befriend wrote:Guy wrote:Hi Befriend,
When people say they "love life", do you think they love all aspects of life or just the pleasant parts?
Do you think that people who claim to "love life" also love: loss, disappointment, pain, grief, despair, sorrow, lamentation, old age, sickness and death?
Metta,
Guy
this may sound odd. even when i feel pain when i am doing the dishes and the water is too hot, i am aware of the sensation, and am curious about the pain. i am not in suffering, then the pain reminds me i am alive. then this makes me happy. id rather feel a little pain than be dead. i disclocated my shoulder a few years ago, the strongest emotion i felt about it was gratitude. the shoulder felt awkward and painful but a sense of gratitude arose INVOLUNTARILY because although it was a unfortunate event i was stil happy because if i couldnt dislocate my shoulder i wouldnt be a live. they obvisouly dont love pain and disease, but i think its possible to appreciate life so much, that you have gratude for everything. i dont know if this is dhamma i have a lot of opinions but most of them are malleable and could very much be delusion. sadhu, befriend
I would take the joyful dance of life over the dour-faced and wary Buddhist puritanism any day.
But perhaps the Middle Way is neither one of the two. Trungpa wrote some interesting things about being intoxicated with the sense-bases, being intoxicated with existence, etc and that guy knew a thing or two about intoxication.
So I would second Ben's advice to attend carefully. But then again this applies just as well to whatever attitude to life we have and hold on to.
PS I guess when we shift to a lighter and more joyful way of being, or when we let go of some hindrance, have an important insight, etc, it is all too easy to pitch the tent and on some level at least feel that we've arrived, that this is the final position. And when one is surrounded by attitudes that are less skillful and more coarse, this position is all too easy to slip into.