Comments on: “practice the way as though saving your head from fire” [dogen zenji] http://theunreliablenarrator.net/2008/07/08/sitting-with-fire/ "bringing you all the news that's fit to mistrust" Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:24:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0 by: miss bovary http://theunreliablenarrator.net/2008/07/08/sitting-with-fire/#comment-33904 Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:37:02 +0000 http://theunreliablenarrator.net/2008/07/08/sitting-with-fire/#comment-33904 Or...blogular? Or…blogular?

]]> by: oleoptene http://theunreliablenarrator.net/2008/07/08/sitting-with-fire/#comment-33898 Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:40:16 +0000 http://theunreliablenarrator.net/2008/07/08/sitting-with-fire/#comment-33898 Do, please, when you have time, send on the Two Nasty Truths and the Two Noble Truths. Caveating myself as someone who knows from Buddhism mostly by way of wikipedia and Mark Epstein books, I had this realization today that I have been brutal on my own little Buddhist strawman: all these truths about where suffering comes from and then how not to suffer, isn't the trying to avoid suffering yet another opening to suffering? Or maybe it's just that I recognize my own brain's proneness to excesses being such that I can't tell basic aesceticism (not, says wikipedia, to be confused with aestheticism!) from anhedonia. I recognize the things made sweeter by their transience, don't know if I would be able to marvel so at the complete human being bundled into three feet and thirty some pounds if it weren't for the trail of outgrown baby shoes and older brother shoes leading off into infinity, and I happily pay the suffering, the loss, for the present joy, I take intimacy with jealousy and vulnerability and relish it....I suppose the Buddhist I am not is a Buddhism of my own construction, and I do have monastic fantasies, and yet I am still working out how I really feel about suffering. • <em>Editor</em>: Here I at last deleted the comment response that began to grow blobular and devouring, and I move it to the main blogbody since the green light is flickering gamely. Do, please, when you have time, send on the Two Nasty Truths and the Two Noble Truths. Caveating myself as someone who knows from Buddhism mostly by way of wikipedia and Mark Epstein books, I had this realization today that I have been brutal on my own little Buddhist strawman: all these truths about where suffering comes from and then how not to suffer, isn’t the trying to avoid suffering yet another opening to suffering? Or maybe it’s just that I recognize my own brain’s proneness to excesses being such that I can’t tell basic aesceticism (not, says wikipedia, to be confused with aestheticism!) from anhedonia. I recognize the things made sweeter by their transience, don’t know if I would be able to marvel so at the complete human being bundled into three feet and thirty some pounds if it weren’t for the trail of outgrown baby shoes and older brother shoes leading off into infinity, and I happily pay the suffering, the loss, for the present joy, I take intimacy with jealousy and vulnerability and relish it….I suppose the Buddhist I am not is a Buddhism of my own construction, and I do have monastic fantasies, and yet I am still working out how I really feel about suffering.

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Editor: Here I at last deleted the comment response that began to grow blobular and devouring, and I move it to the main blogbody since the green light is flickering gamely.

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