Emotion - a false and deadly notion
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2003 4:28 am
This is an extract from 'Genius News' of a discussion that took place on the 'Genius List' back around mid 2002. It was my first foray on the list. Dan comments are the one's to watch, my views are now radically different to what they were then.
Rhett: I hope that a genius can achieve plenty of happiness whilst honing their awareness of reality...
Dan Rowden: The genius has no need of happiness. He is beyond happiness and unhappiness. Unhappiness arises precisely because of our egotistical desire for happiness.
Greg Shantz: Yes but before you become a genius couldn't feelings of happiness accompany learning about the infinite even thought they will eventually have to go?
Dan Rowden: Sure, that will inevitably occur at times, but Rhett's implication was that it is a good and desirable thing. It isn't. It indicates the continued presence of ego and therefore delusion. But you're right to say that the seeker will feel emotionally empowered, sometimes happy, as a result of certain insights. But, those feelings are a danger to him and he must not rest in them.
Greg Shantz: He must not rest in them, he must continue on the path to overcoming them entirely. But while he is learning about reality without having a full knowledge of it he will still experience emotions. When he has a new insight or works out a problem that has been nagging him he may experience happiness and contentment. An enlightened person is beyond dualities like happiness or unhappiness. But enlightenment is not an emotion; enlightenment is freedom from the unpredictable winds of emotions. Enlightenment is when you see the world clearly without delusion. Emotions are clouded thoughts, enlightenment is a clear mind.
Rhett: When i remove myself from social interaction my emotions fade away and i am neither happy or unhappy. When i engage in social interaction the experience of emotions increases. I seem to be attempting to maximise happiness and minimise unhappiness in a social context through the application of accumulated (and accumulating) wisdom at the core of issues. When i surround myself with seekers they give me space within their world. I avoid being worshipped overtly by them but i do appreciate their thanks for what i share with them. But i have not as yet found people with comparable insight as myself. Thus, there is a hole somewhere in me...
I am searching for a better understanding of the path that will...see me...if i could finish this question i think i would immediately know the answer. Perhaps i'm just trying to work out my best compromise between isolation - integration with society(?).
Leo Bartoli: Dan is referring to a perfect genius so his advice has little practical relevance to all of us here. For all we know, and as i say we may know this intuitively or instinctively, periods of happiness may have a healing effect on the body or the brain helping to eventually bring one closer to perfection of consciousness, just as play may help a young mind develop properly. Of course, to use this as an excuse to indulge without restraint may be counter productive.
Dan Rowden: In strict terms, yes, my point refers to the perfect state of affairs, but to say it has no practical relevance to the imperfect is wrong. One does not require perfection to significantly and meaningfully transcend the egotism of the happiness/unhappiness duality - and therefore samsara and suffering.
Development in this area occurs with any diminution of the force of the ego.
The advice is entirely relevant to the imperfect. Anyway, we're striving the goal of enlightenment and perfection, aren't we? Are you saying it is of no practical help to the seeker to comprehend the nature of that which he is striving for?
Leo Bartoli: No, i was simply saying, or believe i was saying, that the genius in not beyond the need for happiness unless he is perfect. Does that help?
Rhett: Happiness is an emotion and is therefore a real state. Can humans be emotionless? Should humans strive for emotionlessness?
I spent a number of years trying to be emotionless. Why did i try to do this? Perhaps the greatest factor was that it was a self protecting response; I feel that geniuses are more sensitive to people and thus suffer from negative emotions/interactions more than others. Being constantly misunderstood is extremely alienating and dispiriting. I did not fully succeed in being emotionless. Complete isolation may have brought that, but, whilst i am not afraid of isolation, i do not particularly value it. Thus, i chose to accept that i will experience emotions. Simple logic suggests that if i am going to experience emotions then i'll try to maximise the desireable ones and minimise the undesirable ones.
Subhash: Happiness should not be an emotion. It should be a state beyond that.(The Genius would know better !)
Genius is not one who is sensitive to the world as we conceive a sensitive individual to be. He is able see and experience things in the light of eternity. Hence he is not disturbed by the 'leela'(worldly play) and is able to live in 'ananda' undisturbed by the sensual world.
Rhett: I'm quite uninterested in any construct that suggests that all thinking leads to sadness. It seems that many people engaging in this forum believe this. If you're unhappy, how smart is that? Surely a genius can facilitate their life such that they are happy? Why not? I'm amazed that this topic is so contentious. Is it perhaps a common pitfall that has grown into a culture within philosophical circles? I've read widely whilst unconsciously avoiding most of the eastern 'enlightenment' books and western books on philosophy. The common ruts within the debates on this forum have me celebrating my intellectual path. Of course i may simply be ignorant.
