Buddhism, or so you want to transcend reality

My year's worth of practicing and studying Irish polytheism is up. While it has been quite worth it and I do believe that yes the gods and ungods are real at heart I seem to remain a Buddhist. As a result I am going through a surge of FIERCE BUDDHIST ZEAL. Which is hilarious given the whole INTENSE EMOTIONAL CONTROL thing.

So why not a Buddhism thread? The thread here will serve as a place for various ramblings about the religion. Things like explanations of concepts, accounts of contact with Buddhist cultures, and so on. Also why not pretty pictures of temples and stuff too? Art may be something that binds us to this cycle of again and death, but wow Buddhist art.

If you have any questions about the religion feel free to ask me. Or others here I suppose. I do not know how many here share my specific brand of madness. I'll do my best to answer what questions I get. As a word of warning though my knowledge is primarily that of a Thai Theravada Buddhist, and many of the monks whose talks I've read are of the Thai Forest variety. I know very, very little about Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions sadly, so I can't give any information about the two types of Buddhism most popular in the West, Zen and Tibetan schools.

 

To start off I feel that a brief introduction to the very basis of Buddhism is in store. So all Buddhism is basically bound together by a few things, such as a reverence for the Buddha to some degree or another. The purpose of all Buddhism meanwhile is bound together by the Four Noble Truths or Cattari Ariyasaccani. While every school has their own take on things and have various ideas about how we should conduct ourselves and what we should aim for this is the basis of it all.

So what the hell are the Four Noble Truths? In essence they're asking a question and then providing an answer to that question. The question is "What is suffering and what can be done about it?" while the answer is "Suffering is the result of craving, attachment, and ignorance and it can be cured by the Eightfold Path." Buddhism is thus a way to deal with pain. Not just deal with it but to end it entirely. Anyway let's list off each truth and talk a bit about each.

1. There is suffering in the world. The word used for suffering in Theravada Buddhism is a Pali word "dukkha". Now despite how extreme the word suffering is in English, suffering in Buddhism is not nearly so extreme. It's actually fairly broad in levels of severity. Suffering is not just the pain of being shot or losing a beloved pet, but it's also your general dissatisfaction with things. It's the itch you can't scratch, but it also happens to be things like depression. Dukkha is a lot of things.

2. The causes of suffering are craving, attachment, and ignorance. Now a fact about reality within Buddhism is that nothing is permanent. There is no absolute and ever lasting substance to anything. Everything must die and all feelings must come to an end. However while we may know this fact intellectually we don't actually understand that fact and don't want to accept it. We are thus ignorant. Being ignorant we desire more things! Pleasure feels great! I want more of that! But you are also attached to things. You don't want to lose your video game collection because you feel that it is yours and your derive pleasure from it. In the end it is empty though.

3. There is an end to suffering through the cessation of craving, attachment, and ignorance. This meanwhile presents the idea that so much of what many people consider unavoidable facts of our lives aren't actually that. Craving is a thing you can end. So are attachment and ignorance. For myself personally first ignorance must be uprooted and with that the whole rest of the suffering plant will go with it.

4. The end to suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path or Ariyo Atthangiko Maggo. Now the Eightfold Path is basically a guide to behavior that will end all suffering once mastered. It consists of Right View, Right Intent, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Action, Right Speech, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. These fall into three rough categories of ethics, wisdom, and concentration. It is also called the Middle Path because a huge part of it is to avoid extremes. And while to many Westerners abandoning everything we own and saving our heads sounds extreme it's really not when viewed in the context of what the term arose. Namely within India when ascetic and eternalist schools of Hinduism and the atheistic and hedonist Caravaka school reigned supreme. Buddhism cut right through the middle of those, endorsing neither extreme asceticism and eternalism or nihilism and hedonism.

With these four truths in mind everything else follows.

 

My dad is Buddhist, apparently. I didn't know that until I had a world religions class in high school, and it came up.

 

Oh? Intriguing. What sort? If you know that is.

 

When asked he replied "The normal chinese kind. Not the japanese one or thai one." Of course, I did interrupt him watching sports, so I could probably get a better description later.

 

Hrmm. That. Can be a lot of things from what I know? All of them falling into the Mahayana traditions, at least for the most part. My experiences with Chinese Buddhism are pretty limited. I did do a short ethnography assignment on the chanting services of Chan Buddhism though. Was fun, but I suffered from culture shock.

