Is Spirituality Perfectible?
What’s “detachment?” What’s “enlightenment?” Who’s not in favor of constant joy – but does it exist?
Parts one and two below are abridged from a post by Avani Mehta and from our exchange of comments on her thread. Below that are some further thoughts.
Thanks, Avani, for such a thoughtful post and blog. I very much agree with the main point of Avani’s post – that the happiest and most productive mental state for getting work done is to focus on the work-process itself and not its possible future effects, particularly its effects on us.
I. Isn’t the Joy of Doing Enough? (excerpted from Avani’s post)
Shouldn’t it be enough …
That you get joy from doing what you do?
Why do you care to succeed …
How does it matter if you fail?
Doesn’t the joy of doing nullify both anyways?
Why should there be a reason for what you do …
Why should you get something out of it?
II. Detachment and Joy (from Avani’s comments thread)
Paul: Joy in the process of doing work that one performs from out of love for others and the wider world brings deep peace - whether it succeeds or not. Still, one does desire the success of one’s best efforts and those of others. And there is some sadness when these are defeated, although that sadness does not override peace.
Avani: I still haven’t reached there but I know a few people who can detach themselves from the outcome and do whatever’s required. I can only imagine what joy they must feel – to constantly work on what they want without worrying about what happens next or whether things will work out the way they want. I do agree that working out of love for others will bring joy and world wide deep peace.
Further Thoughts
Desire: Two Kinds
I see two very different kinds of desire that can motivate us to do work. “Worrying about what happens next or whether things will work out the way we want” – agitation of this kind comes from egoistic desire. Egoistic desire is desire that one experiences for the sake of the self as a thing apart from the rest of life, as in…
I’m doing this for me – so I won’t be “a failure,” so I can leave my “legacy,” mark, imprint. Or, for more materially-minded egos, “so I can get stuff.”
But there is another kind of desire that is truly for the sake of the well being of others and the wider world. If this second kind of desire didn’t exist, then work that entails great personal difficulty, risk, long odds for success, or that promises nothing by way of private or personal reward would rarely if ever be done. This second sort of desire comes from love and perhaps ultimately from an aspect of us that runs still deeper.
Love’s Desire and Sadness – or Compassion – and the Question of Enlightenment’s Meaning
If work attempted from out of our love’s desire for the larger world’s well being substantially fails, then I think there is necessarily an initial response of sadness upon realizing this. I can't imagine, for example, that the Dalai Lama has never felt moments of sadness as he witnesses events in Tibet. Perhaps compassion is a better word than sadness, since the feeling I refer to is fundamentally still and at rest. Because whether we succeed or fail, it’s impossible to regret our love’s best efforts. The peace and integrity that comes with making that effort absorbs sadness like tears falling into an ocean.
Yet sadness is real and it is a different thing from joy.
Even work that involves a great deal of joy also includes partial failures and times of unpleasantness. To experience ego-detachment from the outcome of one's work doesn’t mean that one exists in a perpetual state of joy.
Sometimes the concept of enlightenment is used in ways that seem to suggest that it consists of the attainment of perpetual joy; I don’t think that this can be the case.
Parts one and two below are abridged from a post by Avani Mehta and from our exchange of comments on her thread. Below that are some further thoughts.
Thanks, Avani, for such a thoughtful post and blog. I very much agree with the main point of Avani’s post – that the happiest and most productive mental state for getting work done is to focus on the work-process itself and not its possible future effects, particularly its effects on us.
I. Isn’t the Joy of Doing Enough? (excerpted from Avani’s post)
Shouldn’t it be enough …
That you get joy from doing what you do?
Why do you care to succeed …
How does it matter if you fail?
Doesn’t the joy of doing nullify both anyways?
Why should there be a reason for what you do …
Why should you get something out of it?
II. Detachment and Joy (from Avani’s comments thread)
Paul: Joy in the process of doing work that one performs from out of love for others and the wider world brings deep peace - whether it succeeds or not. Still, one does desire the success of one’s best efforts and those of others. And there is some sadness when these are defeated, although that sadness does not override peace.