When i use the word happiness i mean exactly that. I am not talking about a false or superficial happiness.
Dan Rowden: Thinking necessarily leads to sadness (suffering) because thinking necessarily means a critical examination of one's self-reality and of one's attachments. Whatever the outcome of that examination, it will produce, if authentic, anxiety, which is a form of suffering.
Irena: What makes you think the state of happiness has anything to do with desire or any other form of volitional pressure. Can't it be possible that happiness is the optimal condition for a normal human, aiding digestion for example? and what not?
Why must happiness be characterized additionally as a desire when it is already quite sufficiently described under its accepted definitional term as happiness?
Is the need for food always a desire for food? Isn't it sometimes a pressing need? Ditto for other conditions. Would you say a desire for anger is a typical way to describe what is a very similar condition, emotionally to happiness, in that it is a somewhat elevated state? No, generally we accept anger is a result of certain factors, including biological. So why would happiness be any different? Why do you infer happiness is a weakness?
Dan Rowden: Well, let's get our concepts in order here: happiness is not a desire. Happiness is an emotional state; it is the sublimation of the will to power in the emotional realm. The desire for happiness is a desire. The need for food is a basic biological need. The desire for happiness is an expression of our psychology; specifically, it is a desire of the ego for power.
And it is not weakness but rather delusion. The desire for happiness indicates the egotistical sensation of a lacking that is not based in valid notions of reality.
Irena: I guess you see happiness as a kind of mindless bliss. I see it as a joyful contentment. And I just looked up happy in the dictionary and it says "to be content with one's lot". I would guess to be content with one's lot would mean not to desire anything more or less.
Dan Rowden: Well, yes, I guess I do see it as mindless, because that's basically what it is! Most people don't have the foggiest understanding of their own psychology, so how could their state of happiness really be other than mindless? Happiness, however, is one of those slightly nebulous terms that can refer to a variety of mind states - joy; gladness; contentment etc, so it can be hard to pin down the psychology of happiness per se. What one might say about its nature depends on the way one is defining it. But all these states share certain common properties, so let's se what we can do with it..........
Any desire represents the will to overcome some negative state - that means one is powerless (lacking) in the face of circumstance. The sublimation of any desire is to gain and possess power over the lack of a desired state; it is to gain power over circumstance.
Irena: If the desire for it is desire for power, then I would guess you define happiness as power.
Dan Rowden: It's a form of power, yes. As I said previously, it is power over circumstance and the absence of something. If you conquer your fear of flying you experience happiness at your having conquered this fear. That happiness is an expression of your power over fear. How many unhappy people have you met whose unhappiness expressed their power over something? Happiness is absolutely a feeling of power.
Irena: Well, that's one way to describe being contented - in a position of power.
Dan Rowden: That's right - power over that which made us discontent.
Irena: You are describing a kind of ego gratification which is not happiness but egotism.
Dan Rowden: The desire for happiness is egotism. That feeling of power one experiences, which again is happiness, is egotism. That which stems from ego is necessarily egotism.
Irena: Fine, you are probably right. But assume i know a little about two kinds of ego behaviour. One being egotism the other egoism.
Dan Rowden: Well, I regard that distinction as part of the gibberish of academic psychology. It might have its place somewhere in that great malaise, but not, I would argue, in this discussion.
Ego, Happiness and Samsara:
"Happiness is the transition from one form of suffering to another. Suffering is the transition from one form of happiness to another. Samsara is made of these transitions."
Desire is expressed in the individual because the ego - the concept held in mind of an inherently existent, separate self - has a continual and necessarily unending need to ground itself in reality, to substantiate its existence, to give itself permanence and therefore security (generated by the perception of separation). The ephemeral nature of things, however, constantly steps in to destroy that security and hence desire constantly arises. This is the basis of the forming of attachments. Attachments give a foundation and support to the idea of our existence; they ground us, our egotistical selves, in "reality" and therefore provide security, a concrete sense of being. "Happiness" is that state in which this desire for substance and security is sublimated, in whatever context that might occur. Unhappiness (suffering) is that state where ego feels insubstantial or disconnected from reality in some way (lacking in something it perceives itself as requiring). The desire for happiness may be characterised as the ego's will to security in being.
But happiness only lasts as long as the conditions upon which it is based continue to exist. Therefore happiness is not only, itself, ephemeral, it is dependent upon those continued conditions. Herein lies the beginning of a need for control of one's environment, physically and psychologically. Happiness is a state of such control and therefore, as I said before, a sense and type of power. I don't there's too much need for me to elaborate on the personal and social consequences of that need for control.
