HA HA - and yet by your recent analogy of supposedly being a "writer" shitting a book, you think you can stink up the joint regularly without a complaint? The very LEAST you could do is hand out some clothespins for our noses. I submit you wouldn't know an "afflictive emotion" if IT OWNED YOU.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > To differentiate between just having a passing flash of anger or envy or > momentary feelings of spite and what I mean by "indulging in" such > emotions, a example would help. > > I once moved into a house in a small mini-neighborhood, and one of the > first neighbors I met was a lady I'll call M. M was an old woman, > nearing 70. She saw me in my yard one day, realized I was a new > neighbor, and walked over. Rather than saying hello, her opening line > was "You must let me warn you about Mr. J, who lives in the house next > to mine. He lets his dog shit in my garden." > > I thought to myself, "Uh huh," and made my excuses, claiming to have an > important task I needed to get to, like darning my socks. This scene > repeated itself with frightening regularity over the coming weeks. M > would corner not just me but everyone who entered the neighborhood and > "warn" them about Mr. J and his terrible dog, who shat in her garden. I > was chatting with some other neighbors one day and she came up and did > her number on all of us again, and one of the other neighbors said > gently, "M, don't you think it's time you got over this? The dog shit in > your garden *two years ago*. When it happened, and you complained about > it to Mr. J, he built a fence. It hasn't happened since. Why do you keep > going on and on about it?" > > M stepped back like this man had slapped her in the face. She went all > purple-faced and started screaming over and over, "THE DOG SHIT IN MY > GARDEN. THE DOG SHIT IN MY GARDEN. THE DOG SHIT IN MY GARDEN." My > neighbors finally had to call her son to come over and quiet her down. I > was told that this was sadly a fairly frequent occurrence. > > THAT is indulging in one of the afflictive emotions. > > If the emotion just "passes through" and then is gone, that's one thing. > When the person actually *holds on* to the emotion -- be it anger or > envy or hatred or spite or a desire for revenge -- for days, weeks, > months, or even more shockingly like poor M, years, it's quite another. > > If the Buddhist theory of each of these afflictive emotions being a kind > of operating system that imposes a corresponding state of attention on > the person indulging in that emotion is true, imagine the effects of > indulging in anger and spite like this woman did for years. Try to > imagine what it DID to her, and how it forced her to see the world. > After a certain point the only thing she *could* see was this dog > shitting in her garden two years ago, and her need to exact revenge for > it. Sad. > > My suggestion is that I think we have a couple of people on this forum > who are in the same ballpark with regard to indulging in the past, and > in their attachment to afflictive emotions that came up for them in that > past. And I think it colors their perceptions as much as M's were > colored by one tiny dog taking one tiny dump in one tiny garden. The > original *incident* wasn't worth getting all bent out of shape over. But > to allow it to warp her for YEARS? This is the danger that Buddhists see > in indulging in the afflictive emotions. >
