WARNING: This post will take you down a very deep rabbit hole if you let it…good luck.
The duality of everything is going to drive me insane, I think. I yearn for independence and yet need thousands around me to survive. I want eternal happiness, yet feel down or depressed for no reason. I strive to be a man of virtue, yet notice some of my actions are inconsistent with right versus wrong.
I’ve really been noticing the contradiction all around me. It really is everywhere. It is everywhere and unavoidable. AND, like I said, my noticing it lately has been driving me crazy. It is like watching an existential tennis match, when you hate tennis!
- happy/sad
- life/death
- practical/idealistic
- sleep/awake
- materialistic/spiritual
- money is everything/money is nothing
- individuality/non-self
- meaning/emptiness
- purpose/futility
- good/evil
- knowledge/ignorance
I think the insanity begins when you start thinking of all these “opposites” as distinct either/or poles. Either life has purpose or it is futile, either I am happy or I am sad, etc. As soon as you start noticing these things, they pop up all around you, they come at you from everywhere…like that tennis match, or maybe it’s like two opposing walls closing inward on you with ever greater compression (think of the Star Wars trash compactor scene). My personal frustration begins when I try to figure it out. What does it all mean? Is their purpose in life or is it futile? Are we inherently evil or good? Should I reach out to change my world or recede into myself? Should I be happy with what I have, or should I strive for more?
Are there absolutes or not? We want there to be, don’t we? We are comfortable when we cling to our “answers.” From a practical standpoint, we decide yes or no all the time. Should I steal this candy bar? No. Is that the right thing to do? Yes. However, when it comes to our place in all of existence, these answers are approximations for truth. What if we ask even more questions about our candy bar problem? Who is selling the candy bar? What are they doing with the profits? What is in the candy bar? Is it hurting people? Isn’t that their choice? Is my neighbor starving? Am I starving?
My point here is not to convince myself that stealing a candy bar might be the right thing to do (although, I suppose given the right conditions, it might). My point is to illustrate that even with the simplest of either/or questions, there is a spectrum that goes unnoticed by us. We create the either/or world to try and simplify our existence, but it is not reality. If too much of this reality seeps through into our view without the right context, it can drive us mad.
That may very well be where the Buddhist concept of right view comes in. To see reality and thrive, we must have context; a large sea of understanding that helps us see where we fit. When I have a right view, I can see that there is a Middle Way. I know that there are guides to right and wrong, but I understand that these guides are dependent on context, and that all of existence is very complicated.
If I try to point to the grain of sand, I would be both right and wrong.
What I think I am trying to emphasize is that our understanding is almost always incomplete. The appearance of opposites is an illusion. We must always (yes, I said always) make our decisions with incomplete information. We do not know everything about anything, and we know very little about most things. So, when we make our life decisions we can take heart in the fact that we are doing the best we can with the given information. It seems that it is best when we avoid the opposite poles and favor the middle way.
…and hopefully avoid insanity.
“…what makes [the noble truths] noble truths is precisely that they are actual, undeviating, invariable (tatha, avitatha, anannatha). It is the failure to face the actuality of these truths that has caused us to wander for so long through the long course of samsara. It is by penetrating these truths exactly as they are that one can reach the true consummation of the spiritual quest: making an end to suffering.”
Taken from “Dhamma and Non-duality”, by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Access to Insight, 4 April 2011, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/bps-essay_27.html . Retrieved on 2 January 2013.
your statement, I want eternal happiness, yet feel down or depressed for no reason. ,it is me more days than not,well certainly not for no reason ,but reasons are always changing ,if my husband dies ,if I die first .right now I’m in a quest to find a new home for 4 of us ,hubby ,myself and t teenagers ,one in collage.but the quest gets me depressed ,if its ether or ,I don’t want to live ghetto style and in the metropolis of mpls., it is not hard to do to only option is to live beyond my means.our cities are over come with legals and illegals .MN is where most Samollians and Liberians live ,rather than anywhere in the us.I am not saying i;m racist ,just want to live with my kind.for instance ,the people who owed my house before us were from Africa but the neighbors said they had no garbage service for 4 years.I don’t want to live amongst bugs or strange smells.so call me snob,so when you say: So, when we make our life decisions we can take heart in the fact that we are doing the best we can with the given ….. your right ,but as soon as we have made it and completed our goal ,in my case a move ,will it be what I wanted?
Interesting discussion on the dualities of life. I’ve come to understand the concept of “virtue” as the balance between opposing extremes (dualities). An example would be courage, which is the virtue between cowardliness and rashness with those (cowardice and rashness) being vices. If you think about what we consider virtuous…prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, etc. they all seem to be a balance between extremes. Thomas Aquinas talks a lot about this concept in “Summa Theologica”, which I recommend you put on your reading list. For a more contemporary book “Boys to Men: The Transforming Power of Virtue” is a really good read.
Thanks Judy and pjstap for your comments. pj, your point is well taken about the balance between extremes. Thanks also for the book recommendations. The hard part, I think is judging when you’ve reached an extreme. For example, when you have shelter, food, and water, aren’t you being extreme to want more? Why do you need to eat a feast every now and then, like Thanksgiving or Christmas? Some would think that such excesses ever partaken are beyond balance. How about transportation: is a decent reliable vehicle good enough or is a BMW or Mercedes extreme? The examples abound. I am guilty as charged with generalizing “everything in moderation,” but that’s the easy part. What is moderation? Is there a moderate amount of meth, or heroin? Killing animals? This is where the disagreements lie, no?