Avani: I still haven’t reached there but I know a few people who can detach themselves from the outcome and do whatever’s required. I can only imagine what joy they must feel – to constantly work on what they want without worrying about what happens next or whether things will work out the way they want. I do agree that working out of love for others will bring joy and world wide deep peace.
Further Thoughts
Desire: Two Kinds
I see two very different kinds of desire that can motivate us to do work. “Worrying about what happens next or whether things will work out the way we want” – agitation of this kind comes from egoistic desire. Egoistic desire is desire that one experiences for the sake of the self as a thing apart from the rest of life, as in…
I’m doing this for me – so I won’t be “a failure,” so I can leave my “legacy,” mark, imprint. Or, for more materially-minded egos, “so I can get stuff.”
But there is another kind of desire that is truly for the sake of the well being of others and the wider world. If this second kind of desire didn’t exist, then work that entails great personal difficulty, risk, long odds for success, or that promises nothing by way of private or personal reward would rarely if ever be done. This second sort of desire comes from love and perhaps ultimately from an aspect of us that runs still deeper.
Love’s Desire and Sadness – or Compassion – and the Question of Enlightenment’s Meaning
If work attempted from out of our love’s desire for the larger world’s well being substantially fails, then I think there is necessarily an initial response of sadness upon realizing this. I can't imagine, for example, that the Dalai Lama has never felt moments of sadness as he witnesses events in Tibet. Perhaps compassion is a better word than sadness, since the feeling I refer to is fundamentally still and at rest. Because whether we succeed or fail, it’s impossible to regret our love’s best efforts. The peace and integrity that comes with making that effort absorbs sadness like tears falling into an ocean.
Yet sadness is real and it is a different thing from joy.
Even work that involves a great deal of joy also includes partial failures and times of unpleasantness. To experience ego-detachment from the outcome of one's work doesn’t mean that one exists in a perpetual state of joy.
Sometimes the concept of enlightenment is used in ways that seem to suggest that it consists of the attainment of perpetual joy; I don’t think that this can be the case.
Posted by Paul at 1:06 PM Permalink
19 Comments:
When I think about this subject, I imagine someone perhaps trying to help people in desperate trouble, in poverty or disease or slavery, etc. If one's efforts fail and all one feels is a sort of peaceful sadness, then that's a sign their ego is involved. If one is actually caring about those they are trying to help, the failure of that help and the suffering that would ensue whould cause anger, grief, etc.
Sometimes it seems to me that people who value detachment care more about maintaining their tranquility than they do about others. The meaning of the word compassion is com (with) passion (suffering) - suffering with.
End of rant :)
As for love's desire/sadness...this is something which I have felt...when I see something I feel really sad about, but when I start writing , I find that it all has a certain "sense" and that by asking those questions/pointing out those things I can find a sense of joy.
/* Sometimes the concept of enlightenment is used in ways that seem to suggest that it consists of the attainment of perpetual joy; I don’t think that this can be the case.*/
/*
Joy in the process of doing work that one performs from out of love for others and the wider world brings deep peace - whether it succeeds or not. Still, one does desire the success of one’s best efforts and those of others. And there is some sadness when these are defeated, although that sadness does not override peace.
*/
We are always selfish its either for this 'I' or any 'I' we see ourselves...
My son was a budding artist at the age of three. He loved art. He loved the process. He loves the process today. Even at that young age of three if his artistic endeavors did not bring results that met his expectations he would get angry and tear the piece up that he was working on. He might do that a dozen times at one sitting until he got it right in his estimation. To this day he exhibits that kind of response, which I would call an angry frustration, to work he has done that does not measure up to his standards.
Of course my son has an ego like the rest of us, but whatever was working in him at that young age and whatever continues to work in him to this day, can't be written off to ego I don't think. It is something else in him that causes him to seek excellent results, to seek excellence. I understand gifted children experience this same kind of angry frustration when whatever they are doing does not approach perfection. So I am wondering if this is something we do not want to discourage in the gifted among us. Just a thought.
peace,
mike
livelife365
I agree with your compassion/sadness differentiation. Compassion has an element of sadness in it but it is tempered with hope.
as for loving what one does, I believe if we look for it we'll find an element of satisfaction in doing any job well, no matter what it is, much the way we look at people for the best in them despite the worst. perhaps that's that "aspect of us that runs still deeper" that you mention.
