Confused About DESIRE - VS - I Feel Damaged

[mulyo13]

Originally Posted by flippyfloppies

Hello! I've posted in Spiritual Development about what is going on with me but it's spread throughout the thread. I will be more to the point here.

1. As a boy in middleschool + highschool I found spirituality, & I thought that I had surely found a set of rules that would help me live a meek life. However, I am now in my mid 20's and I can say that it seems spirituality has harmed me in many ways. So I have some questions to ask all of you.


DESIRE- What I don't understand is how the teacher's i've followed could tell me to destroy my desire. "DESIRE IS SUFFERING" is a common phrase I have read whenever seeking answers. Well I adopted my world view around this phrase and I feel it has harmed me tremendously in life. My reputation in my home-town is that of a vagrant, or someone that does not care what he looks like, someone that does-not take care of himself. I own no home, I own no vehicle, I live with my mother. I rarely work. Each time I get a job I feel almost trapped, & as if I am only working for my desires. However.... On the other hand, I am beginning to awaken to ideals that I had never found as a child without a father... Ideals like pride in my work. PRIDE has always been something I thought I should avoid if I wanted to live enlightened. But I am at a point where I am worried my world-view that I formed around this single teaching, is going to leave me alone, without a woman or a child. I am afraid that I got it all wrong. I feel like I went gung-ho without fully understanding the teachings. How can you delete your desire without your mind elevating you above others? How can you pick and choose which desires you delete? I assume most of you hold jobs, partners? None of you are laying in your sweat stain for weeks on end.

I will be honest, i got addicted to drugs and I had been unable to stop using them for years. Early this year, I finally went away to rehab. But during the last year of my life I had deteriorated so much. I barely ever left my bed for anything other than to go pick up the drug. & I thought that I was living piously, I thought that I was living meek. I got to the point where I was laying in my bed with my eyes closed for weeks, months... & I tried to justify this as... I was living without desire. I was living without ego. But, now that I am clean and sober from drugs I realize the spot I was in. I was often depressed. I was killing myself. I was not THRIVING.

In fact all of my life, I have used spirituality as a reason to not thrive. I got D's and F's in school because I was reading articles online telling me institutionalized learning is wrong, learn on your own. (which I did, to a monumental extent, but.... I could of learned in school as well!) I wore ragged dirty clothing all through highschool.

Another teaching that I believe I misinterpreted and molded my life-view around was the "Ego is pain" which I got from reading Eckhart Tolle books. Also, I began "quieting my mind" in the early years of highschool. Especially when in social situations.... & I believe this has caused me to STUNT my emotional growth. Rather than growing from my emotion and learning to allow it when it is beneficial and deny it when it has no grounds, I have learned to silence my thought and allow my fears and anxieties to GROW.

I am here BEGGING YOU ALL to PLEASE PLEASE set me on the path to HEAL this. I have been confused for years and years & I have gone down many wrong paths because of it. ANY ADVICE IS APPRECIATED. ANY BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS would be appreciated.

At this point I don't know if I should abandon spirituality and get lost in the world or what.... I feel like I really harmed myself all these years, having MISINTERPRETED the teachings I held so high.

Actually, when you attached to desire, it will raise the suffering. It's not easy to understand desire, because you need to know causality of desire(the root/cause and the effect of desire). To understand this, you need time.

If you really want to walk in spiritual path, the first step is start from your heart. Forget about quieting mind, emptiness, desire is suffering,... etc. You must start knowing who you really are and the process to knowing who you really are is never ends. Even when you have reached high level spirituality, knowing who you really still continue and never stop. Learn step by step and start from the bottom. If you don't understand, no need for you to force your self to understand. One day, you will.

Don't learn theory too much, but do it. Understand but not 'do it' is no use. Here's an analogy:
Years ago, I joined a philosophy forum and there's a topic about "Silence is golden, but speak is diamond". People in that forum debated about it. Some of them pro to "silence is golden", and some of them pro to "speak is diamond". After some time later, the thread was dead and than some people reply with a simple words such as "Silent is golden, isn't it?", "Yeah.. in fact silence is diamond",... etc. After that, people start debating again but those people never joined the debate.
It's not about which one is right or wrong, but from "silence is golden" side, there was 2 type of people,
1. people who only understand "silence is golden" but not apply/implement it.
2. people who understand "silence is golden" and apply/implement it.
No use to understand many understanding if none of them is applied in daily life.

