Leo, how happy are you?

[ZenAlex]

1 minute ago, Stovo said:

If you can still be happy with poor health then by definition it's not "completely contingent on good health".

In which case we come full circle towards "suffering is imaginary". 

I think he means despite having health issues you can still be health to some degree if you take care of yourself, so you can still be happy despite being chronically unhealthy in some ways.

[Stovo]

17 minutes ago, ZenAlex said:

I think he means despite having health issues you can still be health to some degree if you take care of yourself, so you can still be happy despite being chronically unhealthy in some ways.

Exactly

[LSD-Rumi]

@Leo GuraI understand that life can be very hard especially health issues, I my self have multiple mental ilnesses and still seriously consider suicide every couple of days  but what I don't understand is that you did like 300 trips and you meditated a lot, how on earth such things still affect your happiness, aren't you supposed to be invinciple . Maybe your relatively low baseline is the problem, maybe this shows greatly the limitations of the psychedelic approach Or is it that suffering cannot be practically transcended by humans?

Edited February 8, 2023 by LSD-Rumi

[Vrubel]

@Leo Gura What is your greatest source of happiness in life just directly felt reliable day to day?

For me, it's the different passions/hobbies I am blessed with, seeing beauty and "poetry" in life and the world around me. And also indulging in music, taste and carnal pleasure. 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Vrubel

[r0ckyreed]

11 hours ago, something_else said:

How would you even know for sure that it’s just a fairytale?

There are Buddhist monks that set themselves on fire and seem relatively unphased

Lighting yourself on fire isn’t a symptom of happiness. It takes a suffering and twisted mind to even think about something like that.

Detachment from the world and your desires does not mean you are free from suffering. That is what I think Buddhists get wrong. The Buddhist conception of enlightenment and happiness would only be applicable to 1% of humans. If only it was that easy.

Edited February 8, 2023 by r0ckyreed

[Eternal Unity]

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Chronic health problems have basically destroyed my happiness.

Oh, man, I forgot all about that. I thought the July 2020 Blog took care of that. I wish you full recovery!

[something_else]

18 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

Lighting yourself on fire isn’t a symptom of happiness. It takes a suffering and twisted mind to even think about something like that.

Detachment from the world and your desires does not mean you are free from suffering. That is what I think Buddhists get wrong. The Buddhist conception of enlightenment and happiness would only be applicable to 1% of humans. If only it was that easy.

You were talking about suffering previously, not happiness.

If you’re able to set yourself on fire without flinching then there probably isn’t much that can make you suffer. It also doesn’t mean you’re happy per se, just that you have transcended suffering.

In particular I was commenting on how you were saying that being able to transcend suffering is a fairytale, when really there is no way you could know that unless you’d tried literally every method in the universe to transcend suffering.

[Inliytened1]

10 hours ago, Vibes said:

Yeah, try to meditate with the flu or sleep deprived 

Yeah..we take good health and a good mental state for granted...that is until we lose it...then we appreciate it so much more.  

That's not to say you can't be happy with a chronic illness.  It's amazing how the human mind adapts.  But we do take for granted the little things- like being able to walk for example, or having healthy organs.   We get so picky with our material and egoic desires, yet we should just feel blessed that we are healthy and can be self sufficient at all.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Inliytened1

[Nilsi]

1 hour ago, r0ckyreed said:

Lighting yourself on fire isn’t a symptom of happiness. It takes a suffering and twisted mind to even think about something like that.

+1 

The fact that this gets glorified shows how twisted Buddhist psychology is.

[Gesundheit2]

Do not misunderstand the burning monk. Do not glorify it or idealize it, but also don't poo poo it. It is a feat that you cannot accomplish normally without drugs/anesthesia. It takes quite a lot of practice to be able to reach such states, but it's impractical to attempt to do so when you have cheap alternatives. It's not Buddhist psychology to just consume suffering mindlessly, but rather quite the opposite. But again, you don't need to work towards that in our modern age, because you're unlikely to experience massive pain. The alternative being putting your awareness to better use, not jerking off or playing video games.

[something_else]

22 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

+1 

The fact that this gets glorified shows how twisted Buddhist psychology is.

People don't glorify it per se, it's more pointing out that it's possible. It clearly requires some exceptional level of mental fortitude which the vast majority of people will never have, so it deserves some attention even if it's quite twisted.

If I remember right, many of them did it as protest against the mistreatment of their fellow people. Not dissimilar to suffragettes, for example.

[Israfil]

1 hour ago, r0ckyreed said:

Lighting yourself on fire isn’t a symptom of happiness. It takes a suffering and twisted mind to even think about something like that.

Detachment from the world and your desires does not mean you are free from suffering. That is what I think Buddhists get wrong. The Buddhist conception of enlightenment and happiness would only be applicable to 1% of humans. If only it was that easy.

The monk that set himself on fire was protesting against religious oppression in Tibet. 

[MarkKol]

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Chronic health problems have basically destroyed my happiness.

Why do you think you have these issues at such a young age?

[r0ckyreed]

37 minutes ago, Israfil said:

The monk that set himself on fire was protesting against religious oppression in Tibet. 