Because wow it's Buddhism but it's not Buddhism as I know it AT ALL.

 

He lived in Hong Kong for a long time, if that helps at all?

 

Not really unfortunately. Again I am not really well versed in what goes on with Chinese Buddhism, sadly. Just Theravada and Thai Theravada in particular. Ah well. Still interesting to know.

 

Ah well. I'll bug him for more details tomorrow :)

 

That would be neat if you could!

 

So this thread exists for rambling and the sharing of information. One thing that's come up in a book I'm reading by Phra Brahmagunabhorn is the differences in how Theravada and the other branches handle things. Our work ethics are entirely different and have different bases. Yes we all go back to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path but we have VERY different ways of interpreting this. Vajrayana presents a beeline to Enlightenment, quick and certain like a lightning bolt. This involves a series of esoteric practices that require initiation and part of why I am so amazingly iffy on the popularity of Tibetan Vajrayana in the US! Mahayana has a lot of devotional schools meanwhile which stress the importance of the Bodhisattas even more than Mahayana does as is. The Pureland schools in particular stress how hard it is to reach Enlightenment even as a monk, so the laypeople are encouraged to venerate the Amida Buddha and hope to be born into his Pureland. Basically he's a savior figure.

What about Theravada though? What do we do? Well, we prove time and again that we are in fact that angry old men of Buddhism. Enlightenment in Theravada is 100% hard work and perseverance. There are no esoteric techniques to help you. There are no gods to save you. There's only you and your sheer gumption, nothing more. So you're basically going to be going through the program as laid out in the Pali canon. Which consists of such things as "Meditate" and "Meditate" and "MEDITATE SOME FUCKING MORE", as well as "MORALS AND ETHICAL BEHAVIOR". Now the beautiful thing about this system? Anyone can do it. No initiation into secret practices needed and no gods required.

This to me is perhaps the most attractive thing about Theravada Buddhism. Anyone can do it. It's very hard and you probably won't manage it outside of the Sangha, but the overall message of Theravada is very optimistic. Suffering exists and there's a cure to it and you yourself can apply it, help or no help. And there is of course help in Theravada because we, like the other branches, have the Sangha.

I'm not really sure how it works outside of Thai Theravada Buddhism but with us the Sangha are basically the central core of society. Along with the monarchy but the matter of the king's role in my religion is for another day. Basically we have two types of lives. That or the lay person and that of the monk. Both are very tightly intertwined and both depend upon the other.

The laypeople are people like myself. We only take the Five Precepts and we have to do things like go to work and cook our own food. For spiritual and life guidance we head to the temple. Hell we head to the temple for everything. Getting married? Go to the monks. Someone died? Go to the monks. Worried about school? Go to the monks. Happy you got a new job? Go to the monks. Birthday? Go to the monks. They'll help you out. The Sangha supports us.

Now the monks themselves have to follow a lot more rules than just five. They have a total of 227 in Thai Buddhism. These rules are set up for a variety of reasons. Some for safety. Some to keep people from doing shit. The general idea though is that the Sangha provides the most ideal conditions in which to reach Enlightenment. Monks aren't allowed to own anything save their robes, a cup for drinking, and an alms bowl. They are not allowed to cook and can only beg for food or be given it as a gift and only at very specific times of the day. Monks also aren't allowed to handle money in the same fashion we do. And this is where the laypeople come into play. It is because of the lay community that the Sangha can function as it does. Because of people like myself the monks can go on their lives following all these rules. Which provides them an ideal set of circumstances for reaching Enlightenment. We support the Sangha.

And the general idea is to eventually get YOU in the Sangha. If not in this life then another. You hope to go from human to human who knows of Buddhism to human in a Buddhist country to human in a Buddhist country who joins the Sangha for life. This is the gameplan. Learn about Buddhism from the Sangha and then become part of it. It's like an Enlightenment machine and we're all parts in it. For more fun in Thai culture it's expected that all men spend at least a few months as a monk. There's sadly no officially recognized Thai nuns though people are working on this. Thailand does have mae ji though which are basically like novice monks? That's the highest you can go as a woman officially.

