In Reply to: Re: cool Sam!! posted by juni on July 31, 2003 at 01:12:56:
One aspect really has me puzzled. I've seen Buddhists in action, accumulating wealth. I sincerely doubt that if these wealthy Buddhists lost everything in a fire, that they wouldn't cry out of disappointment and feel some sense of loss. Yet, this sense of loss comes from if nothing else, a habit, a regularity of having something in your life, and expecting or wishing for it to be there for you still, but it isn't anymore.
Alright, nevermind about what is preached and what is practised. From what I understand about Buddhism, one is not supposed to have expectations. Expectations = (potential) dissapointments, so one shouldn't have any at all. Is that really achievable? Can one really go through life not having any expectations at all? Everything about our existence, even being able to move about in dimensional reality, is based on information gathered from learning experiences, and expectations on predictable results of our actions (the scenery changes when I move my leg and step forward). Can we really go about putting any effort at all into something, if we don't have at least some kind of expectation that our actions bring about desired results. What about the whole concept of achieving goals, does not removing the possibility for expectations remove the possibility for working towards goals? Doesn't this idea, in its ectreme, ultimately reduce us to non-living beings?
Maybe I'm understanding it all wrong, but I would really like to get past this, because I really like many aspects of Buddhism, such as living in the now, and even this philosphy of not having expectations, to a point. Man, is that a stress reliever or what? It's taking the philosophy to its extremes that make me think it don't hold up so good.