Apologies for appearing too judgmental and nearsighted about that. I was looking at it from a narrow perspective. The monk made a sacrifice for something greater, even if I don’t agree with his methods. I have great respect for the courage and kindness of Buddhist monks, but my concerns about “enlightenment as meaning the end of all suffering” still remains.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/thich-quang-duc-burning-monk

[SharingKnowledge]

3 hours ago, Stovo said:

If you can still be happy with poor health then by definition it's not "completely contingent on good health".

In which case we come full circle towards "suffering is imaginary". 

You can still be happy with poor health, but there still exists a poorer state of health that would meet your threshold for unhappiness.

Yes, there Exist extremely high levels of consciousness that can be in those poorer states and feel blissed out, but even those states have thresholds of suffering they cannot handle let alone enjoy

[SharingKnowledge]

3 hours ago, LSD-Rumi said:

@Leo GuraI understand that life can be very hard especially health issues, I my self have multiple mental ilnesses and still seriously consider suicide every couple of days  but what I don't understand is that you did like 300 trips and you meditated a lot, how on earth such things still affect your happiness, aren't you supposed to be invinciple . Maybe your relatively low baseline is the problem, maybe this shows greatly the limitations of the psychedelic approach Or is it that suffering cannot be practically transcended by humans?

It doesn't show the limitations of the psychedelic approach because we're not comparing to non-psychedelic approaches. Many guru's who never used psychedelics have suffered similar problems so you really can't extrapolate. Of course, it's easy to extrapolate if you live under the assumption that suffering can be absolutely solved by awakening, but this is obviously not true when we look at WHAT'S POSSIBLE as opposed to what's actually the case.

Leo has his health problems that cause suffering, but you'd be naive not to think there are problems 1000x worse. Or 100,000x worse. I don't think it's realistic to expect a human to enjoy that state no matter how enlightened they are. Even if they did somehow enjoy it, they're enjoying it DESPITE suffering, it's not like they're just not suffering at all.

[Nilsi]

1 hour ago, something_else said:

People don't glorify it per se, it's more pointing out that it's possible. It clearly requires some exceptional level of mental fortitude which the vast majority of people will never have, so it deserves some attention even if it's quite twisted.

If I remember right, many of them did it as protest against the mistreatment of their fellow people. Not dissimilar to suffragettes, for example.

I understand.

It's still very degenerate. Strikes me as similarly imbecile as these bug-eating climate activists vandalizing a Monet painting to spread awareness for their cause.

It's Life turning on itself, denying itself, destroying itself - pretty sick, if you ask me.

- and this is just a symptom of the underlying death wish and nihilism of the Buddhist.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Nilsi

[something_else]

6 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

I understand.

It's still very degenerate. Strikes me as similarly imbecile as these bug-eating climate activists vandalizing a Monet painting to spread awareness for their cause.

It's Life turning on itself, denying itself, destroying itself - pretty sick, if you ask me.

I don't think it's comparable. One is privileged people throwing a temper tantrum, possibly even paid by oil companies themselves to make activists look bad, the other is most likely coming from a place of deep empathy for their fellow people's troubles.

[Nilsi]

3 minutes ago, something_else said:

I don't think it's comparable. One is privileged people throwing a temper tantrum, possibly even paid by oil companies themselves to make activists look bad, the other is most likely coming from a place of deep empathy for their fellow people's troubles.

Yeah, not a great comparison.

The Buddhist is way more degenerate than those activists. They at least have some kind of purpose, even if it's twisted and not very noble. The Buddhist wants to end the flourishing of Life as a whole.

[SharingKnowledge]

I used to hold the view that awakening can be used to transcend suffering. Here's what happened to me.

A few years ago I was so awakened I had NO addictions, NO vices, I had 100% control over my mind, my body, my soul even. I could INTENSELY ego death from 5 minutes of sober meditation, and taking 50ug of LSD was a powerful 12-hour breakthrough experience. It's worth mentioning I have insane genetics when it comes to spirituality and have had many many spiritual experiences since before I was 10.

I could even enjoy (very) intense physical pain because it was recontextualized as love and a service to God (myself) in my mind. I reached a level of awakening that's honestly unnatural and unrealistic, every second of my life was like being on heroin. Nothing could hurt me.

I only realise now this level of awakening required an insane level of privilege and luck as well as a willingness to suffer that I only realize now I was taking completely for granted.

Something really terrible happened to me, one of the worst things that can happen to someone. I don't want to go into the nature of this, but it was so horrifically evil it made me suicidal every day for months (even as someone who identified as God and who had an incredible life purpose). I had multiple horror nightmares every night for months and even years after the event: therapy and multiple powerful psychedelic trips have still left me less than 10% of where I was at in terms of my embodiment.

Sure I got to keep many of the insights, but if anything that makes it hurt more. I have high hopes I will return to where I was one day, but Reality is brutal and sometimes you get smacked hard enough to set you back 5 years. Actually, I got lucky, because it could've just as well been 10 years, or my whole life. I think 99% of people in my situation would never recover, so yes I do still believe enlightenment can help you become much more resilient to suffering, but let's not get ahead of ourselves that we'll become completely "invincible" to the tangible (or even intangible) existence we live in.

Don't expect Leo to be some blissed-out always on heroin guy JUST BECAUSE he's awake, infinity will always go beyond your awakening.