But is the sadness of being alone anything else apart from the desire for company? Is there any other component?
There might be other desires/aversions involved: insecurity, fear, boredom, usw. But if all desire were absent, would there be loneliness?
Yes, thatâs the question. Not just loneliness, but anger, sadness, envy, jealousy and all the other strange emotions that we are prone to. Arenât they all covering over this sense of desire to move away from the actuality of what and where we think we are? Behind most of our emotions there seems to be a strong element of self-pity, of disaffection with the state in which we seem to find ourselves. This personal sense of self-pity then clouds how we look at all those other things in our lives that are really going wrong on a national or a global scale.
They are always reactions to desire/aversion.
Sometimes they are strategies for avoiding the pain of a thwarted desire/aversion. If I desire a promotion and donât get it, rather than feel the pain of loss, I might get hateful and spread damaging rumors about the guy who got promoted.
But sometimes they are the pain. In the same situation, I might feel the loss as sadness.
Is there any psychological pain that is not thwarted desire? And desire must involve an image.
No. Which means that I am desire/aversion, as the Buddhists have known for centuries.
Aversion to what? What is it from which we turn away?
Aversion is desire inverted. Fundamentally, the two are one.
I donât know. Perhaps there is psychological pain that arises from a misunderstanding of the nature of reality, of how things (including us) really work.
At the bottom of any misunderstanding is still the desire to understand, the desire to know how things work. Is this desire to understand and to know what motivates our learning?
So what is the well-spring of desire? Not what the Buddhists say, but actually for ourselves. How shall we learn about it?
Ignorance, then: Perhaps there is psychological pain that arises from ignorance of the nature of reality.
Yes. But that might not be the whole story. Learning might be the natural activity of a healthy brain-mind.
I wouldnât call it ignorance. The nature of reality may be eternally unknowable. Any mind that thinks of itself as ignorant will either just give up on this, accepting its own ignorance, or it will continue seeking knowledge, which is the rejection of its own ignorance. Is it possible for this same mind not to form a single image about what it should do next?
In fact, is there really a maybe? Now we have said it, it seems fairly obvious that the nature of reality must be unknowable.
Depends what knowable means. If it is possible to know anything fully, it might be possible to know the nature of reality fully. Personally, I doubt either is possible.
It would have to be dead to know it fully because anything alive is constantly changing. Thatâs obvious, isnât it?
We donât even know what it is that we donât know - how can this be painful? - if there is something missing, if we are desperately wanting something, its more probable its some idea we know of, something weâve invented
The need to solve a problem. There are countless practical problems I must find satisfactory solutions for, but desire creates problems that are practical only for the self-centered mind. Desire is the incentive to solve problems that exist only in oneâs mind, not outwardly obvious. But this doesnât mean that desire is evil or perverse, and it doesnât mean desire must end. It means that every desire must be examined closely enough to determine what drives it. Not every desire comes from the same âwellspringâ.
For instance, if one feels the desire to do or say something, the effect of which is unpredictable, should one refrain for fear of offending, or act to follow through and find out?
Again, it depends what you mean by knowing. You can know about anger ⌠how it is triggered, blossoms, evolves, and fades ⌠but it is constantly changing.
Could you explain what you mean by knowing?
Say I believe with utter certainty, I know I am an isolated human being disconnected from the universe and everything that inhabits it. I suffer tremendously from this: loneliness, fear, self-pity, rage, despair. Itâs a false belief like this Iâm calling ignorance. If you werenât ignorant, youâd know that you are in fact connected with everyone and everything. Likewise, our ignorance of what makes the self tick causes great anguish.
I donât know whether we are isolated or connected. Thatâs the only fact. Knowledge doesnât even come into it. Knowledge is irrelevant in this area of questioning. I may believe this or that, that I am isolated or connected, but thatâs all. So it is our beliefs that keep us isolated and connected. Physically, geographically, we are all separated from one another. When we come here, we are together in this virtual, internet sense. Or we gather together at a certain place and meet in person. But the moment we say, âNow we are together with the universe,â thatâs just another belief. Our knowledge of the fact destroys the fact. So can the fact destroy the knower, the believer, the learner? Then it all makes far more sense. The fact is we donât know. And the learner is trying to change the fact; whereas it is the learner himself who must change.