More: friendship & cheerfulness

Lan wrote:

"Hi :

Thank you all for contributing to a stimulating discussion. By now, I think we all agree on the relationship of desires and emotions. Whether it's "trimming desires" or "controlling desires" .... is only a matter of semantics. If we continue to split hair, it'll become a futile exercise.

I think what is important is to put the theories into practice. That's what Buddhism teaches us: It's a way of life, not just a theory. That's what Lung Zhi did. Prior to opening A.K.'s attachment, she already felt happy. The fact that Anthony felt cheerful on a sunny Friday morning and wanted to share it with us and meanwhile attempted to enlighten us with the Yogi's teaching is very noble and admirable. It's only a small brain like mine which had been trained to analyze everything to death became reflexive and reactive (to borrow a phrase from Stephen).

Anthony, thanks again to provide us the opportunity to dialogue. Since so many of us like to philosophize, perhaps we should start a "Shooting the Breeze Club"? :)

Cheers and Happy New Year! (No pun intended.)

Lan"

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Re: friendship & cheerfulness

A.K. wrote:

"I like lkw’s story about trimming your desires. Enlightenment is a never ending process.

Stephen was right. Our desires are intimately linked with our instincts, or life impulses. In the animal world, it is fairly straightforward. Desires are instincts, without which life would be impossible. But human is a more complex animal. Besides our animal instincts, we also have our human needs which evolve over tens of thousands of years and are deeply influenced by culture and conditioning. Not only do we live a life governed by our animal instincts but also a life governed by man made concepts and language.

So when we talk about desires, we are referring to both our animal needs as well as cultural conditioning. For example, human beings are prone to excessiveness and addictiveness which are not prominent features in the animal world. It is these human qualities that land us in trouble. Our need for more, which underlies greediness, is definitely a human quality, and it is a double-edge sword. It allows us to build up excess capital which makes culture possible, but also becomes a human vice if left unchecked.

I sometimes feel that the Ch’an practice of seeing our original face seems to be talking about reclaiming part of our animal nature.

A.K."

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Friendship & Cheerfulness

Stephen wrote:


"Dear Lung Zhi, Lan, A.K. & Kwok-wai,

Thanks for your comments and KW's powerpoint. They're all inspirational.

There are a few things worth mentioning:
- thanks for your friendship, it is a "root cause" of my cheerfulness;
- as shown in KW's powerpoint, the guru agreed that desire cannot be suppressed but can only be "trimmed;"
- unsurprisingly, even the guru/sage has desires and needed to be tempered from time to time. We don't know what those desires are, we can only guess considering he has to trim a big bush to a tiny circle, consistently and continuously...

Kwok-wai, do you know something we don't, since you've brought this up to our attention?

Stephen"

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Kept the cheerfulness...

Hi Stephen & A.K.:

Just received a power point from K.W.L., it is along the same line of thought:


LWK wrote:
"some always thought Shen-xiu was the realist;
神秀说他的树和镜子，有灰尘就檫，该怎么做就怎么做嘛；

his master's favorate, Hui-neng, was the idealist.
惠能说树和镜子都没有，一了百了，别人捧他贬他都欢喜！

one picks what one likes to be, of course,
这里面学问实在太大了，当然不能简单说：一位大师现实、一位理想；

call me dumb or lazy, but
when there's a knoll, then there's a knoll.
我笨也好、懒也好，总不能说山不是山吧。

lkw"



I am not good at rationalization, all I can feel is that I was very happy to receive the first message sent by A.K. on Friday Nov 27, without even opening the attachment or spending time to find out what the supposition was.

I kept the cheerfulness sent by Anthony, the rest.............

Thanks, A.K., Stephen and Lan.

Lung Zhi

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RE: Is desire the root cause of ALL emotions?

Stephen wrote:

Dear A.K.,

With your encouragement, I would like to further address the little "issue" I see with the title of the article: "Desire is the root cause of ALL emotions."

Let's take a look at the definition: Desire, is "a conscious impulse towards something that promises enjoyment or satisfaction in its attainment;" while emotion, is "a psychic and physical reaction". (Merriam Webster's dictionary)

So desire is pre-eminently a conscious, obvious, insistent state that is hard to ignore and sometimes difficult to resist. It has a tendency towards "something that promises satisfaction in its attainment." But emotion, being a "psychic and physical reaction," like joy, anger or fear, may or may not have anything to do with enjoyment or satisfaction. Nobody in the right mind would 'desire' a pain by cutting his finger. Hence, I rest my case.

One comment you made is that philosophy should not be used to explain emotion. While both Lan and myself have been commenting from the psychological & physiological perspectives, I don't mind to add a philosophical perspective if that makes it more appropriate.