The reason the desire for happiness is delusional is that the entire above state of affairs is delusional in that the "ego" conception of self is false (i.e. there is no separate, inherently existent self) and all psychological phenomena that arise with this falsity as their basis, are also necessarily false.
I mean, we can get bogged in terminology and semantic pedantry if we want to, and some of us probably do want to so as to avoid the crux of the issue, but rather than worry about whether we should characterise something as a "need" rather than a "want" and so forth, we should look to the essentials of the issue. We could quite easily characterise the desire for happiness as an essential need of the ego, because, frankly, it is - which is to say it is as natural to the ego as the spreading of roots is to a tree - but the point is the ego itself is not hard-wired into mind whereas certain biological needs like breathing are hard-wired into our biological natures.
We might be stuck with the need to breathe and take water, but we're not stuck with the delusion of the ego or any of the psychological phenomena that emanate from it, the desire for happiness being one of the more prominent ones and also being one of the most significant sources of suffering.
Alex Meyer: But the lack of psychological understanding in "most people" [you spoke of], has nothing to do with the question of happiness being necessarily mindless. Would you disagree that it is possible to feel happiness, and at the same time be aware, and conscious about the psychological implications of that feeling?
I often find that I can recognize a feeling, and because I recognize it, it is easier to control it and sometimes ignore it. I do no longer need to succumb to the feeling. I am not perfect though, and do not always immediately recognize the feeling, but that is irrelevant to the issue of the possibility, that the state of happiness doesn't need to be mindless.
Dan Rowden: Actually, it has everything to do with people being mindless. A psychological phenomenon that is occurring, and is valued, that is happening in an absence of any understanding of its nature, is necessarily mindless. One cannot truly understand the basis of happiness and experience it, for to really understanding happiness is to understand the basis of ego and of Reality itself. If one is experiencing happiness, understanding is necessary absent in the moment that happiness is being experienced.
One can understand happiness and have a memory of the "feeling" but that is not to be in a "happy" state. One cannot be happy and mindful at the same time. Understanding is dependent on the absence of ego; happiness is dependent on its presence. You can't have both, not in any pure sense.
Alex Meyer: Also, mindless happiness will kill any motivation to seek truth. So perhaps happiness should be sold with a warning-label on the package... As David Quinn pointed out in the forum, though, if the will to truth/wisdom is strong enough, mindless happiness will eventually become tiring, and not so mindless after all.
Dan Rowden: Happiness - and the desire for it - is transcended. Till that time, one is still engaging in mindlessness to some degree - namely, the degree to which one experiences happiness.
Edited by: Rhett at: 11/20/03 10:24 am
Rhett: I hope that a genius can achieve plenty of happiness whilst honing their awareness of reality...
Dan Rowden: The genius has no need of happiness. He is beyond happiness and unhappiness. Unhappiness arises precisely because of our egotistical desire for happiness.
Greg Shantz: Yes but before you become a genius couldn't feelings of happiness accompany learning about the infinite even thought they will eventually have to go?
Dan Rowden: Sure, that will inevitably occur at times, but Rhett's implication was that it is a good and desirable thing. It isn't. It indicates the continued presence of ego and therefore delusion. But you're right to say that the seeker will feel emotionally empowered, sometimes happy, as a result of certain insights. But, those feelings are a danger to him and he must not rest in them.
Greg Shantz: He must not rest in them, he must continue on the path to overcoming them entirely. But while he is learning about reality without having a full knowledge of it he will still experience emotions. When he has a new insight or works out a problem that has been nagging him he may experience happiness and contentment. An enlightened person is beyond dualities like happiness or unhappiness. But enlightenment is not an emotion; enlightenment is freedom from the unpredictable winds of emotions. Enlightenment is when you see the world clearly without delusion. Emotions are clouded thoughts, enlightenment is a clear mind.
Rhett: When i remove myself from social interaction my emotions fade away and i am neither happy or unhappy. When i engage in social interaction the experience of emotions increases. I seem to be attempting to maximise happiness and minimise unhappiness in a social context through the application of accumulated (and accumulating) wisdom at the core of issues. When i surround myself with seekers they give me space within their world. I avoid being worshipped overtly by them but i do appreciate their thanks for what i share with them. But i have not as yet found people with comparable insight as myself. Thus, there is a hole somewhere in me...
I am searching for a better understanding of the path that will...see me...if i could finish this question i think i would immediately know the answer. Perhaps i'm just trying to work out my best compromise between isolation - integration with society(?).
Leo Bartoli: Dan is referring to a perfect genius so his advice has little practical relevance to all of us here. For all we know, and as i say we may know this intuitively or instinctively, periods of happiness may have a healing effect on the body or the brain helping to eventually bring one closer to perfection of consciousness, just as play may help a young mind develop properly. Of course, to use this as an excuse to indulge without restraint may be counter productive.
