Adumbra wrote:You never responded to the question about traveling to those places. If you haven't explored the world completely, how can you complain that life is boring to the point of ending your life prematurely? You need to really examine the situation and reflect on the fact that you probably haven't even experienced a fraction of what life has to offer. So your analysis is disturbingly incomplete.
It is true that I have not traveled around the world. But I have been around nearly all the U.S.A (including Hawaii), Canada, and the United Kingdom. I've also explored other cultures in books, through television, and by talking to people. What I see is that, on a superficial level, people are different, but on a fundamental level they are all very much the same.
Sorry Adumbra, but this doesn't cut it! Before I traveled to Nepal, India, Israel, Brazil, Guatemala, Austria, Greece, France, Qatar, Egypt, etc. I had also "explored other cultures in books, through television, and by talking to people." This is just not in any way comparable. That's like saying you know what chocolate tastes like because you saw a chocolate commercial once on TV! Please, try to have some interesting life-experiences before you start posturing the "i've done it all and it's boring and I will die now" rhetoric again, OK?
on a superficial level, people are different, but on a fundamental level they are all very much the same.
Let's talk about it when you've lived in some of these places for at lease a few months each. Anyway, it's not just about the people: it's about taking in new sensations, smells, energies, sights, spirits, sounds, tastes-- everything in some of these places conspires to shift the entire psychic nervous system into uncharted territory. But you need to be open to it.
For example. Every culture has its own idea of what it considers proper sexual behavior. Every sexual deviation you can think of: homosexuality, pedophilia, zoophilia, pedarasty, even rape is considered or has been considered 'normal' in certain cultures. And yet, all these cultures have also condemned certain types of sexuality which they considered immoral. Thus, I conclude that it is human nature to persecute certain sexual minorities and this will happen in whatever culture humans might create.
This is just intellectual rubbish. Please have some visceral real-life experiences! See the world!
Certainly, there are some things I intend to see before I off myself. I very much want to visit Rome and Florence and take in the art there. I'd also like to climb a mountain and get a little skiing in before I die
Great! Now we're talking! I suggest making a bigger "bucket list" and try to get a bit more interesting -both with locations and activities.
There are also some hard drugs I haven't experimented with yet such as ecstasy and LSD. However, I am certain that these wishes will not take more than a few weeks to fulfill. And what then?
Once thing you have overlooked: the nature of existence is change. Your mind is always changing, as is your body, as is everything around you that you relate to. Your self-perception may be in a habitual rut, but this also can change, given time and opportunity. If you try LSD, or shrooms, or Ayhuasca, etc. inevitably something will shift. I am not recommending these things.. but I did plenty when I was young which forever changed my experience of life and this world. The same with travel. If you have never been to Varanasi, in India... (Benares) then that is a mystical power spot that everyone needs to experience once in their life for instance. I can add more to your list if you're interested.
What can you offer someone like me who can go into meditation for a few minutes and experience the equivalent of a really good marijuanna high? Or can jerk off tantric style and experience multiple orgasms that could make the Marquis de Sade jealous? I'm capable of having a lucid dream any time I want and doing any thing I want, experiencing sensations so vivid that I cannot distinguish them from waking life. What does this world have to offer someone like me? It has nothing to tempt me with. Nothing to threaten me with. What purpose is there in living when anything I desire, I can have instantly and anything I can't have instantly, I don't desire? Life simply becomes a series of pleasant sensations that add up to zero. There's got to be something beyond... hedonism.
I can offer you the perspective that your triumphalist vision of your experiences is completely myopic, and does not betray much in the way of what the great mahasiddhas relate as the core of spiritual experience. The boredom of "same-taste" that you describe while you glorify your experiences seems clearly to be quite opposite of the "same-taste" pointed to by the great Dzogchen masters who are always palpably happy, content, realized, and yet who always refrain from claiming any great experience or realization at all.
As for your suggestion that I dedicate my life to helping others, I must tell you that I have given the thought serious consideration and have even tried to put it into practice, but my experiences have been ambivalent at best.
Mixed results in the beginning is no reason to abandon the enterprise.
The sad fact is that most people are not willing to renounce the things that are causing them pain nor are they willing to accept that pain as the price of their attachment. And so they are unhappy all their lives.
True!
Then there are the truly innocent sufferers. The starving child. The AIDS patient. The criminal. I can help individuals like this to an extent, but I cannot abolish the social and economic conditions which cause their burdens. Yes, I suppose I could dedicate myself to helping people like this. It would be a noble endeavor that would keep me occupied forever (I'm reminded of the myth of Avolikiteshvara). Maybe you are right.
Avalokitesvara is a great one to emulate. This is the wish and occupation of the Bodhisattva. But it is best to cultivate compassion for both material and mental suffering.. (even those you deem "guilty".. but you need to start somewhere.. equanimity and patience are something to put on the back burner for now, maybe.)
Going without food for a week, in my experience, clears the mind and lifts depression like nothing else can. If, after a week's fast, I felt great but still didn't feel like sticking around here for another century, then any subsequent delusions from then on would be irrelevent. Going without food for 6 weeks might lead to delusions, but by then the decision to die would have already been made, so what of them?
Anyway, if you don't see the illogic that I pointed to, I don't know how else to say it.
You personally not eating meat a few times a week from the super-market is really not going to save any animals. This is just a simple reality.
I agree. It is simply an ethical principle for me. I don't want to participate in it, even if my non-participation does nothing to change the system.
Fair enough.. but I am sure there are many ways you participate that you aren't even aware of. Anyway, this is getting off topic.
Adamantine, you've been a worthy nemesis.