We are taught that unless we cultivate indifference to what happens outside our control in the world, while at the same time strictly governing our thoughts, desires and feelings that arise within ourselves, we will attain peace of mind. While I see there are certain merits in this austerely self-denying view, I think wiser reasoning may help to put the true and value of our desires and emotions in the right perspective, which in turn will set our mind free.

"Desire is nature's instrument of self-perpetuation." Without desire there would be no humanity.

Reasoning and emotions are equally great gifts, and equally important & necessary. Like many other things of life, we have to learn how to appreciate them. They exist for a reason. It is, therefore, like our reflexive and reflective systems, needed to be tempered by one another to achieve the best balance. If not, the result can only be spiritual and intellectual impoverishment, yielding a life, scarcely worth living.

May we all make our lives worth living.


Stephen

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More on: The root causes of cheerfulness?

A.K. wrote:

Hi Lan and Stephen,

The passages I sent to you was actually an excerpt from a book by a yogi, hence the argument appears incomplete. He did not advocate suppression or repression of our desires, but proper understanding and sublimation of our desires so we can have better control of our emotions. Happiness or cheerfulness could be attained only when we turn our negative emotions into positive ones.

We might assume that everyone desire happiness, but experience has shown that a lot of people are actually sabotaging their own happiness because they do not understand the dynamics of their emotions or why they are taking certain actions. Even though they yearn for happiness, their actions often speak otherwise. So when we analyze this issue from a philosophical perspective, it is not the same as when we analyze it from an existential or religious perspective. In philosophy we strive for rationality, but the human psyche is far from being rational.

What interested me about these passages was how the author analyzed the different emotions and how they were related to desires. There might be other ways of analyzing human emotions but this particular approach struck me as being quite insightful, hence my urge to share it with you on a sunny Friday morning.

Our minds are generally focused on external factors. It takes training, or shall we say wisdom, to be able to decipher the labyrinth of human emotions. It is one of those things where everyone has an opinion because everyone is experiencing it in different ways. And we have not even begun to talk about religious practices.

Thank you for the responses. Keep it going.
A.K.

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Re: The root causes of cheerfulness?

A response from Lan:

"Hi A.K.:

Never thought that your kindness to enlighten us will elicit such a debate?!

When I first read the article, due to time constraint, I sent you an instant teaser because I was not sure that I totally agreed with it. I'm glad that Stephen has further elucidated us on the subject.

My humble opinion is: "The root causes of cheerfulness" and "the pursuit of happiness" are profound subjects which can be viewed from different perspectives.

The article you sent is from a religious perspective, while Stephen's exposition is from a philosophical, psychological, and physiological perspective. And "The pursuit of happiness" is American's Constitutional right perspective.

As human beings, as long as we're breathing and alive, it's difficult to control all the impulses firing from our brain cells all the time. Desire is one of the impulses. Desire is the source of motivation. Be it good or bad, it's how our lives come to be.That's why we try to control the bad ones with all kinds of means, external means such as reward and punishment; internal means such as moral, ethics and self-discipline; and physical means such as meditation, focussing techniques, biofeedback,etc. Confucius says, "A sage has no dreams." because he/she has already achieved the art of controlling the firing impulses, I guess.

By the same token, I think in Buddhism, when you have no desires (even the desire to be cheerful or happy), you have achieved the no I-ness, leading to Nirvana.

Lan"

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The root causes of cheerfulness?

Stephen wrote:

"Thanks for the article. It has triggered some thoughts.
The questions we've been asked are real: how do we control our emotions and desires? how do we maintain our cheerfulness?
While the article was well written, except for two little problems: the author didn't explain to us how to control our desires; and how to maintain cheerfulness?
The devil, I believe, is always in the details.

While we all live in the real world, we need desires and emotions in many of our endeavours, without which we won't be able to survive. As much as we want to eliminate the 'bad' emotions, to a large extent our behaviors are pretty much driven by 'emotional shortcuts' which have been developed in the last tens of thousands of years during which our ancestors gone thru the evolution process(it's been ongoing, even as we speak).

To wit, Dutch Philosopher Benedictus Spinoza once said: "It is necessary to know the power and the infirmity of our nature, before we can determine what reason can do in restraining the emotions, and what is beyond her power."

As we learn from many psychologists, the human brain is run by both the reflexive(driven by intuition) and reflective(driven by logical analysis) systems. Think of the former as 'on auto-pilot' in order to steer us away from immediate threats or troubles; it must be rapid-fire. The latter being a slow, analytical process where our check-and-balance system kicks in. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, most humans make judgments and decisions primarily by the reflexive system. (If not, we are all dead by now!)

That leaves us with the big question: theories aside, how do we practically, consistently control our desires & emotions?

