Anger & Resentment - or Happiness and Gratitude?

"Hipster machine?" Think of how all the wanna and would-be hipsters would feel after all their hard work at buying cool hats, growing odd facial hair, and trying to keep up with cool/obscure bands if they found out that a machine could turn them hip with no effort.

Probably grateful.

But then the world would be full of hipsters and they wouldn't feel special, so they'd all become hippies instead to try to stand out...

It's true. By making everyone into a hipster, via some kind of hipster ray, it would effectively rid the world of hipsterdom.



A boy can dream.

@mike, I'm going to need to get enlightened before I can fully answer... and I'm going to need to know where the fat will go when I eat.

-shargrol

One simply does massive poos.

Anyway, the whole shorter lifespan thing is really no problem for an enlightened being; the desire for more life is craving, bhavatanha, and thus is extinguished when enlightenment is achieved. Sign me up! I'll even forgo the cheese sandwiches. Heck, the nettlesomeness of things like sexual desire is why I became a Buddhist in the first place! Not because I wanted to enjoy life more. No sandwiches, no sex, short life: paradise.

Of course the twist is that one wouldn't actually *miss* sex or greasy sandwiches. They'd simply become not particularly interesting. One would be content, even happy, without it being based on eating certain foods or having orgasms or whatever other things we want to throw on the list. I think it's hard to imagine the non-craving thing, but it's about *not wanting* the stuff either way, not resisting the wanting or missing the wanting or wishing you wanted it. Nor about reacting to it with horror and aversion, pulling out the whip and flagellating yourself like a penitent every time you see a woman or sandwich.

God, why do women always end up in the same pile as sandwiches in these discussions? Presumably, hopefully, one begins to see women as human beings worthy of compassion and the same deep friendly love as everything else, rather than triggers for ones lusts or reminders of ones discontents. Same with the damn sandwiches.

I don't know, I think I'll take the sex and sandwiches. And yes, cheddar, medium or mild even, and as for the bread, l like something with some body. Then you see you butter the outsides and grill it on a cast iron skillet to a nice golden brown. Now, some say they must be cut on the diagonal, and I'm always willing to accommodate a guest, but for myself, the down the middle cut is the way to go.

The best way to do this is, first sex, then sandwiches. That, my friends, is romance.

Ona, Exactly. I know I feel compassion and friendly love towards sandwiches before I gobble them up. Same with women.

"Same with women." -Jake2

Metaphorically speaking, I hope :-/

Haha. Only if they ask for it

P.S. Grilled cheese is our safe word.

LOL! (seriously. out loud.)

You know the rules, though. We are here to learn to conserve and recycle our vital energies. So you may observe, smell, feel and taste the grilled cheese sandwich but not actually eat it.

The vipassana guys have to just look, observing their salivation, growling stomachs, the resulting traumatic early childhood memories that bubble up and the sensation of grilled-cheese-scent wafting in and out at the nostrils.

Oh, I don't know Ona. I find it entirely possible to conserve and recycle my vital energies while eating grilled cheese, and while having sex for that matter. From a dzogchen standpoint, anyway, it's all about attitude and energy. On the behavioral level, it's best to just do the thing, whatever it is, rather than a stylized symbolic substitute.

The thing is to completely empathize with the sandwich's perspective, beyond perspective even, so that one is not merely a dualistic subject enjoying the sandwich-object, but rather, locked in a nondual intersubjective intimacy of exponentially increasing joy feedback with the sandwich, in which one is no longer sure who is enjoying whom.

Or maybe that was the sex bit? Oh well, now that i consider it, why sell the sandwich short? I've received shaktipat from a bagel, I may as well have nondual intimacy with a grilled cheese sandwich!

You mean Dr. Major Bat Guano?

Oh, do share the bagel shaktipat story!

I had a moment of deep communion with a bee today.

"Dharma gates are boundless; we vow to enter them all"

I thought I told the bagel story on here somewhere!!! On a thread about early A&P events maybe? Then again, with the way our threads (d)evolve into polytangential cocktail party conversations, it could be anywhere... Anyhow, all I can think about right now is how cool my new pants are.

Hilarious.

(Evolve, btw. Evolve.)

Red pants? Blue pants?

God I love that movie. "Precious bodily fluids..."

Does this thread have to stay PG?

Because while reading that wikipedia link I found out what a "merkin" is.

I'll let readers decide if they want to look that up for themsleves.

I had no idea. ROFL.