So there's quite a bit to help the individual person out in Theravada. Community is a big thing and it's very important. It's not necessary but it's helpful. At the end of the day though you have to be the one to go to the wat and you have to be the one who works on being a diligent monk.

 

In which Aondeug attempts to breathe life into this thread with history.

When the Buddha was on his deathbed he told the Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis gathered around him that their teacher from that point on would be the Dhamma as he spoke it. Following his death there was a bit of a panic and many were concerned that the Buddha's teaching would either die or end up so corrupted that it effectively died. As a result after about three months after his death the Sangha order planned a council at which to finalize the Dhamma and to discuss the matter of their organization.

This First Buddhist Council is the first time the Tipitaka was completely recited for finalization. It was hosted by some king whose name escapes my mind at the moment. Anyway. Two monks were crucial in this. The first was the Venerable Ananda, who was basically the Buddha's right hand man. Ananda had memorized a very good portion of the Buddha's discourses as well as a variety of the other tales told about the acts of monks such as himself or the Venerable Sariputta. He is reputed to have memorized the entirety of the Sutta Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. So basically all the various discourses, tales, and poems in addition to the technical laying down of the cosmology. There is a third section of the Tipitaka though and that is the Vinaya Pitaka. The Vinaya Pitaka holds within it all the rules that monks and nuns are to follow. The Venerable Upali is regarded as the one who recited the various books of the Vinaya Pitaka in their entirety. Upali in general was known for his considerable expertise where Buddhist law, I suppose you could say, was concerned. Over the course of many days Ananda and Upali recited the Tipitaka until at last the entire congregation of monks and nuns had the thing memorized.

There's been a variety of other councils following this one as well. Some of them are not regarded as truly viable councils among certain sects of Buddhism. Most of the ones that aren't considered viable by Theravada tend to deal with the Mahayana. There's also a variety of councils specific to certain countries, as well. Thailand has had two such councils at least and Ceylon had about four.

Now besides the first perhaps the most important of the councils was the fourth, or fifth depending on whether or not you take the one Ceylonese council as true. It was during the Fourth/Fifth Buddhist Council that it was decided that the Tipitaka needed to be committed not just to memory but to written word. Over the course of months the entire Tipitaka was written down in what is considered to be its present form. As with the recitations the text is in Pali and this is considered to basically be the oldest form of the Tipitaka. Down the years it would eventually be translated into Sanskrit and then from Sanskrit into Chinese and then from Chinese into a host of other languages such as Japanese.

 

I am bored and feel like rambling about something so let us ramble about what all the people on the tumblrs are intrigued by lately or at least those in the circle of hell called pagan tumblr. Namely the matter of open and closed religions. Which is a thing that for the sake of ease we can boil down to three questions. "Can I borrow things from this religion?", "Can I be a member of this religion?", and "Are there initiations?" This results in religions like Catholicism being closed due to initiation rites and things like certain indigenous folk religions being super closed and why are you fucking touching this thing.

As you may be able to guess this also plays a lot into appropriation debates on pagan tumblr. At times the sentiment that Buddhism is a closed religion that Westerners should not touch has come up. And in some cases the answer is yes! Yes certain schools of Buddhism are closed, either because the school is a reaction to colonialism and just a thing that probably shouldn't be touched or because the school is like certain Tibetan schools and has tons of initiations. My issue is not with people pointing out that certain schools are probably not things you should just jump into. My issue is with the idea that Buddhism as a whole cannot be practiced by non-Asian individuals.

This I think is flagrant nonsense. Also if anyone cares it's also adhammical nonsense. Buddhism is a religion with a point, like Christianity or Islam. There is a very clear and defined goal with Buddhism. Said goal is so well defined in fact that we have numerous drawn out gameplans for getting there. And that goal is escaping suffering. Suffering is a thing that all living beings experience and Buddhists are held to ideals such as loving kindness, which is the unconditional and boundless compassion for all living beings. You can't logically hold to metta and say that Buddhism is closed off I don't think, given that the Dhamma is held to be the greatest blessing anyone can possibly receive in the not suffering department.

There are other problems too, namely ones regarding Westerners' role in Buddhist history. Yes, part of the history of Westerners in Buddhism is definitely one of colonialism and bullshit. Another part however is in helping Buddhism grow and spreading it. The Greeks are the reason why Buddhist sculptures look the way they do. They influenced our art in other areas as well and may have played a role in the development of Mahayana Buddhism, particularly in how the Buddha himself is looked at. The Mahayana is by far the largest of the branches at the moment and the one with the most adherents.

