I did not say life is scary in the sense you imply, that I cower in a corner due to my fear, but presented the way you did "This is my last whatever" birdsong or coffee it sounded scary to me,I don't find it so scary. Most, if not all of us, are bound to be reborn. And how can one expect to truly let go of what one has not yet fully tasted?
I find many Buddhists are terrified of life. But never having embraced life, how can one begin to relinquish its pleasures? We think we can just skip that stage and mistake our fear of life for renunciation, but I don't think it works that way. Those who are stuck with fear and aversion to life and its samsaric charms can never free themselves from it.
Only those who have openly drunk from the cup and grew disenchanted can freely toss it away.
Or so it seems to me.
I don't find it so scary.
- momentarily.
I did not say I was frozen with fear, after reading those silly lines.
Kajjaniya sutta speaks of this very phenomenon, SN 22.79. I summarize it because this week's sutta study is not about it.
The basic message is
Original Buddha's teaching was not about proliferation but about engagement in the 8-fold path, for instance in Samma-Sati, the advice is to remove the mind from feeling."Monks! don't get chewed up by mental proliferation, thinking of the past, the future etc"
Poetry you quoted is an exaggeration of feeling, not conducive to release from suffering.
Reading "lines like that" leads one to proliferate "this is me, this is my life" "this is my coffee" sort of like this is my wonderful life, and grasp it. What happens?
- I fall sick? birds die? coffee gets wiped out due to an invasion by a coffee pathogen.
Never mind! Many suttas constantly repeat "Do not conceive"
Your claim
have you explored the life of many buddhists? To dispute your claim, is a distraction to the chosen sutta study.I find many Buddhists are terrified of life. But never having embraced life
A proper answer to that accusation will force me to bring in multiple suttas. Only three days are left.
I don't want to disrupt the discussion on burning
Let us stick close to the week's teaching. If at all I would prefer if someone dragged me into a conversation on origination of suffering, which is the core of "this sutta""It would be better, bhikkhus, for the eye faculty to be lacerated by a red-hot iron pin burning, blazing'
You write
Are you sure of this? The goal is Nibbana. If most of us do not reach that goal, I hope at least some of us on this thread succeed in lessening our suffering in this lifetime.Most, if not all of us, are bound to be reborn.
The learning is gradual. Remember the sutta on
You wrotethe little bit of soil trapped within a fingernail?
You appear to be proposing things that go directly against Buddha's teaching. SN 12.66 writesAnd how can one expect to truly let go of what one has not yet fully tasted?
Sutta implies only fools drink from it. Wise person stays away from it knowing that it is poisoned."Life is a bronze cup of wine, having a fine color, aroma and taste but it is mixed with poison."
Your advice to us to get drunk with that wine. Should we? I think not.
Dearest SDC, forgive me for quoting other suttas.
It is morning here, sun arrives, birds sing, aroma of coffee fills the air,
yet i know all this is fleeting.
With love