Trying to do good comes from love. If those efforts fail, then subsequent inner rants that stay “stuck” don't come from the same source. (See my reply to Vishesh.)
Vishesh – I think I’d need to hear more about what you mean by the word “attached” to understand what you’re getting at on this...
You mention the activity of writing as helping take you out of sadness that can be associated with love. I think that’s one of the characteristics of love-associated grief: love processes grief and moves on. If it’s a major source of sadness it’s a longer process, but it’s still a process. It resolves.
In contrast, an outraged ego perseverates with the same rants – they tend to become more angry and resentful than sad – for decades or even a lifetime. We stay “stuck” – processing doesn’t happen. And that’s a really good sign that more than love’s sadness is involved in our response to an issue.
At least that’s how it’s worked for me…
We’re always selfish by definition I suppose – wherever we’re coming from, it’s ourselves. But there’s a big difference between feeling, thought and action that’s egocentric and feeling, thought and action that comes from the place in us where we connect to the wider world.
Susie – “You are probably enjoying the process if you lose track of time during the process whatever that may be.”
Good observation of something that I bet many of us have experienced. That may be a real hallmark of creativity – that while one is being creative, in those moments, one loses track of time.
On the rest of it, my guess is that generally this is a situation where you can have your cake and eat it too. Angry bouts of frustration aren’t necessary to the creative process itself. You can lose that and still be creative. In fact, the more attuned you become to your own creative process, the less unsatisfactory stuff you tend to produce anyway.
Of course everyone is unique and everyone has an ego that expresses itself in different ways/degrees, some of that does little to no harm, and your son’s probably doing exactly what he needs to be doing.
Mike – Sounds right to me. I’d just add that peace and joy are separable. Harsh enough circumstances impose limits on joy, yet under these same circumstances, peace can continue to grow.
Pauline – “I believe if we look for it we'll find an element of satisfaction in doing any job well, no matter what it is…”
I think I see what you mean here. In my own work life, there were some aspects of my job that I didn’t much care for. But when I abated my complaints to myself about them, I found that those aspects I disliked became less disagreeable. In fact, eventually I came to acquire better skills and actually enjoy some of the aspects of my work that I’d disliked early in my career.
Here's a pertinent quotation:
What a wonderful world this is, that joy is a signpost that points us in the right direction. How wonderful that the prescription for a happy life is to follow our joy, and not the opposite. -Gina Lake
Hinduism says that nature tracks all your good and bad deeds. And you get fruits/returns of both of them. When neither good deed or bad deed remains on which you are supposed to get returns, you attain nirvana. Till you don't get nirvana, your cycle of life & death continues. The good/bad deed is popularly known as karma.
You need to have good amount of good deeds for getting a better life in your rebirth.
Jainism has the same philosophy as well. The enlightened beings are known as Tirthankaras.
Buddhism says that we attain enlightenment when we can view good & bad feelings with detachment. When we can see whatever comes our way as temporary and we don't desire or run away from it, we attain enlightenment. Every time we react, we sow a seed - and we have to go through the same thing again and again till we don't learn to detach.
This is a very Buddhist view I think, and reading it over it actually pains me a bit because of course I think it's impossible to discuss, and I'm getting a bit to intellectual/metaphysical as usual. But there's also value in trying I think.
Would the Buddha be considered not quite enlightened and are Tirthankaras considered to be other worldly beings, so to speak? I’ve read that in rejecting an attempt on the part of some of his monks to divinize him, the Buddha explained that he continued to struggle with holding to his own Eightfold Path...
