3D life as insufficient

3D life as insufficient

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

9:05 a.m. More on the energy of the gods?

We must now keep reminding you (-all) that 3D life is not an end in itself. To try to live as though it were is to live a pointless unsatisfying life – if only because you have to die! But even if you could live in one body forever, life would be pointless and unsatisfying.

I take it you are not meaning merely for philosophers.

For anybody. Awareness of the feelings will vary, within a given life and between people, but it will be there. What is inherently unsatisfying in and of itself cannot satisfy. It is tautological.

But, like any tautology, it depends upon definitions.

Yes. But our definition is not arbitrary, nor a matter of taste. People may, over long periods of time, concentrate so hard on the game as to invest it in meaning – but let their self-hypnosis waver even slightly, and the spell is gone.

Eugene McCarthy once defined success in politics as like being a successful football coach: He said you have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it is important.

We’re not saying quite that. Rather than smart and dumb, we are comparing awake and asleep, closer. They who look outwardly, dream, remember. It is only in reaching for what is important in life that one achieves satisfaction. But this statement is far from self-explanatory.

I’ll say!

It needs breaking down into components:

• Using a specific skill in life leads to satisfaction. So does pursuing and achieving a life path – a career, say, or a general pattern of life.
• These things end. It is in the nature of life in 3D, things end.
• The process of adjustment to loss varies considerably. The worst loss is one that cannot be compensated for. It may be a mate, or a path, or one’s physical or mental abilities.
• It may be what is called zest for life.

Is there any aspect of life that can be guaranteed not to run out of road?

Nothing I can think of.

Nor we. Philosophic calm, religious zeal or enthusiasm, the love of learning for its own sake, virtuous and satisfying courses of action such as philanthropy or just charity – you name it, it may or may not be attractive to a given person, may or may not provide meaning for that person, but nothing in life is the universal meaning. It may be made to serve in place of one, but it will not bear the weight on its own.

Yes, I see that. Some paths are more satisfying than others, however.

For a given person, yes. Not one for all.

But then, what of our life in connection with our larger life beyond. Won’t this serve?

How do you embody it?

Isn’t knowing about it enough?

Ask us when you are depressed.

So, then –?

Our point here is simply that 3D life does not satisfy in its own terms. It offers many satisfactions, and of course some lives are happier than others, but in and of itself, it is not enough. “And yet it is,” you say, and that isn’t wrong, but it needs looking at.

I think I just got it. Life is not the same as a definition of life, or a philosophy of life. People may live in connection with the non-3D component of their life without ever thinking about it, just taking it for granted.

Correct. And these lead blessed lives. Not easy lives, necessarily. Certainly not necessarily prosperous or famous or any attribute commonly given to success, but blessed.

There is an expression just out of my reach about simple people being happy.

Yes, and it is not “ignorance is bliss”! For one thing, simplicity has nothing to do with ignorance. But it is as the peasant said at Tolstoy’s funeral, “with too much reading one often loses the way.” Simplicity is a gift and is not bestowed on request.

You are talking about a sure instinct.

That is a good way to say it. and that one instinct has nothing to do, one way or another, with learning or the lack of learning.

However, I get that the eightfold path applies here.

That’s why is was codified, after all. Right livelihood assures that you don’t’ throw your shovelful of dirt into the air and have it land right back down in the hold you’re digging.

Odd image.

Not a bad one, though. More to the point than a ditch or anything that implies forward progress. You’re always in the hole you dig,  at least until you stop digging.

Call this “3D as insufficient.”

[The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path:

Right understanding.

Right thought.

Right speech.

Right action.

Right livelihood.

Right effort.

Right mindfulness.

Right concentration.]