If you really like Buddhism, go find a Buddhist teacher or join Buddhist social activity.
If you want to learn how to meditate, learn meditation for self development(enlightenment path), not meditation for leave body, mediumship, astral world,...etc.(occult path). I'm highly recommend to join Buddhism meditation retreat at least once, so you have good meditation basic.

Try read this

Hope it helps.

[SecretDreams333]

how about loving your self ? loving your ego and desire what every you think those are for you it must some how be a part of you ???
an ego is a part of me I should have that is to be judged by an other part I also am that is not my ego ? lol whats wrong here
I never understood what ego is supposed to mean in the reality of how I experience my self

[Miss Hepburn]

Hi flippy,
I'm sending you a link to a great talk on desire in a pm.
Because it isn't 'Buddhist'...I didn't think I would post it.
It's just for you if you are into it, since your orig post
seemed so desperate..

Actually, the way I see it...Desire is not the cause of suffering,
it's unfulfilled desire! Desire is what makes the world go round.

Can you tell I'm not a practicing Buddhist?

[kingfisher]

Hi flippyfloppies, I would recommend taking a look at "Beyond Buddhism:Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age" by Stephen Batchelor.

Mr Batchelor comes in for a bit of stick in some Buddhist circles for his agnostic stance towards one or two prized doctrines such as Rebirth/Re-incarnation, but for me he has the knack of making the Buddhist teachings relevant to my life as I find it to be in this age.

In the book mentioned he translates the Pali "tanha" (which more often than not is translated as "desire") as "reactivity", our instinctive - not to say "conditioned" - responses to life as it unfolds around us.

All the best

[shivatar]

Originally Posted by flippyfloppies

Hello! I've posted in Spiritual Development about what is going on with me but it's spread throughout the thread. I will be more to the point here.

1. As a boy in middleschool + highschool I found spirituality, & I thought that I had surely found a set of rules that would help me live a meek life. However, I am now in my mid 20's and I can say that it seems spirituality has harmed me in many ways. So I have some questions to ask all of you.


DESIRE- What I don't understand is how the teacher's i've followed could tell me to destroy my desire. "DESIRE IS SUFFERING" is a common phrase I have read whenever seeking answers. Well I adopted my world view around this phrase and I feel it has harmed me tremendously in life. My reputation in my home-town is that of a vagrant, or someone that does not care what he looks like, someone that does-not take care of himself. I own no home, I own no vehicle, I live with my mother. I rarely work. Each time I get a job I feel almost trapped, & as if I am only working for my desires. However.... On the other hand, I am beginning to awaken to ideals that I had never found as a child without a father... Ideals like pride in my work. PRIDE has always been something I thought I should avoid if I wanted to live enlightened. But I am at a point where I am worried my world-view that I formed around this single teaching, is going to leave me alone, without a woman or a child. I am afraid that I got it all wrong. I feel like I went gung-ho without fully understanding the teachings. How can you delete your desire without your mind elevating you above others? How can you pick and choose which desires you delete? I assume most of you hold jobs, partners? None of you are laying in your sweat stain for weeks on end.

I will be honest, i got addicted to drugs and I had been unable to stop using them for years. Early this year, I finally went away to rehab. But during the last year of my life I had deteriorated so much. I barely ever left my bed for anything other than to go pick up the drug. & I thought that I was living piously, I thought that I was living meek. I got to the point where I was laying in my bed with my eyes closed for weeks, months... & I tried to justify this as... I was living without desire. I was living without ego. But, now that I am clean and sober from drugs I realize the spot I was in. I was often depressed. I was killing myself. I was not THRIVING.

In fact all of my life, I have used spirituality as a reason to not thrive. I got D's and F's in school because I was reading articles online telling me institutionalized learning is wrong, learn on your own. (which I did, to a monumental extent, but.... I could of learned in school as well!) I wore ragged dirty clothing all through highschool.

