How does the average American live in The Way?

[blue eyed snake]

nice music! brings me back to other times.

 

About spinning,

before i fell ill i regularly was spinning like a sufi in the dojo.

My teacher once told me that it helps to open certain channels.

[Karl]

You're kind of right! Pleasure is neither tangible nor intangible but a basic property of reality. It is reality, felt.

 

Now the problem comes when we symbolise this fundamental pleasure in the form of, say, a sports car and then go seeking the symbol. If someone scrapes a key along our sports car we imagine that our pleasure has been spoiled. This is the illusion. Pleasure cannot be found nor lost, ultimately.

If someone shapes our sports car we lose a value- the nice finish on our car-we feel anger/sadness at the loss. There is no sadness or anger intrinsic to the car, so it isn't an existent concrete reality. We feel the pain as an attempt to damage our survival based on the principle value we hold-our lives.

 

So, seeking pleasure as the standard of value against which all other values are judged we end up doing things that might be pleasurable but are also damaging such as drugs, over eating and high risk taking.

 

All I'm saying is that pleasure/pain is not a good determinant of what our goals and actions should be, it can only be a value as a guide after we have done the right thing in accordance with our values and hence reality. We must first use our minds correctly to achieve and hold values through following a code of principles-ethics. Then pleasure is the reward for achieving the values. It's a value itself, but it isn't a principle value, it's a secondary.

Edited April 19, 2016 by Karl

[Karl]

ah, but the shared pleasure of eating a meal, or looking at something beautiful at least doubles the pleasure of the participants.

It's not only shared pleasure, but makes it grow.

 

What are you actually sharing though ? If you were sat with a bitter enemy intent on sprinkling arsenic on your food or stabbing you under the table would you double the pleasure then ? ;-)

 

So, a meal within a friend is good because we value the company as opposed to eating alone, but we can only value the company if we also value their values-otherwise we would happily invite random strangers and get exactly the same pleasure as we would with a good friend.

 

 

[Karl]

 

Does Karl like Kansas, I wonder?

 

I know he's a prog fan like me, good old Karl.

 

 

...

 

Enjoyed that. I've heard it before but not from specifically listening to Kansas, but it's a well known track. I'm still very much a prog rocker at heart though and seek it out coupled to other kinds of music-like Janes Addiction, NIN, Meat Puppets, Metallica, Opeth .........and too many others to name.

[Michael Sternbach]

The average American doesn't live in The Way.