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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