Another teaching that I believe I misinterpreted and molded my life-view around was the "Ego is pain" which I got from reading Eckhart Tolle books. Also, I began "quieting my mind" in the early years of highschool. Especially when in social situations.... & I believe this has caused me to STUNT my emotional growth. Rather than growing from my emotion and learning to allow it when it is beneficial and deny it when it has no grounds, I have learned to silence my thought and allow my fears and anxieties to GROW.

I am here BEGGING YOU ALL to PLEASE PLEASE set me on the path to HEAL this. I have been confused for years and years & I have gone down many wrong paths because of it. ANY ADVICE IS APPRECIATED. ANY BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS would be appreciated.

At this point I don't know if I should abandon spirituality and get lost in the world or what.... I feel like I really harmed myself all these years, having MISINTERPRETED the teachings I held so high.

The path that leads out of your current pain is greater than anything you've experienced this far because you now have to deal with the same problems you had before finding coutnerfit spirituality (an incomplete system of beliefs, because either you followed too many teachers, a bad teacher, or simply failed in your determinaion to fully understand the teachings before applying them. Gung-ho as you called it).

There is no path of "no suffering", at best we can evaporate the concept of self (ego) that we have through thinking. If there is no self, there can be no pain to self. But I digress, only the most skilled can reach this level and it's not wise for someone just beginning to try such a thing. they will end up homeless and an acetic but without the spiritual determination to follow through with their path they will end up hating spirituality and blaming it for their actions. never taking responsibility for what they have done and growing cold to what once gave them warmth and meaning.

-------

This is going to be brutal but here is my opinion based off my experience.

I once turned to spirituality to bypass my pain, I wanted to do the spiritual things like evade desire and ego that I thought would stop my pain. It only put the pain on pause, and when my faith faltered all the pain I had put aside fell back into place.

It's my opinion that you turned to spirituality for the wrong reasons, to escape the pain of your life and not to experience a higher form of self. Which requires work, determination and discipline. Instead you latched unto the beliefs and teachings that you felt helped you ease your pain, and you gladly ignored the teachings that brought the pain back.

its my opinion that you failed to follow just one set of beliefs, one "religion". You did what many new-agers did and picked and choose which beliefs you wanted to follow from many systems, attempting a kind of Frankenstein spirituality. It's our survival self that causes us to do these things, to seek what is comfortable and deny what is difficult.

for you what is difficult is facing your demons, facing your flaws, facing your memories. For you the pain of living is so great that you would rather sit in physical pain than sit in mental pain.

To get yourself out of this situation you must do the hard work, face the hard things in your life that are pushing you so hard. Only you know what those are and only you can solve them, seek friends and allies in your journey.

------------------

Perhaps I can lend you my understanding of desire and ego and Dhukka.

Dukkha (Pāli; Sanskrit: duḥkha; Tibetan: སྡུག་བསྔལ་ sdug bsngal, pr. "duk-ngel") is an important Buddhist concept, commonly translated as "suffering", "pain" or "unsatisfactoriness".

In my understanding Dukkha is not suffering or pain like we understand it. It is the pain of expecting one thing and getting another, it is a mental pain, a pain that the vast majority of the world feels sub-consciously via their feelings of disappointment, doubt, infatuation, etc.

Dukkha is looking at a person and THINKING (problem is in thinking instead of observing) and attaching what we have once experinced to this new person.

example. in my life I've experinced a lot of beautiful women. (in my mind drawing a conclusion about this beautiful woman I now see in front of me) so when I talk to this woman she should be fine with it.

when i talk to her and she is not fine with it, I experince Dukkha, a difference in what the world gives me and what I think I ought to expect from the world based off my past experinces/culture/memories, etc etc.

In Buddhist belief, everything has Dukkha in it, this world we see is not the real world because we don't just observe things free from our thoughts. That takes practice. What is automatic is we see a tree and we automatically attach "a tree grows tall, a tree is made of wood, a tree is good for the environment", whatever we have learned about trees is automatically applied when we see a tree. Only with training and awareness can we separate the extra layer (invisible layer of thoughts) that we add to things via our mind.

example.
my eyes percieve the tree. Before that image is sent up to my consciousness to be viewed it has to go through this other little detour where my mind will add the learned meaning of trees to the image of trees.