It doesn't end there though. The British as thoroughly fucking atrocious as they have been in many regards are vital to how Buddhism has spread in the West. Particularly in regards to academic study. Thomas William Rhys Davids is a renowned Buddhist scholar who is greatly respected by at least a portion of Buddhists, not all of which are Western. Because Davids did something amazing. Namely he helped translate the Tipitaka and other Buddhist texts into English. He also devised the first complete Pali dictionary in English and then founded the Pali Text Society. The Pali Text Society produces the Tipitaka completely translated into English as well as a number of other texts. They also do other things. Davids has done a lot for the promotion and study of Buddhism in the West. A whole hell of a fucking lot. And he is not the only British person to do this shit. It's through men like Davids that Buddhism began to really spread in the West after the whole fall of Greco-Buddhism thing (which was a very real thing and you should look it up).

There are also monks like the Venerable Thanissaro Bhikkhu to take into consideration. He's a white American monk who is part of the Dhammayut Nikaya and the Thai Forest tradition. He's translated a good deal of the Tipitaka into English and has written about Buddhism heavily in English. Also he is the residing abbot of the Metta Forest Monastery out in America. Which is a high honor! Also important.

Westerners fuck up Buddhism a lot and sometimes in entirely gross ways. Westerners've also proven to be vital to the history of Buddhism and in particular its growth. There's a lot more to this too. Western interest in Zen Buddhism has had quite the marked effect on it, for example. Not all of which is stealing words and misapplying them.

I just really do not understand the idea that Westerners need to keep "their grubby hands" off Buddhism and that they've done nothing to help Buddhism ever. Not from a historical stand point. Not from a theological stand point. Really I don't think the idea that Buddhism must or should be entirely closed to non-Asians holds at all.

 

It's late and I am bored so it is now time to talk about guilt and shame and their place in Buddhism. Buddhism is a popular kid on the block I have noticed, and people are prone to going to it because it doesn't seem to do a lot of the shit that Western religions do. So it might come as a surprise to some that guilt is actually very much a part of the religion and how one is taught. It has in at least one case I've seen. Namely someone on a Buddhist forum expressed surprise at how shame pops in talks as being a good thing, because previously they hadn't thought that shame had any place in Buddhism.

But it does. Oh god does it ever. So in Buddhism we have a thing called hiri. Hiri I suppose we can simplify as being the conscience for our purposes here. This is the thing that controls your shame and, in theory, guides your actions. Now shame, guilt, and remorse are not just part of this hiri thing but they are praised as being the guardians of conduct. If you feel shame in your action you should at the very least reconsider what it is you're doing. I mean do you leave your hand on a hot stove or do you remove it and then consider not doing that again? Shame and guilt work the same way basically, just with emotional pain as opposed to physical pain.

This comes up a lot in talks and writing by monks I've noticed. To feel shame is pointed out as a thing that we all need to be very on point about and we need to stop and listen to the pain. And consider. This seems to have bled into the way problems are solved as well. At least in the Sangha there are offenses that basically you need to confess in front of a group of your peers. Basically publicly shaming yourself in the hopes that you won't fucking do it again. This is also one of the suggested ways of dealing with sexual desire I've noticed. Teaching people to feel shame for it.

Now I do see a sort of use in this. Though many here are probably and rightfully wary of guilt and shame based methods of teaching I do think it has its place. The issue comes from how easy it is to abuse the guilt of others and how easy it is for some to cling obsessively to their guilt. Neither of which are appropriate in a Buddhist context but which show up all the time anyway because people are flawed and often also assholes.

I personally ran afoul of becoming obsessed with this and it just kind of got me stuck in a rut. While I can certainly see the usage and value in the hiri teaching, as well as the emphasis on tearing down the ego I do feel we need something more of a move from the other side of things. Not everyone can learn well in that sort of fashion and I feel that this definitely does hinder some people. And one way I've found that helps is instead to emphasize or expand upon entirely different parts of the teaching. There are other ways of dealing with sexual desire after all. Such as reminding yourself just what the reality of sex is and what the reality of bodies are. We're filled with all number of disgusting substances and sex is really kind of dorky and gross, and really we're all just going to grow old and die anyway.

