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OfflineTheHulk69
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Registered: 12/21/13
Posts: 100
Last seen: 6 months, 7 days
Desiring not to desire * 1
    #22293019 - 09/26/15 11:28 AM (8 years, 4 months ago)

Hey shroomerites

The past few days I've spent a bit down in the dumps reading for most of the day. Recently I've been reading over Alan Watts' lecture on the nature of consciousness, which is absolutely fascinating if you've never read through it: https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/watts_alan/watts_alan_article1.shtml.
Anyways, after reading through it a few times I feel as if I grasp most of what he is getting at. Right up until around chapter 3(about half way through part 3) where he speaks about the Buddhist "trick"
This line specifically is what prompted my post here:
"So the moment you start practicing yoga, or praying or meditating, or indulging in some sort of spiritual cultivation, you are getting in your own way."
I can feel what Watts is getting at, very reminiscent of the inspiration behind the Beatles song "dear Prudence". But as someone new to meditation and walking down this spiritual path I question if I even should. I think what Watts and Buddha are warning against is the taking a sense of "identity" from these spiritual practices, or thinking that by practicing you gain a "one-up" on the universe as Watts likes to put it. These spiritual practices can still be of value to us then no? So long as we "tread lightly"?

Another thought I've been having that  d like to work in with this idea of desire involves the inspiration behind this whole site: the mushroom. The season for actives here in the PNW is rapidly approaching and lately I've been thinking more and more about tripping with "spiritual intent", I.e dark room, blindfold. Like I said the past few days I've felt on the downslope of the wave, I don't think that taking mushrooms will provide some secret that I've been missing this whole time(one that can be put into words at least) but I don't think there is any doubt that the experience one has can be beneficial if approached in the right way. You see I find myself in the position that Ram Das describes in "Be here now". To paraphrase Das, there are essentially 3 "states" of "knowing", one is through direct experience, one is through faith, and the last is where one can "assume" based upon what they've read or what they've heard from someone else.  I find myself in the  latter position, I have tripped before on LSD/psilocybin and had my perspective shifted, mainly within thoughts, some visual play but mostly "heady". Perhaps my set and setting were a bit too stimulating on my previous experiences, I have felt "reflections" so to speak of the connection and unity of us all but it's usually within a stream of other thoughts(LSD especially I can feel very confused). I suppose that comes with the territory of these substances and maybe a lack of awareness on my part.

God damn I've really ended up writing more than anticipated but what I wanted to address is am I just getting caught in  desire for authentic "spiritual" experience? I think obviously I am, but is that such a "bad" thing? If  I were to not follow through this path of "desire" then I am essentially "desiring not to desire." There's no "escape" which I think is another point the Buddha desired(lol) to teach us.
Haha well I ended up writing a lot more than I expected and answered some of my own thoughts along the way.

What are your thoughts? I hope my rambling will open the discussion, or maybe I'm just "desiring" it will :wink:

Peace


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Invisiblecez
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Registered: 08/04/09
Posts: 5,854
Re: Desiring not to desire [Re: TheHulk69]
    #22293228 - 09/26/15 12:09 PM (8 years, 4 months ago)

I think at the beginning you get in your own way but as time goes on (years) and the practice is more ingrained into your nature it just becomes who you are and what you do. 

You can't do anything without desire.  If that's the path you want to take, persist in that desire until it collapses, and then continue about your life with new desires.


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OfflinePed
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Re: Desiring not to desire [Re: TheHulk69] * 1
    #22293512 - 09/26/15 01:05 PM (8 years, 4 months ago)

The most perfect and most authentic spiritual experience is sometimes described as being completely in the present moment.  When somebody develops an intuition that this might be true, they sometimes undergo all sorts of gymnastics in their attempt to arrive there.  Perhaps they will start practicing yoga or meditation, attempting to train themselves out of becoming stretched and torn between memories of past experiences and grasping at future experiences.  By breaking those habits, it is supposed, a person can fully and completely arrive in the present moment.

Perhaps after many years of effort and training, that person will come to imagine themselves as very enlightened and special, having tasted the virtues of a concentrated, disciplined mind.  Yet, still they are troubled by wanting and not-wanting.  No matter how thoroughly they practice, still they feel prone to becoming lost in bouts of elation and despair.  Gradually, or perhaps suddenly, that person eventually collides with a disquieting realization: implicit in the idea "I must arrive completely in my experience" is the belief "I have not arrived completely in my experience," and that the more they try to arrive there, the more convinced they become of their removal from it.  If they're really clever, they'll come to see that the scale of their efforts to arrive completely is directly proportionate to the barrier felt between them and it. 

When such a person develops that intuition, they might suppose it's time to stop attempting to arrive completely in the present moment, and to "just be" instead.  Now they're really spinning, because that notion is an unsolvable, anxious paradox: how does one attempt to stop attempting?  How can a person deliberately "just be"? "How can my desire to stop desiring ever be fulfilled?  Was all my effort a meaningless waste?  Can the desiring mind ever cease?  Is this roller coaster of elation and despair without end?  It's hopeless!  I'm helpless!  There's nothing I can do!" 