Therefore the tree we see without training is not the same tree the trained buddhist sees. They see a tree physically the same as we do, but they do not associate their past memories with the tree.


Ego is the same added layer of memories we add to the tree, but it's a self. We define our self via the ego but the ego is not the self, the ego can be diminished or evaporated but when we do this the self does not evaporate. It becomes like a conundrum, when we become selfless we don't lose our self, we become a self-less self.

I would not suggest dabbling in the ego or trying to evaporate it until someone has been meditating for many years and getting on an intimate level with their self. I would also not suggest it without a trusted teacher or spiritual guide, trying to kill the self as a way to evade pain will never work, trying to kill the self as a way to enlightenment will work but if one is trying for enlightenment to evade pain and not to experience self then it won't work. Instead a person will wander the streets in suffering as their ego regains its strength.



Desire, is the attachment our ego has to Dhukka. Desire is not always "i want this thing", it can also be "I want this emotion, I want this belief". The desires that are accompanied by mental thoughts are easy to identify, the attachment (attachment is perhaps the same thing as desire, as I've come to understand it, perhaps different though) to positive feelings is a hidden desire. When we attach to positive feelings like "i'm doing good at smashing my ego, I feel no pain" is a hidden thing, we are convinced we are doing the right thing because our thoughts convince us that this is a good attachment. It's always the mind though and if we try we can sometimes discern what is a necessary desire or attachment for our greater goals of helping others, or simply to help us evade the pain we have brought unto our self.

-----



my advice to you, there are ways to be enlightened and still have a house, a job, a family, and there are ways to have all these things and not be attached to them when they come or go. Perhaps you don't find enlightenment in this life because the bonds of house, family, job, are too difficult to sever once formed, that is your choice to make. Do you want to continue on the path you have chosen, or do you want to do it slower and perhaps take another lifetime or two to finish your work?

I was once homeless and jobless, it took me many nights of cold and pain before I became determined to not live the life of an acetic but that of a balanced (and noble 8fold) spiritual practioner. I can still find happiness and glimpses of enlightenment while living this life, granted it is not the same profound ecstacy that I once experienced, it still gets the job done. It allows me to help other people and to make my life comfortable enough that I still want to help others. When I forsook everything because I wanted to help others, eventually I came to hate the pain and position I had put myself in, I consequently fell in my determination to uphold my Boddhisatva vow, and I fell into my ego thinking I was unworthy to help others because I once did and gave up. That was a few years ago, and I have since came back to the desire to help all and make the world an easier place to live in, and since I came back I have not hated myself like I once did. I now am more understanding of my own desires and I'm aware that I need a little bit of creature comforts before my desire to help others surfaces.

When I'm worried about where my next meal will come from I'm not focused on helping anybody else but myself. When I'm worried about the cold outside I'm worried about how to get warm, I dont mean anxious worried but determined worried, bound to get my goal accomplished.

When I work 40 hours a week (or less), I can focus all my attention on helping others for say 10-12 hours on the weekend and through the weekdays.

It's just how I function, and it took me a lot of pain and trail and error before I found that. Know how you function and know it by the fruits of your actions.

[shivatar]

How can you delete your desire without your mind elevating you above others?

How can you pick and choose which desires you delete?

I assume most of you hold jobs, partners? None of you are laying in your sweat stain for weeks on end.

-------

desire is as primal a force as self is, it cannot be deleted or removed, it will simply resurface. The best thing we can do is destroy the self that desire influences, in this way we are still not free from desires, even the Dalai lama wants a sweet treat from time to time.

The problem you have is in definition. You use english words and the english definiton of desire to define what the Buddhists call desire.

You think that the sweet treat is the desire, but its not. The desire is attaching to the good feeling that the sweet treat brings, the desire is in eating another beacuse you want to feel how you once felt. Being free from desire is eating a candy because you want one, enjoying the sweetness as it comes, and letting it go as it leaves. If still hungry and it wont spoil your appetite, you perhaps go for another sweet, enjoy it as it comes and let it go as it leaves.

In this way someone is not a slave to desire, and not in denial that desire still exists for them or is still a constant struggle.

