Have you ever been thinking so deeply that when you've finished, it turns out you had only been thinking for a few seconds when it seemed like you'd been thinking forever.

A few minutes later you try and remember what the fuck it was you were thinking about. You'd reached such mental depths that you wasn't even aware that you were there and you come out of it wondering what the fuck you were thinking when you were down there.

Enlightenment is kinda like this feeling. You are experiencing all the crazy depths of thought. Understanding things at such a deep level, and the joy of the next thought is so wonderful that it makes you forget what the previous thought was. But it goes on for ever and ever. There are so many thoughts that you are experiencing that you never have time to think about the negative thoughts that unenlightened beings think. All these new thoughts your experiencing are just too damn beautiful to worry about those.

As an enlightened being you don't have time to mourn death because to understand "not existing" is impossible (since not existing is impossible) and so it never crosses your mind. Death is like a wonderful process of life that you can choose to explore. Everything is a wonderful process of life that you can explore. Without attachement you can love it all.

Buddism (and other associated religeons) teach how attachment throws hurdles in the way of happiness. They teach that when we free ourselves from attachment we have nothing to cause us suffering.

Suffering from what? Suffering from always holding onto your thoughts and stopping the flow of experience.

If you're attached to a gold watch and it gets stolen. You'll stop your thoughts and start think about the same thoughts of "getting it back", or "I'm unhappy coz I loved that watch".

If you wasn't attached to you watch your thoughts wouldn't dwindle around wanting it back. You thoughts will be free to experience the next thought that comes along.

It's the same with people. You can find a moment of Joy with a feeling that another person gives you. And so you try to hold on to that person in the hope that you can get more of that feeling. When after a while you start to become bored of there company. They don't give you the same feeling of Joy as often as they did at the start. That's because you've already experienced the feelings they give and there is nothing unknown left to experience, unless you've got a bad memory, then you might never get bored of someone). The true person you love is someone who never stops surprising you ever, yet even then you can trust them with a flawless passion.

Attachements are never really attachments to the actual objects, but to the feelings behind the experiences that those objects brought. If we can cling on to the object then we can surely get the feeling back again. But this isn't so, because it was the feeling of experiencing a brand new thought that was so joyfull.

People cling to things in the hope that they will give them a previous loved experience. But they won't, because what they really love was the act of experiencing something new.

You might say "well I'm attached to my watch. It doesn't give me joy but I'd be pissed off if I lost it".

You sure would be pissed off if you lost it, but that's not because the watch brought you joy, but because it prevented the opposite of Joy, which is fear. It's stopped you from being late home and getting a bollocking from your parents. It prevent you from being late to work and being sacked. Sure you might not be scared about the boss being angry at you, but you are scared that you might not be able to feed your children. This attachement is also bad, because it's purpous resists the experiences you can have of "Being fired", and the feelings that your thoughts can give you when being fired are amazing (Providing your not attached to the memory of happily sitting at your desk yesterday).

To say you shouldn't be attached to something doesn't mean that you can "love" it. You can love everything you come across but it doesn't mean you should cling to it. Love flows because love is the feeling that a brand new thought gives you. A thought may make you feel love but the next thought will aswell, and the next, and the next. If you cling to a thought that makes you feel love it'll stop you from feeling the love that the next thought would have brought. All new thoughts are beautiful, but old thoughts are boring, and clinging to them in the hope they'll provide the same excitement they once did, will stop you from experiencing more beauty.

It's not objects that bring happiness, it's the experience of a new thought.





[This message has been edited by ---Beany--- (edited 09-07-2003).]

Buddhism is certainly a good and interesting religion. If you're so inclined I would suggest you picking up "Be here, now" which is a good book from the 70's by Ram Dass. I'll also suggest you picking up some things on Sufism, Hinduism and Buddhism, but particularly Mahayana Buddhism.

If you're interested in how some of your ideas might work in the Western world, allow me to suggest you look into Kabbalah a little bit.

Very interesting post, Beany.

What's really interesting about Buddhism is how you can apply it so much to life. I've read articles written by people who seemed to not know about buddhism, they were just observing life and writing their thoughts. Then when I read some buddhist concepts, it totally coincided with a lot of the things I read. I keep coming back to buddhism everywhere I turn, seriously. That is why it is really an interesting religion to me.

I agree with a lot of what you say.

I have been there too, that feeling of breaking the attachment. Knowing it is in my head only and that I can be happy if I want to be, questioning what was holding me back from doing so. Illusion. My perception.

Regarding people, the thought "but then if I stop being attached, it will make them sad" but the truth is, it's their own choice and if they are sad from it, they can break the attachment just as easily, if they figure it out. Something people have to just learn to do on their own to grow.

It was all in my head, and I knew it. I held onto that thought, that thought of realization and I have remembered moments like those, as times of studying myself, understanding myself, realizing many problems I had were only my perception...

Excellent post. Far better than the usual christian/atheist bullshit I'm used to hearing around here.

I think the Buddhist freedom from "suffering" is always interpreted too humanly. I dont think it should be be made clear, that by suffering they dont mean like, teen-angst, or hunger. "Suffering" is just their word for hungry, conditioned and contingent material existence, being chained to an empirical ego.

Maybe you understand this already, I just wanted to clear that up before some dipshit 16 year old comes on here like the rest of 'em and htinks Buddhism is the way to make poor people happy.

Cheers Fuck. There are other religeons or spiritual practices very similar to Buddism that are worth looking into. Such as "Kriya Yoga" (introduced to me by Evolove). I'm going to Australia this winter to live with Hare Krishnas but hopefuly soon after I'll go to india and practice Kriya Yoga there, or something.