What matters?

[Electron]

One for Satori I expect The practicing Buddhist tries not to attach to things, seeking release instead. But how practical is this? If I find myself becoming angry with something, it spurs me on to do something about it - sometimes bringing about some sort of correction or justice. However I am aware of the web of stress that this creates - especially when there is no prospect for justice.

Attachments to other immaterial and material things cause similar problems so raising the question are they really worth it?

In an attempt to add a few extra days to my life I would like to be able to lower my blood pressure by attaching somewhat less, but viewed in the extreme, it would seem to run the risk of letting oneself be trampled over. What really matters I wonder?

[Satori]

What matters indeed. I guess that's the sort of question whose answers could vary quite dramatically from person to person.

I think most of us try to attach some sort of purpose to our lives. We have this brief window between birth and death which may be the only opportunity we have to express ourselves in the human way, so we'd generally like to make the most of it. From the moment of birth we are, after all, marching inexorably towards death.

We might ask such things as 'Why am I here?', 'Am I living in such a way that I'll die without regrets?', 'How much of what I do is a compromise and how much am I putting off what I really want to do?'.

Would, in fact, answers to any of those questions be satisfactory? Or would I just invent more questions to replace the ones I've answered? Many find that that's exactly what happens and their life is spent constantly craving after some future dream.

There's nothing wrong with ambition, hopes and aims, of course, it just becomes problematic when the craving for those things takes such a hold as to induce misery when they're not attained.

How about the present? Maybe there's more to it than we generally give it credit for. Maybe we're just too busy to notice it all of the time; too busy to notice the experience of existing. Maybe we can 'live' a bit more if we don't constantly crave after our future dreams or live our life through past memories.

Personally I find there's both great peace and great insight in trying to be rooted totally in the moment, trying to be totally aware of existence even to the point of noticing the pressure on the balls of my feet as I walk. It's very hard to do for any length of time without the mind wandering off on a dream, a memory or some other distraction, but for those brief moments when I can do it, I feel very serene, even as it opens my eyes to the sheer (and sometimes frightening) transitory nature of everything.

Maybe in the end part of what matters is that we keep asking questions such as the ones we do here and that's just fine too, but that's in the realms of the intellectual and rarely has any direct influence on how I exist at this very moment.

I have a broadly agnostic approach to things such as God; they may be important things, but I see them as intellectual pastimes rather than useful life rules (I know Christians would disagree there!).

To me, getting too attached such questions as 'does God exist' is similar to having an arrow in my chest that must be removed to prevent death, yet I refuse to allow anyone to remove it until I know precisely who made the arrow, what wood it's made of and what forest the tree came from.

Just some random musings there!

[Electron]

Thanks, I really do apprecaite your perspective on this question. There are fewer 'universals' than most people think there are. What we do know is that people naturally normalise all the time. By this I mean that we feel changes but become accustomed to new conditions after a while. This drives thrill-seekers to ever more dangerous pastimes for example, just to get the same 'buzz'. I use this as an excuse not to participate in dangerous activities all the time

But while "what matters" will be different at certain superficial levels, I can't help thinking that there are bound to be deeper levels where we all share some sort of common instincts. This is becasue we all share a suprisingly common set of emotions that seem to 'come with the territory'.

Apart from the obvious things such as survival instincts, have you ever noticed for example, that when sat in a cinema watching a scene charged with emotion such as sadness, you might be suprised by the onset of a tear... then a quick look around you reveals a large cross-section of humanity with an added glisten in their eyes.

I would extend this, somewhat more radically, to suggest that if some of the more extreme individuals plucked from the darker side of human history, were to be seated in the audience, most would also exhibit the very same reaction precisely on cue.

This suggests to me an envelope which we all operate within, one that is hardwired into each and every member of our species. This could be the foundation on which to build universals upon, i.e. a basis for allowing us to assess what really matters after all.