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Grief
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3435
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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Grief
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The Lord Buddha said suffering arises from attachment. In the West we don’t pay much attention to this. When we fall in love, we don’t find in the contract that we are signing up for grief when our lover dies, or that our lover will grieve if we go first, or that our heart will break if the relationship breaks up. It’s not even in the fine print. When our hero dies or disappoints us, we grieve. It’s not what we were looking for. But it happens all the same. In one big company I worked for, you didn’t get a management job unless you specifically asked for it. There is a certain amount of crap involved in any management job. Among 250 people, conflict is sure to arise, particularly if more than half the people are male engineers in their 30s and 40s. More than once I had to remove someone from a critical position they couldn’t handle. Leaving them there would have caused the whole organization to fail catastrophically in its mission. In that company, it inevitably resulted in lower pay and loss of status. Sitting in my office, feeling sorry for myself, I muttered ironically, “Why me?” Then I answered myself, “Fool, you asked for this.” When we grieve, it is because we have invested ourselves in the relationship. The Buddha counseled detachment. Don’t let yourself become involved in what he called the world of illusion. That is the path to escape from suffering. That’s the Way to nirvana. I consciously choose to ignore his advice. I think this life is the only one I’m going to get on this earth. I choose to participate. I choose to pay the price. It’s worth it to me. And by now I know what I’m signing up for. RNJ
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Date Mar. 4 2014 20:16:06
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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RE: Grief (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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Looking back, I must say I am grateful for having majored in geological sciences, and also having had a lifelong interest in astronomy. I was thus more than usually receptive to the uniquely relevant poetry of Robinson Jeffers, and also to the 2000-year-old serenity that radiates from Titus Lucretius Carus' On the Nature of Things, his long poem outlining the philosophy of his mentor, Epicurus. The geological/astronomical background make clear to me the relative insignificance of our perceived central place in the order of things, and of the precariousness of our status; it also hints strongly at an unflattering parallel between the growth and behavior of human populations and metastatic disease. Jeffers and Lucretius/Epicurus offer somewhat parallel but not coincident ways of absorbing these perhaps unpleasant truths, that others have found useful--Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, professed that, if he wasn't a Christian (and he definitely wasn't your standard Christian), he would be a follower of Epicurus. We can, should, and do grieve for those near and dear to us, and part of us (me, anyway) grieves over the vileness of human behavior, toward each other and toward our biosphere, but I myself do not allow my own life and mental equilibrium to be warped such that I can no longer be happy. The key is to find the proper balance.
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Date Mar. 5 2014 23:58:05
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: Grief (in reply to runner)
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Runner, I found some of Epictetus' sayings to be similar to my conception of Buddhism. (not having read Epicurus) "Philosophy, Epictetus taught, is a way of life and not just a theoretical discipline. To Epictetus, all external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control; we should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. However, individuals are responsible for their own actions, which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline. Suffering occurs from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power. As part of the universal city that is the universe, it is our duty to care for all our fellow men. Those who follow these precepts will achieve happiness and peace of mind." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus
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Date Mar. 7 2014 13:11:48
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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RE: Grief (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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Miguel, thanks for the Epictetus reference. Epictetus was clearly a Stoic, and, as such, took a rather sterner view of what our responsibilities and our pleasures ought to be than the Epicureans--stiff upper lip, and such. The Stoics took rather a dim view of the Epicureans, as did many other philosophical schools of the time, and one can see why, as the Epicureans preached a life of quiet enjoyment of mind and body, and not messing about in your neighbor's business. But their equal--maybe even more important--contribution was the then-crazy idea that the world could be understood by the human mind--could be figured out--without recourse to gods or the supernatural. In order to avoid the then as now dangerous charge of atheism, the Epicureans postulated that the gods exist, but live in a dream space outside our universe, and have no interest in or influence on the affairs of the actual, physical world. Lucretius' work, de Rerum Naturae--On the Nature of Things is fascinating reading, in that Lucretius has a sort of plausible explanation for just about everything, based, by our standards, on just inspired imagination, and much of it is nonsense. But one is impressed by the effort, and by the modernity of the idea, which we have to wait until Galileo for, that the world can be explained and understood.
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Date Mar. 7 2014 18:17:23
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