fuck

When rock stars hit it big, a lot of them crash and burn because they'd been counting on fame and fortune filling the empty space. But it doesn't. It's an feeling of emptiness that you can try to anesthetize by distracting yourself, but that doesn't solve anything - it just lets you pretend for a while that the hole isn't there. It's actually worse the more comfortable you get--when you're struggling just to keep your head above water you can sometimes focus on that and forget about the hole (although this doesn't work for everybody).

The most common thing in our culture is to think that finding the right partner and getting married and having kids and a house and two cars will fill the hole, but it doesn't. A lot of marriages fail not because the husband and wife hate each other, or cheat on each other, but simply because once each one has succeeded in getting the spouse, the house, and the kids, they realize that the hole is still there. Since filling the whole was the purpose of the marriage and the kids, once they realize that it won't fill the hole, they either continue on in quiet desperation, or let it collapse.

The first step to finding fulfillment is to figure out where it can't come from. If this all sounds like nonsense to you, don't worry about it, but if it doesn't, it might be worth spending some of your precious meditation time thinking about this: can you in fact find fulfillment in any of the things that you're trying to do right now? How would that work? Why would it work?

I see the ignore function was a good way to go. lol

I'm gonna miss the game tomorrow and have to record it. I'll be at work and won't get home till late 3rd period.

Thanks man. I have a real good real life friend who is from Detroit who I used to work with here..we had fun last year..and having fun again this year..I'm tired of the Wings though lol

It's going to be intense.

So there are two ways to read what you said about not being afraid of death. One is that a lot of times we let our fear of death stop us from doing things that are important in some way. Another is that if we aren't afraid of death, we might take unreasonable risks for no good purpose, just because we aren't worried about the outcome.

To the extent that you are doing the first thing, I think that's very healthy. But it sounds from what you're saying like you're doing a fair bit of the second thing. Now, if life is meaningless, and death doesn't hurt, that makes sense. Why not go out with a bang?

But I don't think you really agree that life is meaningless. If you did, you wouldn't care about your grandmother. You wouldn't care about the situation in Detroit. You wouldn't remember your road trip fondly. All of these things are things about life that are meaningful.

You raise a very good point when you talk about paying back others' kindness. But consider this: suppose your way of looking at it is true. What form would you repaying my kindness take? What do I want from you, specifically?

Master Shantideva said something that I always find inspiring. It's going to seem a little bit off-topic in this context, but bear with me. He asked us to consider the situation where someone comes to us and beats us with a stick. Who do we get angry at?

The obvious answer is that we get angry at the person who beat us with the stick. But why does that make any more sense than getting angry at the stick? Why is the person beating us with the stick? It is because they are angry at us. They are as helplessly controlled by their anger as the stick is by their hands. So just as we do not get angry at the stick, we have no reason to get angry at them either. Our true enemy is anger itself.

What does this have to do with repaying kindness? This: you are experiencing a lot of bad shit in your life right now. This is causing you pain. Your pain is just like my pain, just as your anger is just like my anger. The pain is not okay, for me, just because it is you who are feeling it. So when I act in hopes of reducing your pain, I am really being selfish, because I am fighting my own enemy: pain.

So the kindest way you can repay me is to take up the battle with me. To act against the causes of the pain that you are feeling, so that you feel less pain, and perhaps someday you are entirely liberated from your pain.

So why am I fighting your pain, and not my own? Am I free of pain? No. Of course not. But it happens that, according to the Buddha's teachings, and to Jesus' and Saint Francis', when I take up the fight against your pain, I am also fighting my own.

If you look at St. Francis of Assisi's famous prayer, the one in that lovely song that Sarah McLachlan did for the season six finale of Buffy, a naive reading of it is that we should just sacrifice our own happiness for the sake of others' happiness. But that's not a correct reading of the prayer. In fact, as you noticed when you brought food to that homeless man, being kind to others brings a special kind of joy.

We are taught in our culture to look out for number one. It's so pervasive that when I first started practicing Buddhism I had this weird realization that I'd finally been given permission not to be an asshole anymore. That I'd actually internalized an entire complex of behaviors as I was growing up about "not being a chump," and that these behaviors were making me unhappy, and hurting the people around me.

So what do you do next? I don't know. What do you think about this teaching from Master Shantideva?

By the way, when you say that you have no marketable skills, I'm curious - do you have skills that you don't consider marketable? I guess you aspire to be a tattoo artist, and you've been working on drawing, but is there anything besides that that you find interesting? I think becoming an artist is somewhat underrated as a profession, but I know from friends who've gone down that road that it helps to have other things to do that you love along with your art.

How can this be a new favorite. It is the best movie ever made

what the fuck?? come crawling back did ya? didn't come back to much. i don't know about the group anymore. i pretty much done with the site. got into a fight with an SG and was hoping to get zotted. apparently i'm not even worth that much effort.

hey man! how's it goin?

You have been missed

i would be lying right now if i didn't say that i am incredibly jealous of your tattoo work. just letting ya know.

good luck hun.

I wish you nothing but positive things man. I have so many good friends in the same boat, it's a fucking shame good folk can't find good work.