"There's nothing I can do."

When you were a child, from time to time you probably entertained yourself by spinning around in circles until you felt dizzy.  During that game, you probably noticed that when you attempted to stop spinning around in circles, you were helpless as your body kept turning beneath you against your will.  It works that way with the mind too: when the mind starts to compare its present experience against some past or future experience, soon it starts going around in circles, and once it starts going around in circles, it keeps turning despite attempts to stop.  The spinning mind begins without effort, continues without effort, and comes to rest without effort.

The more you go around in circles, the more dizzy you get.  The more dizzy you get, the more quickly you fall down.  The moment you fall down, you immediately stop going around in circles.  It's precisely because the effort is futile that you should pursue it rigorously.  Enjoy the ride, and allow yourself the entertainment of it.


--------------------


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InvisibleKurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
Re: Desiring not to desire [Re: TheHulk69] * 2
    #22294571 - 09/26/15 04:51 PM (8 years, 4 months ago)

Do we necessarily understand what desire is, to be using it like this in this principle or logic? What if someone just came out here and "solved" this paradox? Or what if that never happens, on the other hand?

These terms are common enough in the conventional way that we speak about them, but still I wonder; what if what we know of and speak of as desire could not for whatever reason be reduced to a substantive element? What if things in general do not have this basic reality?

I am not sure if you follow, but what I would be asking in particular is this; what if what we understand as desire, is something "which is never satisfied", or "that which I try to get rid of..." and this is actually what we observe in the complex entangled articulation you have suggested (I desire not to desire). What if how we apparently understand desire "itself" is in something just like that, and only that? What if the way we conventionally or logically think about desire, suggests nothing more basic or substantive?

I am personally a longtime fan of the old Zen Englishman Alan Watts,  but my question, nonetheless, is whether we indeed need to suggest these "terms" in one sense to understand them, in a way that apparently also hinders us. So it is to raise your own question. Maybe we need to dwell on such things in this way, I am not sure. Maybe we need to wrangle this into a paradox or koan, or some eastern saying about enlightenment, because we need puzzles like this. But why? I am not sure if this is expressing skepticism to such sayings; or say just following Alan Watt's suggestion...

I think it makes a good bit of sense to think of, but I'd still observe at face value, that we may not be fully understanding these given terms (of desire) in the way they are given. We just gather together an approximate principle, and assume this entanglement. Of course the hinderence you mention may then arise as an issue, but why would you think it is basically what you are doing, and condemned to do? Why would you necessarily identify with desire? Of course; who could doubt the importance and not empathize with the struggle you are talking about; but are we so reverant/attached to actually think that we are exhaustively describing the problem in this manner of suggestion?

And what about the possibility of insight, that is indeed most suggestive in eastern traditions? I am reminded of a simple buddhist sutra, which states that preceding desire in order of arising, there is "fundamental ignorance of nature". The precedence of "arising" as I understand, is not so much establishing concrete categories of understanding, (which would confirm a sense of hopelessness, in all prospects) but is establishing the novel possibility of insight which Buddhists suggest. Kant's transcendental aesthetic could even be quoted here: "Though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience." The opening of insight has many different provisional baselines.

However such an inquiry into nature would seem positively suggestive may be one thing, but we can put any implied ideal, and pursuit of it aside, I'd say. We can plainly see whether in a manner of suggestion or not, that it is not likely that we are understanding what desire is, in these given, provisional terms of our experience and understanding of it. These desire are not as "primary" or substantive as they may seem to be, whether or not we have any Dharma to tell us this or not.

So maybe not so much just in understanding the necessary place it takes in our lives, but in observing desire, we find possibilities of insight. In observing, in being "objective" isn't it true that we can just be present, and dispassionate? So is our understanding what it is "to desire not to desire" exhaustively contained in those terms, or is observing, which is often part of this ride, maybe something we are just doing aside from desiring, which we can better identify with?

I don't know why complex expressions, and puzzles seem fitting to an examined life, according to any tradition, but I do think they are suggested for a reason, including in the paradox of desiring not to desire. I think this is to suggest the basis or nature of our entanglement, at the same time as observation of it.

When things get tangled up, like roots of plants tangled together, just by intuition of looking at such an entanglement, there is a question of who or what is responsible for things, that comes to mind to just about anybody. Where do these roots including all their attachments come from? Can we distinguish the roots from the way they are attached? I would say, yes and no. I think we can significantly think about these problems in different ways. Recognizing attachments happen dependently seems pretty important to me, or my dharma. We can have the wrong attitude of responsibility, or look for the reason of things the wrong way, and dharma helps avoid that.

The simple answer is simple. Dharma is just something that comes along with and emphasizes the possibilities of observing, and being present in consciousness. Does observing mean desiring? I don't necessarily think so, and that is the easy uncomplicated answer. The simplicity of things is that observing comes first. We just easily associate our observations with other "things".

So that'd be my take. Things are as complicated or uncomplicated as they have to be, to some extent.

Anyway, cool thread guys.


Edited by Kurt (09/27/15 12:35 AM)


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