-------

One cannot pick and choose which desires they delete. we can re-program our body to desire different things, say we appetite sweets when we are in pain, but we can teach our body through conditioning to apetite a workout or a jog instead of a sweet. We cannot eliminate desire.

We can eliminate the false self that we attach to desire through, but one who has realized they have no self (an enlightened one) will still have spontaneous urges for things (english definition of desire) but they will not have the same attachment to the spontaneous urge (they will not have buddhist desire).

--------

A few of us are content to sit in a stain without a job or family. Many of us are not, it's up to you to choose how you want to navigate through life and how you want to navigate your spiritual path. They are intertwined, for some a spiritual life is impossible without the strong family and friend support network, it's not impossible in the absolute sense but simply beyond what they would choose.

Some people like 90% spiritual, 10% material existence. some prefer the inverse. Find what works for you, sometimes 70% spiritual and 30% has better results than 99% and 1%. We all need to focus on what works best for us, and we ought to focus on our actions or "fruits" not just how we feel or what we want.

[flippyfloppies]

I am so in debt to you. I am ready to cry. That was very helpful. It is the attachment, and the willpower...... ��thank you for taking the time to write this out for me.

I am still struggling with desire but your post has given me hope that I am going to understand this!!

Now I have a question about SELF.... when you say there is no self, you do NOT mean that you can withdraw from your emotions and that is the natural state of spirit, right?

[shivatar]

Originally Posted by flippyfloppies

I am so in debt to you. I am ready to cry. That was very helpful. It is the attachment, and the willpower...... ��thank you for taking the time to write this out for me.

I am still struggling with desire but your post has given me hope that I am going to understand this!!

Now I have a question about SELF.... when you say there is no self, you do NOT mean that you can withdraw from your emotions and that is the natural state of spirit, right?

What I mean is there is a self, but the ego is a mental representation of that self. The I we think we are, our individual identity, is ego and all egos are manifestations of the self.

The way I like to imagine it is on this journey of life we have made a gift for ourselves. We are eternally in search of the self, which is invisible in almost every single way. Our brains which have evolved to survive have created a way to almost see the self, this is the ego. The ego is almost the self but not quite. It's like a shadow of the self. It's where the self was one second ago, or where the self should be, but it's always hidden and the ego is always just a guess. The true self is beyond comprehension, beyond words and understanding.

I don't know why the ego is necessary. I don't know why we can't just live in our deepest and most perfect self. To me the most rational answer is what I said above. Life is a game, to discover the self is the ultimate prize in this game, and for it to be a journey the ultimate prize must be hidden. Our ego is the treasure map.

---

Struggle is normal. Remember that life is a long journey and there is always another challenge waiting. Another heaven to be experienced, another hell to endure. There is always more, so find a pace that works for you and begin to master your challenges one at a time. Make it fun, it's the only way to stay in the game for the longest time.

---

A highly enlightened state still experiences emotions. A highly enlightened person will not rush towards nor cling too emotions. When they arise they are welcomed, when they are necessary for the task at hand they are used. When they are no longer necessary they fade as the next task arises.

The natural state of spirit and self experiences everything we do in egoic consciousness. A person experiencing enlightenment will still feel grief, dread, sadness, they will feel everything negative that "normal" people feel. Everything must be accepted as it is in an enlightened state, to reject certain states as lesser or better is not the enlightened state. All states are welcomed.

[Ground]

Originally Posted by flippyfloppies

I am so in debt to you. I am ready to cry. That was very helpful. It is the attachment, and the willpower...... ��thank you for taking the time to write this out for me.

I am still struggling with desire but your post has given me hope that I am going to understand this!!

Now I have a question about SELF.... when you say there is no self, you do NOT mean that you can withdraw from your emotions and that is the natural state of spirit, right?

Frankly speaking I guess you are a liar. you have started this thead beginning of december last year and now - more than 2 months later - you are pretending to reconnect to what you have written at that time.
you are a fake and you know that. It is up to you: either you are being authentic or you are fake.

[shivatar]

Originally Posted by Ground

Frankly speaking I guess you are a liar. you have started this thead beginning of december last year and now - more than 2 months later - you are pretending to reconnect to what you have written at that time.
you are a fake and you know that. It is up to you: either you are being authentic or you are fake.

are you saying people don't change?