But then most of my experience with Buddhism is through Thai culture so. Things.

 

I took an introductory course in Buddhist history last semester, and the teacher was primarily knowledgeable about Theravada Buddhism so it came up a lot. One of the things we noted was how like any globalized religion, Buddhism adopts local teachings and folds them into Buddhist understanding. In SE Asia this usually means local spirits and gods, but with North American adaptation it was also about the spread of meditation, usually more of a specialized thing only some monks did, to the laity to the point where you have a lot of people who are Buddhist because meditation was a gateway, which amusingly came partly from Ledi Sayadaw's attempts to resist Christian conversion by empowering the laity with monk practices.

 

I love the Ledi Sayadaw's works dearly though some of them are just. Very difficult to read. The Manuals of the Dhamma stick out in that fashion in particular to me. And I am very happy that over the years I have progressed to the point where I can actually read shit. The fact that he's helped revitalize the faith and helped spread it to the West pleases me a lot as well. That sort of thing is important to me. Making sure that the Dhamma not just gets passed down, but we restrengthen it when needed and we share it.

My gateway was definitely meditation. The wat I go to has meditation retreats on Saturdays and going there is where I learned things first. Hence why most of what I know is Theravadan because well Theravada temple and then I became Theravadan myself!

And yes I find it very interesting how Buddhism just kind of...adopts and adapts things. Like in Thailand Hindu myth and such are important, and certain holdovers appear. Bits and bobs of other things like the Thai animism have carried over too. Like the Spirit House building thing or the honoring of water spirits on Loi Krathong. Another fun thing with Thai Buddhism that I've noted is that it is a Theravadan sect where at least two of the Mahayanan bodhisattas get venerated. Namely Budai and Guan Yin. We've got images of them at the wat I go to.

 

And more rambling because fuck it. This time about the names of the Buddha, of which he has many. The name of the man himself is Sidhatta Gotama and he was of the Shakya clan. When people say the Buddha they are referring to him and even the name Buddha tends to refer to him. Though I tend to use Buddha to describe the Buddhas in general where as he is always the Buddha. Because he is of the Shakyas he gets called the Shakyamuni or Lord Shakyamuni, which basically means he is the Shakya sage. Very learned and so on.

Beyond that he has a variety of other titles referring to his qualities and achievements. Such as Tathagata the Thus Come One. Which means that he has crossed the other shore and achieved Nibbana. Next up we have the Sammasambuddha, which means the Self-Same Enlightened One. This means that the Buddha of his own merits without knowledge of the Dhamma or the Eightfold Path or a teacher of it achieved Enlightenment. There are other sammasambuddhas in existence and can be more, but the Buddha does get referred to as the Sammasambuddha a lot in the canon and elsewhere. He also gets called the Bhagavata, the Blessed One. Which some may recognize as having the same root as the word Bhagavad! He also gets called the Arahant, which means the Exalted One. Arahant is also a word referring to the Enlightened in general. Arahants are Enlightened but not necessarily Buddhas by the way.

He has a variety of other names and especially in Mahayana wherein Pali is not used and instead the native languages of a country get used. I've also noted that in English he at times gets referred to as the Lord Buddha or specifically as the Gotama Buddha, again as ways to differentiate him from other Buddhas. Sometimes I've seen him simply referred to as the Lord. Which isn't to give him any sort of divine status as the Lord is used in, say, Christianity of course. Which is always important to keep in mind, I feel.

 

MORE CROSSPOSTING FROM MY TUMBLR. This time about karma and a bit about how it works.

Now that I think of it that goat story is a good way of explaining conditional determinism in Buddhism. Basically we lack deterministic fate in the fashion of “everything that is going to happen is going to happen as it is because FATE”. However we also lack free will. Instead we have a thing in the middle of those two things. Action is called karma and all karma needs to have a fruit, a vipaka. This vipaka is something of equal weight to the karma and it spends time growing. Eventually the vipaka falls and a thing happens. Now the thing is through further actions either of our own or of others the conditions under which the vipaka fall may change. However it will fall. There is no way around that. It’s just that how it falls may change.



