survive. We would fail to eat, having no desire to do so, and would waste away.

But desire forestalls happiness. Desire is a self-induced mental debt, which says "happiness can come back only when X condition is met." That's what keeps us alive. At some point, a capable mind gets hip to this game. One realizes that unhappiness is self-manufactured in a kind of automated trick to keep the body running forward, and to reproduce. And one sees with clarity that, if there were no desire, there would be no perception of any problems. Lack of problems = happiness.

Thus one recognizes that to achieve the object of desire, IE happiness, the one thing one cannot have is desire. And soon one finds that there is nothing they desire more than to be free of desire. I wish I could truly not care. Why? Because I care. The wish itself is a contradiction.

When one desires ice cream, there is ice cream to buy. When one desires sex, there is tail to chase. What does one do when they desire not to desire? Any act of willpower comes from a desire for results. It comes from the debt, the unhappiness produced by desire. An act of will is an effort to close that gap. Thus any act of willpower is obviously not a solution, because in fact it will be a repetition of the very problem one wishes to be solved.

Put simply: am I fucked? Or is there a way out? Can the way out be sought? Or is seeking itself the problem?

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laserpig said:
Each of us is subject to desire. We desire our next meal when we are hungry, we desire affection from other humans, and we desire justifications for positive self-image. Without desire, I doubt very much that any one of us would survive. We would fail to eat, having no desire to do so, and would waste away.

But desire forestalls happiness. Desire is a self-induced mental debt, which says "happiness can come back only when X condition is met." That's what keeps us alive. At some point, a capable mind gets hip to this game. One realizes that unhappiness is self-manufactured in a kind of automated trick to keep the body running forward, and to reproduce. And one sees with clarity that, if there were no desire, there would be no perception of any problems. Lack of problems = happiness.

Thus one recognizes that to achieve the object of desire, IE happiness, the one thing one cannot have is desire. And soon one finds that there is nothing they desire more than to be free of desire. I wish I could truly not care. Why? Because I care. The wish itself is a contradiction.

When one desires ice cream, there is ice cream to buy. When one desires sex, there is tail to chase. What does one do when they desire not to desire? Any act of willpower comes from a desire for results. It comes from the debt, the unhappiness produced by desire. An act of will is an effort to close that gap. Thus any act of willpower is obviously not a solution, because in fact it will be a repetition of the very problem one wishes to be solved.

Put simply: am I fucked? Or is there a way out? Can the way out be sought? Or is seeking itself the problem?

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laserpig said:
Deff, I would love to hear you elaborate on that. All is transitory, to be sure, and in that sense insubstantial, but I sense that you're referring to something deeper.

It has occurred to me that much of my difficulty may be coming from the fact that I actually do believe in the world. If you could catch me off-guard so as to get a totally honest answer, and asked me about the solidity and factuality of the outside world, I would respond in a knee-jerk fashion that yes, the world is real, it is out there, and it is in some sense, serious business.

How does one garner perspective on experience, except through more experience? What in your life has led you to be at peace with the perspective that all of this is somehow illusory?

I have meditated on the void which surrounds and underpins all manifestation, but there I stopped. A friend of mine once hit me with the phrase "void is form, form is void," and I have yet to come to terms with it. Is this of the nature of what you are talking about? That somehow even things with shape and weight and color are just as empty as pure spacious nonexistence?

Or am I simply confusing things? (Out of desire, no doubt.)

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Remember, a Jedi's strength flows from the lulz. But beware. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. ”

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it seems like attachment isn't really the process the term implies but is really just state of mental confusion

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Like it's not singular but literally every movement of foreground thought?

Just a bundle of confusion in the background of the senses humming away. It slowly develops the habit of mirroring itself in the presence of death and it starts to both become irrelevant and part dissapear or morph, picks itself apart naturally. That's how I see the process of death/no-self awareness anyway, inevitable (no pun... ).

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Yes, it's difficult but it's a simple problem

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deff said:
keeping it simple is good

sometimes you have to complicate things to get to an even simpler state, it's a bit of an oxymoron

as far as practice is concerned, cutting attachments is great - but understanding emptiness makes it much much easier and more powerful of a practice imo

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sometimes you have to complicate things to get to an even simpler state, it's a bit of an oxymoron

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We can get the knowledge of how to break things down and then you have to breakdown that because it's as false as anything else. You have to destroy the whole system. "Yes! Is the thing that blows the whole structure apart." - UG Krishnamurti. This is the meaning of "kill the buddha on the road" IMO.

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Icelander said:
How is this too complex for words?

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Grapefruit said:

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Icelander said:
How is this too complex for words?

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You may have a point. I don't know, it seems like I'm doing something deconstructing but really I know that I'm not. JM argues that this is irrelevant to the whole of it. It's an intellectual process foremost but eventually you realize you haven't really come a single step, you just have to ware yourself out because you can't do anything else, not out of want.

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Grapefruit said:

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Icelander said:
How is this too complex for words?

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You may have a point. I don't know, it seems like I'm doing something deconstructing but really I know that I'm not. JM argues that this is irrelevant to the whole of it. It's an intellectual process foremost but eventually you realize you haven't really come a single step, you just have to ware yourself out because you can't do anything else, not out of want.

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Icelander said:

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deff said:
keeping it simple is good

sometimes you have to complicate things to get to an even simpler state, it's a bit of an oxymoron

as far as practice is concerned, cutting attachments is great - but understanding emptiness makes it much much easier and more powerful of a practice imo

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Nobody understands emptiness imo and the attempt to obfuscates and distracts from the issue, also imo.

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Icelander said:
Listening to all this makes me glad I'm not a spiritual person. I don't suffer with all this complication. It's a straight forward problem with a straight forward solution imo.

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Worth the log in.

I suppose I'm getting more "zen" these days in this regard. (if that's the right word) 

The paradox of desiring to not desire...or as OC says-being attached to becoming unattached..lol

Seems to clear itself up when you start grokking there is no desire or attachment to begin with. 

Of course some things are easier to believe than others.

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IMO the problem is fear and the symptom is culture.  I think you would agree with that.

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Thinking in ultimates, such as "there is no problem" won't help much imo.  It's beyond our abilities in the beginning at least to grok that kind of thing. Later it comes naturally ime.

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Philosophy is not much help either imo.  Psychology however is imo.  "Know thyself".  Once you do you will see that "you" have been constructed by culture. Then the treatment.  Long term outpatient.  To see for yourself how culture creates you in all the thousands of ways. Then to see for yourself why it creates you.  Then to see for yourself where all this comes from.

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Prescription: Look, understand/see, do nothing else.  Do not try to change anything.  Let change happen without interfering in it's own time and way if it's going to. (hard to be patient with this process) 

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Absolutely agree with this and that is very well said. It's a hard thing to say because of the contrast of doing and not doing, it's like you are doing to not doing if you get me.

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This is how I see and experience it myself and is is not opposed to what you posted.

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