Do you believe in karma?
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As a general principle about how acting selflessly and as a force for good tends to help one find one’s way, YES. As a clockwork cause-and-effect accounting of one’s life activities, NO. In fact, in the latter sense, I believe the idea has quite a dark side that is frequently overlooked.
Change your relationship to sensation.
Feel it all but stop assigning it meaning and value judgements.
What’s the most annoying trope in books or movies?
The McGuffin. A thing chased for the sake of being chased. It only works because humans, like dogs, are programmed to chase certain things without a good sense of whether it’s worth it or what would happen if one ever caught it.
Chapter 7. Chapter 8.
NOTE: Incidentally, I would not title a chapter of my memoirs “The Hard Years,” so as to avoid the assumption that that was when I worked in porn. People would either skip said chapter… or skip to it.
Feel the feelings but cut short the rumination with the realization that negative thoughts are waking dreams and have no more inherent reality than sleeping dreams.
That it’s a worthy object of pursuit, as if it is a stable state. I think both the Taoists and the Buddhists have instructive views on the matter. In Taoism, the Yang contains the seed of Yin and one flows inexorably into the other. In this view, the rock bottom worst life has to offer is a time to rejoice because the light will follow. Whereas, when one thinks life is the best it can get, a fall will come. As for Buddhism, our happiness may reflect an illusion that we’ve momentarily achieved our desires, when desires are inherently great white whales. Aim for contentment. Experience happiness when it comes.
Absolutely. The IKEA Nesting Instinct has run amok, and Consumer is a definitionally discontented state of being.
Personally, I hate that I know what a duvet is.
The implication being that I’m not living it? I’m outraged. Desire for things to be what they aren’t is the mother of all suffering.
Perhaps, you cannot change your jail,
And you can't choose the lumps and scars --
No matter how you scream or wail --
But you pick your view through the bars.
This sounds to me like a recipe for how to turn a great moment into Hell. Nothing special survives its moment. I’m with the Buddhists on impermanence — i.e. Everything is impermanent, (and the desire for things to be what they are not is the root of all suffering.)