So in the goat story we have a Brahmin who is going to sacrifice a goat for a Feast of the Dead. While he and his students are all gathered up the goat they’ve got laughs and then he cries. Startled the Brahmin asks the goat why it did that. The goat explains that in a past life he was a Brahmin quite like the one in front of him. He had a goat killed for a Feast of the Dead just like this Brahmin here is going to kill him. Now because of this act of killing the Brahmin has had to live through five hundred lives as a goat who is beheaded. This is his final life through this.



We have our karma here, which is the former Brahmin’s killing of the goat. We also have our vipaka which is that the Brahmin must live through five hundred lives as a goat and die because of beheading. Through this we can also see that karma and vipaka and not always just a one off bang bang your fruit has fallen thing. The actually falling can be a very prolonged thing.



Anyway to continue, after that the goat explains why he cried. He cried because he realized that the Brahmin in front of him might himself have to live five hundred lives as a goat who is sacrificed. He was crying from pity of this man’s potential fate. Feeling bad for the goat and wanting to avoid that fate the Brahmin says that the goat is free to go and frolic. The goat argues against this though, saying that he will have to die regardless. The weight of his past action is simply that horrible and it needs to play out. Still the Brahmin argues and he tells his students to watch the goat and make sure he is safe.



So the goat gives up and goes to feed while watched by the students. While feeding though a storm kicks up and lightning strikes a rock which cleaves a sharp bit of stone. This falls on the goat and cuts his head off. Even though the Brahmin spared his life the goat died on the day his vipaka was to fall and in the fashion it was to happen: beheading.



And so we have the goat’s circumstances changing through the actions of the Brahmin. Because the Brahmin let him go and had his students watch him the goat’s death was postponed for a time. The exact specifics of the beheading changed as well. They weren’t because of a sacrifice but because of a seemingly freak accident. Still the goat died and in the exact fashion he said he would die, because that was his vipaka. He had to die five hundred deaths as a goat from beheading and he suffered this even though someone tried to intervene.



However the intervention of the Brahmin wasn’t without effect surely. The Brahmin and his students were spared the negative karma they could have gained from killing the goat for a Feast of the Dead. The goat meanwhile likely gained merit for honestly answering and in doing so saving the Brahmin and his students future misfortune. Now if the goat had said nothing he could have just died without that particular bit of potential merit gained and with the Brahmin and his students gaining negative fruits for the act. While fruits must fall as they will the exact specifics are things we can affect. And in doing that we can control to some extent the growth of our future vipaka.

 

Let's ramble once more. Namely about a question I tend to get a lot. So people like to ask "If the point of Buddhism is to get rid of desire then isn't it a paradox? You need desire to want to get rid of it, after all." I hate this question. A lot. Because it isn't a good or smart question in the slightest and I will explain why.

So let's say that you have to get to school. You don't really know how to get there so you go and you get directions from google or something. Now after a few days you've memorized the path to getting there and you even have a greater understanding of the area around it so you could get there by other ways too. Do you still need your directions from google? No. You don't. You needed them to get there the first couple of times though. They were a tool and once you're done with that tool you don't need it.

Now I think Achaan Chah gave an even better explanation because his really cuts to the chase in revealing the sheer absurdity of this question from our perspective. Namely the simile of the coconuts. So let's say you bought some coconuts and were walking home. As you were walking home someone asks you what you bought. You say you bought coconuts. This person then asks if you're going to eat them, to which you say yes of course. But now they ask if you're going to eat the shells too. Which gives you pause for a bit because why would you even ask that? Who does that? Still, you say that, no, you're not going to eat the shells. The person says that they don't believe you though and tells you that if you bought the coconuts to eat then you would eat the shells too. You try and tell the person that the coconut shells are useful for holding the coconut, and maybe some other things too. Still this person continues to accuse you of wanting to eat coconut shells. Which makes no damned sense and so you just go on about your day because you know what you're doing. He can rant about eating coconut shells if he wants.

This coconut shell eating thing sounds really super dumb. It makes no sense and yet the man continues to argue in favor of it. The whole situation is entirely absurd and that is how the question of "well isn't this a paradox?" comes off. I'm basically being asked if I want to eat coconut shells and then told that no I am totally going to eat them when I try to explain otherwise.

 

Get rid of desire, or get rid of desire's hold on you? Most of the, like, practicing levels of Buddhist though I've read seemed more about no longer being driven and swayed by every passing urge/hope/fear.