Awareness, happiness, and attachments

[cjsmith]

[Pieces of my side of a conversation elsewhere, stitched together here.]

There's a lot of happiness to be found when one is oblivious, but then when one begins to see things a bit more clearly, it can hurt like blazes. So is there a stage past that, where one sees more, and is okay again? I'm thinking there is, but I have only a few shards to go on.

Lots of people ignore bad stuff. (Deliberately overfocus on good stuff to drive the bad stuff out, or are in denial. (And maybe also unhappy, maybe not.)) I ignore a lot just to stay sane, and somehow I think I'm missing a piece there.

I want to see it all, be aware of it all, and be okay. Some few humans can. I cannot (yet). Perhaps I don't have enough lifetime left to get there; that's okay. I firmly believe that people can.

I'm thinking of a very few people: Dalai Lama, maybe. I read him as truly happy -- that is, he is content, serene, happy, but not due to ignoring shit. Not due to making up a sweetness-and-light "good outcome" that no one actually knows will happen. That's a dependent, weak happiness. His is not.

The more I think about all this, the more I start to surmise that the attachments we hurt ourselves with are ideas. "Other people should meet my needs even if I cannot articulate them." "People should be competent at what they do." "Life should be fair." I've got that last one and it is going to cause me pain until I jettison it. I am deeply attached to it.

I would guess that this is a teeny tiny step on a really long road. I have peeled one layer of a very large onion. I suspect there's more onion in there and I can do better.

Comments

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.

I want to see it all, be aware of it all, and be okay.

May I have the brain back when you're finished?

I do ignore a lot of what I value as little things; the problem comes if/when they build up or change into big things.

"Life should be fair."

That one is tough - I use affirmations of a sort to remind myself when it isn't, and have learned to be more accepting of circumstance.

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

I want to be sure I'm understanding what you're saying.

The way this is reading, if someone says their happy, they're either self-delusional, or they're one of very few humans who can be aware and still be happy.

I think there are a lot of people who are oblivious to the fact that they're not entitled to happiness, that it's not something someone else can give them. I think those are the truely unhappy, because they are waiting for someone else to fix the world for them.

I think those who are truely happy take responsibility for their happiness, through the pain, disapointment, trauma, etc. It's not a matter of ignoring those things, but acknowledging they exist and are part of life. It's a choice of being ruled by the bad stuff, and dwelling on things you can't change, or dwelling on the good things, the things that can be controlled, the things we do for ourselves to make us happy.

I would consider myself a happy person, overall. I'm not Mary Sunshine, by any stretch of the imagination, but overall I am content with my life, and am working towards chainging the things I want to, and letting go of the things I can't.

I'm not happy about my health. I'm not happy about getting laid off. I'm not happy about some issues in the past.

But dwelling on them does nothing for my life but make me unhappy.

Is this in the realm of what you meant, or am I off the mark?

[layer.livejournal.com]

this is some important stuff to ponder. i've been thinking a lot about things like this myself. especially the whole happiness thing. i think i'm happy in general, but not in a denial kind of way. things are hard and they can suck but i try to remember how lucky i am. and it's pretty darned lucky.

[firecat]

So is there a stage past that, where one sees more, and is okay again?

The Dalai Lama comes from a school of Buddhism that focuses on understanding what suffering is and being committed to relieving suffering in others. For me the latter is what makes knowledge of suffering bearable.

And yes, this school of thought also focuses on the suffering that ideas can cause. (Although there are other kinds of suffering too.)

If you ever want to go with me to check out the Shambhala center in Mountain View, let me know. They offer meditation instruction on Sunday mornings. I haven't been, but I keep thinking I ought.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

A couple of interviews I have read with the Dalai Lama have led me to believe he has a *great* sense of humor. I think that's key.

[kennita.livejournal.com]

I've found that I can lower my blood pressure by replacing "x should" by "I would prefer if x". That puts the focus back on me, since I'm the one having the negative feelings, and those are what I can do the most good by changing, since x often doesn't give a good goddamn what my feelings are, except to manipulate them, perhaps.

I like the idea of going to the Shambhala Center, too -- I'm contemplating the feasibility of not just being up, but being somewhere, by 10 on a Sunday morning :-) . I wonder if this Sunday is a particularly good day, or a particularly bad day, for such an excursion?

As far as ignoring bad stuff to stay sane, you say that like it's a bad thing. Most bad stuff you can't do anything about. In my experience, I have no desire to ignore bad stuff that I can do something about -- it's fun to fix it. That's the problem; there's enough of it that I have no choice but to ignore some of it. Oh, and there's that word "can" -- how much of my energy is it worth it (to me) to solve any given problem that I "can" solve?

People can think of any number of reasons why you "should" (i.e., they would prefer if you did) not ignore their pet causes. Yes, you're missing pieces -- get over it. In any case, you'll want to make sure the pieces are to your puzzle, not theirs.

[exponentialdk.livejournal.com]

At some point in the past, quite likely in the wake of what could be called a domestic social war, I feel like I made a major step in the direction you describe: several layers of the onion. I rather abruptly lost a lot of my inner turbulence, attaining a sort of peace that I hadn't known before.

But:

- is it less turbulence because there is less flow, or has it become more laminar?

- am I harder to upset because I just stopped caring?

I do feel like I've made a lot of progress, though I can't identify how. There are small things that I still get passionate about (e.g. the Right Way to do certain things at work), and I'm still passionate about most of the big things. Perhaps I've just become oblivious to most of the little things.

Good luck with your introspection. Hopefully you'll do better at guiding your development than I've been at riding along with mine.
:-)

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

So is there a stage past that, where one sees more, and is okay again?

Yes.

A lot of things are like that. It's like, you start out with beginner's luck, & then when you figure things out a bit more whatever you're doing starts to suck; but then if you push through that, you end up better than where you started.

And it's important to do that, because the happiness that comes from innocence is so fragile. Start noticing things and it's gone. The happiness that comes from having worked through loss of innocence is a lot more sturdy.

But you have to keep doing it over & over because it happens for every different aspect of life.