The next key question - how to 'maintain cheerfulness' as opined by the author seems to be alot easier to put into practice, at least in theory. If I understand correctly from my philosophy classes (don't blame me, since I took my PHL101 class during lunch time when I was in the engineering school), the first lesson about cheerfulness or happiness is that the surest way to be un-cheerful or unhappy is to think that they can be directly sought of. (repeat after me please)

The fact of the matter is, things like cheerfulness or happiness is an epiphenomenom(you see, that's all I know to impress you?) - that is, something that arises as a by-product of other things. It comes unconsciously and from the side; it isn't and can never be a direct outcome that it can be mechanically attained by pushing a few buttons. Neither can we 'try to maintain cheerfulness' with a snap of fingers.

So what are the 'things' or activities of which its by-products will make us cheerful or happy? Activities that are worthwhile in themselves, that bring senses of satisfaction and achievement in the doing, that give a sense of well-doing and well-being. Examples like enjoyment with family, good friendship, arts/music, scenic places or beautiful things, of success(in achievement sense, not just material rewards), charity etc. are invariable sources of satisfaction and happiness.

Last but not least, the fact that 'the pursuit of happiness' is written in the American constitution has no guarantee that we can all be happy. The key is how do we put those 'things' or activities mentioned above into actions. That is something we can really control.


Be cheerful,

Stephen"

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Where is the happiness?

Sharing the following email with you:

One day, the young lion asked his mom: "Mom, where is the happiness?"

Mom replied: "It's on your tail."

So the young lion keeps on chasing after his tail. But after a whole day of trying, he failed to get the happiness that was on his tail.

Then he told his mom about this, his mom smiled and said: "Son, you don't really need to chase after your happiness, as long as you keep going and moving forward, your happiness will always be with you."

Wish everyone of you find your happiness.

Please do forward to all your friends and wish the happiness is with them always.



You can't decide the length of life, but you can control how you want to live it.

You can't control the weather, but you can control your mood.

You can't change your look, but you can smile.

You can't control others, but you can control yourself.

You can't foresee tomorrow, but you can utilize today wisely.

You can't win everything, but you can try your very best to achieve that.

Hope everyone can face the daily life positively and always happy...

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Life

Sharing the following email with you:

A long time ago, there was an Emperor who told his horseman that if he could ride on his horse and cover as much land area as he likes, then the Emperor would give him the area of land he has covered.

Sure enough, the horseman quickly jumped onto his horse and rode as fast as possible to cover as much land area as he could. He kept on riding and riding, whipping the horse to go as fast as possible. When he was hungry or tired, he did not stop because he wanted to cover as much area as possible.

Came to a point when he had covered a substantial area and he was exhausted and was dying. Then he asked himself, "Why did I push myself so hard to cover so much land area? Now I am dying and I only need a very small area to bury myself."

The above story is similar with the journey of our Life. We push very hard everyday to make more money, to gain power and recognition. We neglect our health , time with our family and to appreciate the surrounding beauty and the hobbies we love. One day when we look back, we will realize that we don't really need that much, but then we cannot turn back time for what we have missed.

Life is not about making money, acquiring power or recognition . Life is definitely not about work! Work is only necessary to keep us living so as to enjoy the beauty and pleasures of life. Life is a balance of Work and Play, Family and Personal time.

You have to decide how you want to balance your Life. Define your priorities, realize what you are able to compromise but always let some of your decisions be based on your instincts.

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of Life, the whole aim of human existence. So, take it easy, do what you want to do and appreciate nature.

Life is fragile, Life is short. Do not take Life for granted. Live a balanced lifestyle and enjoy Life!

Watch your thoughts ; they become words.

Watch your words ; they become actions.

Watch your actions ; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character .

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny .

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Sharing of happiness

In response to my article "Out of Town" posted yesterday, my friend wrote me the following:

"I cannot wait to let you know, I want to write you this note right away. As I read your article, I feel your joy, I feel the warmth in your family, I could hear the laughter and sounds of the children, and above all I feel happy. Happiness has entered my blood, giving me a peaceful and serene sensation.

I do not know what this is, and how this has happened. But, I’m not going to use my brain on this phenomenon…. all I want is to feel and observe it with my heart.

Thanks for sharing your happiness … enjoy !"



My reply:

I am so glad that my friend can share my happiness.

In Chan, we named the sharing as "the transmission between two minds." （以心叩心）

My friend shared my happiness, this reaction in turns brought me joy as well. In Buddhist term, this is how the transfer/expansion of merits (dedication) works.

I wish there are more of us who can pass around joy and merits, thus the Land of Ulmost Joy can be realized sooner.

Lung Zhi