(Untitled)

[grey_ghost]

i'm starting to consider celebrating my next birthday.

i used to think of it as getting older and not wiser, becoming of less use and more biased with experience, cynicism and bitterness ..

.. well, you get the idea;
adding more would only start to depress me.

in light of recent events, i've decided that it's not quite easy as i thought, to

Comments

[sabournine]

http://sabournine.livejournal.com/345379.html... )

[grey_ghost]

I don't think it's really my place to say this, but then again maybe it needs to be said. I think you are depressed, actually I thought you already thought that you were.

i was wondering if anyone was going to remark about that.

i agree that depression could be a problem of mine, but i don't know if i believe in happiness. it seems to mean too many things to mean anything at all, and recently i spoke to steve about it and we dissected it to hell.

often i take a philosophical buddhist approach to the question of happiness. i'll write more about this later, and about a book i've been browsing (whose author sounds like a reactionary, to be honest).

[sabournine]

i don't know if i believe in happiness.

I might argue that this is a hallmark symptom of depression...

But moving on. There are a lot of different interpretations of Buddhism. In the weekly Buddhism meditation and discussion class I have been attending, our lecturer taught us that from the Buddhist perspective, the point of life is to be happy. "Life is suffering," yes, but by becoming aware, we can reduce our own suffering and the suffering of those around us, to sustain happy, pleasurable feelings for ourselves and others as much as we can.

Happiness does mean different things to different people, and I think there are different kinds of happiness. Semantics aside though, from your posts you seem to view things negatively and feel negatively in many situations. Maybe you don't believe in "happiness," whatever this word means to you, but what about enjoying life, finding pleasure in life, believing in the positive aspects of things, and just simply reducing one's suffering?

I look forward to seeing your post on this subject.

briefly..

[grey_ghost]

well, i find moments of enjoyment to be exactly so: moments, discrete points in time. it's why i think it's much harder to be an optimist than a pessimist, because depression has both the advantage of continuity and the freedom to spike, as well.

anger also occurs in moments, for the most part, and possibly fear. maybe i mean that i don't think happiness can be constant, and that puts obtaining it regularly to be extremely difficult, if not sometimes impossible.

i think i have a different interpretation of buddhism than you do, amy chica.