From: Frater-Nigris@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Why not indulge ?  (long)
Date: 7 Apr 92 08:02:22 GMT
Organization: ----


Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The word of Sin is Restriction.



Wong comments about the reasons NOT to over-indulge.  I respond.


I hope you people will support the discussion with comments and
criticisms. Warning : This posting is not well organized.


Response:

Well, I was part of the people who argued for the 'other side', as you
say, so I'm almost OBLIGATED to comment here.  You may find what I say
surprising.


Wong:

First of all, by "indulgence", I do not mean "indulging in the pleasures
of a quiet afternoon". Specifically, I mean "excessive pursuit of sensory
pleasures". Note that this does not necessary mean that a person born into a 
very well to do family is committing indulgence. It is the "constant and
relentless pursuit and striving for" which I am going after. OK ... so 


Response:

This makes sense to me.  I don't ever remember meeting anyone who fit this
description.  Most of them I've known just LIKED to indulge.  They didn't
engage a 'constant and relentless pursuit and striving for' the experience.
So we are discussing something rather extreme here.  Setting out the boundary
between what is healthy and what is dangerous, rather than what is orthodox
and what is strange or 'heretical'.


Wong:

"Why not indulge in sensory pleasures ?" 


1. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything must be "paid" 
for in turn and in time. It comes as no big surprise that the bigger the 
sensory pleasure, the higher its price - a fundamental principle of economics.
Very often, one is required almost literally to "sell one's soul to the devil".


Response:

This sounds rather extreme to me.  You seem to generalize to all of us, rather
than speaking to the over-indulgent.

I agree that over-indulgence carries a price.  However, I ask you to describe
for me what the price of a pleasant romp in bed during an afternoon with a
lover is?  What is the 'price' of eating a single spoon of ice cream?  Where 
does the pleasure begin to carry a 'price'?  You say that 'there is no such
thing as a free lunch'.  I find this a pessimistic attitude with no basis
in reality.  Please justify such a comprehensive claim.  Thanks.



Wong:
 
2. Behind every joy or acquisition is a deep fear that it will end and
it will. The bigger the joy the bigger that fear. Mayor Chamlong of Bangkok
said, "When I was young, I wanted a big luxury car. I worked very hard for it
and I finally got what I want. But it only brought me more suffering - every
scratch on its shining coat of paint was like a deep cut in my heart." His moto
now ? "Eat Less, Spend Less, Work Harder !"


Response:

This is very interesting.  I like this idea and think it may be a perfect
description of 'dukkha', suffering.  What about when a joy becomes a pain?
Getting a massage at noon may be extremely joyous.  Having a massage for
a week becomes painful.  There comes a time when my joy becomes pain and
I cease to want THAT pleasure.  This would seem an exception (a small one)
to your rather extensive claim.


Wong:

3. It is a "big hole". A basic tenet of modern economics is "resources
are limited but wants are not." Furthermore, "poor men want to be rich, rich
men want to be kings and kings are not satisfied till they rule the world". In
fact, not only is it a big hole in the sense that it can never be satisfied but
its "entrance" is "enlarged" each time we throw something in its direction. The
reason is a deep one and psychoanalysts have the following to say,


Response:

The question is, HOW do we heal that hole?  If you say to starve it and I say
to overfeed it, how do we determine which is better?  Is it a relative value
which each must decide for themself?  I tend to think so.  Yet the way you
come off here and the way that most 'experts' are content to portray
it is ALWAYS best to starve that hole.  I think this, along with the previous
answer (#2) exemplifies the unbalanced asceticism of the times.


Wong:

"Control by the intellect over nature, and the production of more and
more things, became the paramount aims of life. In this process man has
transformed himself into a thing, life has become subordinated to
property, TO BE is dominated by TO HAVE. Whereas the roots of Western
culture, both Greek and Hebrew, considered the aim of life the 
PERFECTION OF MAN, modern man is concerned with the PERFECTION OF
THINGS, and the knowledge of how to make them. Western man is in a 
state of schizoid inability to experience affect, hence he is anxious,
depressed, and desperate. He still pays lip service to the aims of
happiness, individualism, initiative - but actually he has no aim. Ask
him what he is living for, what is the aim of all his strivings - and
he will be embarassed. Some may say they live for the family, others,
"to have fun", still others, to make money, but in reality nobody
knows what he is living for; he has no goal, except the wish to escape
insecurity and aloneness." [Eric Fromm]


Response:

Again a pessimistic response.  We're all losers and confused.  While this
may indeed be true, do you think that anybody who pays for their 10-second
sound-bytes will listen to you?  Asceticism is the way of the desperate.
Give a suffering person a tranquilizer and a scalpel.  Tell them that they
can either attempt to operate, taking a great risk at failure, or that
they can inject themselves and numb out to the pain (and that this needle
will be available to them at their request), and I'll bet in our society
they'll select the needle nine times out of ten.  They ALREADY DO THIS
every time they turn on their 'teevee' sets.  And the 'teevee' tells them
that needles and pills will SOLVE their problems.  This is much easier
to hear than the above.

