Here I am again, pondering deep topics in my lunch break. That's why I decided to call myself the Lunchtime Philosopher.
So in the morning I posted a short comment on attachment to worldly desires and happiness. I also promised to elaborate on that with a blog post, so here I go.
Although I am not a Buddhist (I don't subscribe to any particular religion and prefer to think of myself as a spiritual person), I still believe in the Buddhist principle of worldly desires and the need to free ourselves from attachment to them. Attachment brings suffering, and this has been the human condition for thousands of years since Buddha. We desire something and if we get it - good! But is it over? No. The nature of desire is that you are never satisfied with what you get for long. In short, desires can never be satisfied and most of us become slaves to them. Instead of us controlling our desires we invariably fall under their control. So how can we fix this problem?
No, let me give a disclaimer first. I myself have not found a way to free myself of desire yet. I do believe that this can be achieved, but that would equal Enlightenment. I might feel at times that I am free of desire, but this is temporary at best because the desire-based conditioning of the past and present is so strong that it is hard to remove it. Let's face it - we are human!
So what can one do? I believe that the best way to not allow our desires control us is to remind ourselves that no single outcome is anything more than feedback. If you did well, you succeeded, if you fared poorly, then you failed. I guess no one minds success, but failure often upsets us. We suffer when we don't get what we want. But what if we saw things in the bigger perspective? A failure is what you make of it. Two extremes - you might get so upset and give up completely and even commit suicide, or you might get so motivated not to allow any future failure stop you, that you just power through on to your purpose. At the end, the choice what to do is yours!
And at the end, I would like to share a quote from a female author from the first half of the 20th century:
Act as if it were impossible to fail!
So in the morning I posted a short comment on attachment to worldly desires and happiness. I also promised to elaborate on that with a blog post, so here I go.
Although I am not a Buddhist (I don't subscribe to any particular religion and prefer to think of myself as a spiritual person), I still believe in the Buddhist principle of worldly desires and the need to free ourselves from attachment to them. Attachment brings suffering, and this has been the human condition for thousands of years since Buddha. We desire something and if we get it - good! But is it over? No. The nature of desire is that you are never satisfied with what you get for long. In short, desires can never be satisfied and most of us become slaves to them. Instead of us controlling our desires we invariably fall under their control. So how can we fix this problem?
No, let me give a disclaimer first. I myself have not found a way to free myself of desire yet. I do believe that this can be achieved, but that would equal Enlightenment. I might feel at times that I am free of desire, but this is temporary at best because the desire-based conditioning of the past and present is so strong that it is hard to remove it. Let's face it - we are human!
So what can one do? I believe that the best way to not allow our desires control us is to remind ourselves that no single outcome is anything more than feedback. If you did well, you succeeded, if you fared poorly, then you failed. I guess no one minds success, but failure often upsets us. We suffer when we don't get what we want. But what if we saw things in the bigger perspective? A failure is what you make of it. Two extremes - you might get so upset and give up completely and even commit suicide, or you might get so motivated not to allow any future failure stop you, that you just power through on to your purpose. At the end, the choice what to do is yours!
And at the end, I would like to share a quote from a female author from the first half of the 20th century:
Act as if it were impossible to fail!