Happiness is crippling, it's funny I never realized it before. You've got the job you always wanted, a nice girl who likes you, a nice place for yourself, things are good. Suddenly you have nothing to talk about.
Studying Zen for so long, I spent a lot of time contemplating desire. Desire, Buddha says, is the root of all suffering. You want what you don't have. You want what you do have to last forever. You can't have either one, because nothing lasts forever, so you suffer. "So how do you end suffering?" you ask Buddha, and he says, "You end desire." If you have no desire, you have no suffering. The old man has a point, but I'm starting to think avoiding suffering is not the answer to the question of life.
You have to have desire. Desire to live, desire to love, desire that lights you on fire like a million candles, aching for what's just beyond your reach. You'll suffer, yeah, you'll suffer blows so staggering that your soul will flicker like the lights of a house in a storm, but you'll do something. That feeling of life, of knowing you're alive, is what I live for. I find it in music, I find it in the arms of a woman, I find it when a car comes screaming out at me and narrowly misses, I find it in a cigarette, and I find it in the warm, tight hug of a long-lost friend.
I have to believe that there's more to this life than the avoidance of suffering.
"Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun,
so you must know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder
at the daily miracles of life,
your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted
the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity
through the winters of your grief."
~Kahlil Gibran
Studying Zen for so long, I spent a lot of time contemplating desire. Desire, Buddha says, is the root of all suffering. You want what you don't have. You want what you do have to last forever. You can't have either one, because nothing lasts forever, so you suffer. "So how do you end suffering?" you ask Buddha, and he says, "You end desire." If you have no desire, you have no suffering. The old man has a point, but I'm starting to think avoiding suffering is not the answer to the question of life.
You have to have desire. Desire to live, desire to love, desire that lights you on fire like a million candles, aching for what's just beyond your reach. You'll suffer, yeah, you'll suffer blows so staggering that your soul will flicker like the lights of a house in a storm, but you'll do something. That feeling of life, of knowing you're alive, is what I live for. I find it in music, I find it in the arms of a woman, I find it when a car comes screaming out at me and narrowly misses, I find it in a cigarette, and I find it in the warm, tight hug of a long-lost friend.
I have to believe that there's more to this life than the avoidance of suffering.
"Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun,
so you must know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder
at the daily miracles of life,
your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted
the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity
through the winters of your grief."
~Kahlil Gibran
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
richiedagger:
i was gonna comment earlier...but i didnt know how. youre interpretation of that is so dead on to me that i cant really say much except when i read that i felt the same exact way.
unnecessaryz:
I'm glad you were able to come to terms with the flaws in Buddhism's phylosophy of desire. You would think that someone so intent on finding enlightenment would ebrace what is, in my opinion, the greatest enlightener of them all: suffering. If it doesn't crush you, it only makes you smarter and more aware.