I say that we ought to co-opt the needle!  Find a way to use the needle to
reign in, to bring awareness.  Even in small doses.  What if we switched
the serum in the needle for an awareness stimulant?  I'm not sure I know
how to translate the analogy into reality, but the point stands.  What may
be true will not always serve as useful communications to the masses OR to
certain subsets of 'the religious'.



Wong:

Yet, I may add this inner insecurity, aloneness and the whole contradiction of
life cannot be solved by "having more". It may be temporarily suppressed but it
is not the cure.


Response:

Have you experimented with this?  I mean, how do you KNOW that there is no
cure in 'more'?  What evidence do you have for this?  Most people who I've
spoken with (in person and via computer) are simply parrotting the orthodox
here.  Asceticism gone blind.  Like a train with out a rail, it will crash
sooner or later.  I'm not planning to be on that train.  Most traditions
have lost their Heart and know very little about what it is to be human.


Wong:

4. While on the pschoanalysis thing, let me point out that according
to Freud, the pursuit for sensory pleasures issues directly from the Id - the
childish, immature side of man. Freud do not consider any activities of the Id
to be the "higher" goal. We must progress to the Ego - the reasoning side. 
According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, pursuit of sensory fulfillments
whether physical (such as hunger) or social, are in the lower hierarchy. At the
peak is self-actualization (quite close to self perfection). Indulgence, i.e. 
an obsession with the lower need hierarchy, does not lead to the higher
fulfillments. It is like a refusal to graduate from grammar school.


Response:

This seems rather off to me.  It's not just that I represent another
perspective here.  I'm passingly familiar with Freud and Maslow and so I'll giv
e
a different reaction to their ideas.

Freud is not often considered seriously in modern psychological circles due
to his rather extreme point of view with respect to people.  Everything 
revolves around sex and repression.  For him and for countless other people
with 'Victorian values', this is a useful model.  For the rest of us who
also want to see some suggested direction which has meaning to us, we are
left with Jung, Maslow and others.  These latter are seemingly in different 
camps, opposed to Freud.  This may not be entirely true of Jung, but Maslow's
Hierarchy seems somewhat at odds with Freuds ideas.

Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is a description of the psychological environment.
We MUST fulfil our rudimentary (what you call 'lower') needs before we can
move on to the social and then 'transcendental' needs.  For those who find
no satisfaction through the meeting of the basics, their indulgence is a
RESULT of, a SYMPTOM of their inability to meet their social and transcendent
needs. 

To compare this with immaturity or ignorance is, to me, quite cruel, while
containing some truth.  Rather than focus on the fact that the individual
has not graduated, it would seem prudent to make available to them an
awareness that their rudimentary needs really WERE met and that the other,
'higher' needs, are what is not now being satisfied.

Take the analogy further.  Suppose that a person did not wish to graduate
from grammar school.  They felt that they had much more to learn there
and were simply not done.  Do we make them feel poorly about themselves
by telling them something like 'You're not living up to your potential',
or 'You're done here, listen to me and go on'?  We either take away their
power or we abuse them when we approach them in this way.

What if we go over, carefully, what it is that grammar holds for this person?
What if we carefully review what they actually CAN learn from their
studies?  What if we go WITH them, show them that they really ARE ready
to graduate, instead of simply telling them that they are?

Indulgence is grammar studies.  Do we make indulgence a 'lower' thing,
simply because WE have not been satisfied by it?  Some claim to be
satisfied in this realm.  Who am I to dispute them?  All I can speak for
is myself.  I have found indulgence both a trap and a teacher.  Those
who speak poorly of it are often misogynist mouthpieces for dying traditions.

Perhaps some people just need to learn the grammar lessons VERY thoroughly.
Maybe what, for you and countless others like you, is a silly endeavor,
some of us need in order to learn the lesson aright.  Picking on us because
you learn faster or saying that the way we learn is 'wrong' seems the most
horrible thing I can imagine.  I see it happening all the time.  
 

Wong:

5. Expanding on (2), Jung observed that the root of our frustrations
in life is the end - death. Whatever our greatest achievements or failures are,
they are chickenfeed compared with death. So the sensible thing to do would be
to attack the root rather than adding more water and fertilizers.


Response:

Eh?  I don't think I understand this completely.  Are you suggesting mass
suicide?  Heheheheh   I suppose not.  Ok, the root of our frustrations in life
is the end - death.  You suggest we 'attack' this root?  How?  By cutting
off our pleasure of life?  By bringing death into our experience?  I agree
that this will work for some, but argue that many are not ready for this.
Please describe some methods which you would use to 'attack this root'.
Thanks.


Wong:
		
"O Monks ! Which do you think is more ?
All the tears and blood that were let out or
the waters of the four seas ?

O Lord ! Certainly the tears and blood that
fell is much more than the four seas."


Response:

'O friends!  Which do you think is more?
All the hours spent haggling over water and blood or
the amount of time spent enjoying life?

'O friend!  Certainly it is the water and blood
which occupies so much of OUR time!'


Invoke me under my stars!    Love is the law, love under will.



Yours in review,

Tagi