Also, something I’ve wondered about… did Buddhism come from Hinduism? Was the Buddha himself originally Hindu? I hope that by now divinity schools in the US pay much more attention to eastern religions. When I was a student, the focus was almost exclusively on Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
From what I’ve experienced and what I can extrapolate, I know there is a state of profound detachment from self – I have experienced this as a cessation of identifying with myself. I become no one special. It is an expansive and awesome sense of presence. It is very hard to put into words.
I should say that I’ve experienced this as temporary suspensions of my more usual states of mind. And while this kind of experience has had a pervasive influence on how I’ve led my life and spent my time in my more usual states of mind, it’s hard for me to imagine any person being this way all the time and functioning in the world.
Mommy Mystic – As you can see in my reply to Avani, it looks like we view this similarly, especially when you refer to how being human includes various depths – and, it seems to me, not spending all one’s time focused on the deepest depths due to those functional requirements of life that you refer to.
A wonderful question. I don't know. I decided when I started this journey to rely only on direct experience. Everything else can be useful as pointers, but they are always someone else's concepts.
In my experience, I have
1. expanded awareness. Many people meditate; I don't; it's more effective, and easier, for me to be in a meditate state of "passive watchfulness" all my waking hours. It becomes effortless.
2. Release. I use my own release method--there are others like Sedona and EFT. Releasing can help us feel better, right here, right now.
3. The biggest obstacle I see to knowing Truth is the clinging to concepts. This shows up in many ways. I am very interested, for example, in the Hindu/Vedic theories of existence: Maya, lila, Brahma, etc...but this is not personal experience, just theories, and I don't take them seriously.As Tseng-tse said "don not seek truth; only cease to cherish opinion."
At some point, the whole thing runs on its own, effortlessly.
Does this lead to happiness for everyone? I can't say. I am happier and more peaceful than I was. I am not completely free of problems. I handle depression/anxiety/addictions much better than I did, but I am not completely past it. I handle the usual struggles of life--money, job, relationships, no-job --much better than I would have.
In the end, "can everyone be happy", is impossible to answer. I can say, based on my experience, that with awareness and release, many of us can be happier than we were.
Does it matter? If you are not enlightened, then the best you can do is have concepts about enlightenment is, and this will be an obstacle to your growth. I would say get into the flow of awakening, where awareness expands effortlessly, and don't worry about when enlightenment happens in linear time, or if there is even such a thing.
I have never really stopped to wonder which religion Budhha was from. Although it would be wrong to say Buddha because Buddha actually means 'the enlightened one'. The one whom we call Budhha is Siddhartha Gautama.
One major difference between Buddhism and Hinduism is that in Buddhism there is no God who creates and regulates the world. Buddha rejected people proclaiming him as God. Hinduism has 100+ gods - mostly because they worship all incarnations of God as well. Hinduism believes Lord Bramha, Vishnu and (I forget name of the third one) together created this world.
Buddhism & Jainism are quite similar. Jainism too doesn't believe in God - one who creates and manages this world. Tirthankaras are those who have attained Moksh (Nirvana), who are released from the cycle of life & death. We worship them almost like Gods.
Ultimately I think all themes talk about becoming compassionate and becoming love. Not because of someone else but because that's who we are. When we embrace everything that is, we are making progress towards enlightenment.
I know Christianity talks about walking the path that Jesus shared - which is ultimately of becoming love.
I have heard that the term Musalman (one who follows Islam) actually means 'complete faith' and 'pure conscience/heart'. When the meaning is so beautiful, I am sure their Koran too must speak about love.
(Actually, I don't think any religion would encourage otherwise)
Have you read works of Dr Brian Weiss, Lee Carrol? Powerful stuff. I like their angle to this as well.
Avani – Yes… however, so far you’re the only person I’ve met who can remember how to spell “Siddhartha Gautama!”
“Ultimately I think all themes talk about becoming compassionate and becoming love.” Seems so to me too – that all the major religions of the world sound these themes. In practice – and sometimes in theory too – they deviate from this. My best guess is that’s because religions are owned and operated by human beings, including, at times, seriously flawed human beings.
Haven’t had a chance to read those authors --
Thanks for sharing.
Giovanna Garcia
Imperfect Action is better than No Action
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