Dan Rowden: In strict terms, yes, my point refers to the perfect state of affairs, but to say it has no practical relevance to the imperfect is wrong. One does not require perfection to significantly and meaningfully transcend the egotism of the happiness/unhappiness duality - and therefore samsara and suffering.
Development in this area occurs with any diminution of the force of the ego.
The advice is entirely relevant to the imperfect. Anyway, we're striving the goal of enlightenment and perfection, aren't we? Are you saying it is of no practical help to the seeker to comprehend the nature of that which he is striving for?
Leo Bartoli: No, i was simply saying, or believe i was saying, that the genius in not beyond the need for happiness unless he is perfect. Does that help?
Rhett: Happiness is an emotion and is therefore a real state. Can humans be emotionless? Should humans strive for emotionlessness?
I spent a number of years trying to be emotionless. Why did i try to do this? Perhaps the greatest factor was that it was a self protecting response; I feel that geniuses are more sensitive to people and thus suffer from negative emotions/interactions more than others. Being constantly misunderstood is extremely alienating and dispiriting. I did not fully succeed in being emotionless. Complete isolation may have brought that, but, whilst i am not afraid of isolation, i do not particularly value it. Thus, i chose to accept that i will experience emotions. Simple logic suggests that if i am going to experience emotions then i'll try to maximise the desireable ones and minimise the undesirable ones.
Subhash: Happiness should not be an emotion. It should be a state beyond that.(The Genius would know better !)
Genius is not one who is sensitive to the world as we conceive a sensitive individual to be. He is able see and experience things in the light of eternity. Hence he is not disturbed by the 'leela'(worldly play) and is able to live in 'ananda' undisturbed by the sensual world.
Rhett: I'm quite uninterested in any construct that suggests that all thinking leads to sadness. It seems that many people engaging in this forum believe this. If you're unhappy, how smart is that? Surely a genius can facilitate their life such that they are happy? Why not? I'm amazed that this topic is so contentious. Is it perhaps a common pitfall that has grown into a culture within philosophical circles? I've read widely whilst unconsciously avoiding most of the eastern 'enlightenment' books and western books on philosophy. The common ruts within the debates on this forum have me celebrating my intellectual path. Of course i may simply be ignorant.
When i use the word happiness i mean exactly that. I am not talking about a false or superficial happiness.
Dan Rowden: Thinking necessarily leads to sadness (suffering) because thinking necessarily means a critical examination of one's self-reality and of one's attachments. Whatever the outcome of that examination, it will produce, if authentic, anxiety, which is a form of suffering.
Irena: What makes you think the state of happiness has anything to do with desire or any other form of volitional pressure. Can't it be possible that happiness is the optimal condition for a normal human, aiding digestion for example? and what not?
Why must happiness be characterized additionally as a desire when it is already quite sufficiently described under its accepted definitional term as happiness?
Is the need for food always a desire for food? Isn't it sometimes a pressing need? Ditto for other conditions. Would you say a desire for anger is a typical way to describe what is a very similar condition, emotionally to happiness, in that it is a somewhat elevated state? No, generally we accept anger is a result of certain factors, including biological. So why would happiness be any different? Why do you infer happiness is a weakness?
Dan Rowden: Well, let's get our concepts in order here: happiness is not a desire. Happiness is an emotional state; it is the sublimation of the will to power in the emotional realm. The desire for happiness is a desire. The need for food is a basic biological need. The desire for happiness is an expression of our psychology; specifically, it is a desire of the ego for power.
And it is not weakness but rather delusion. The desire for happiness indicates the egotistical sensation of a lacking that is not based in valid notions of reality.
Irena: I guess you see happiness as a kind of mindless bliss. I see it as a joyful contentment. And I just looked up happy in the dictionary and it says "to be content with one's lot". I would guess to be content with one's lot would mean not to desire anything more or less.
Dan Rowden: Well, yes, I guess I do see it as mindless, because that's basically what it is! Most people don't have the foggiest understanding of their own psychology, so how could their state of happiness really be other than mindless? Happiness, however, is one of those slightly nebulous terms that can refer to a variety of mind states - joy; gladness; contentment etc, so it can be hard to pin down the psychology of happiness per se. What one might say about its nature depends on the way one is defining it. But all these states share certain common properties, so let's se what we can do with it..........
Any desire represents the will to overcome some negative state - that means one is powerless (lacking) in the face of circumstance. The sublimation of any desire is to gain and possess power over the lack of a desired state; it is to gain power over circumstance.
Irena: If the desire for it is desire for power, then I would guess you define happiness as power.
Dan Rowden: It's a form of power, yes. As I said previously, it is power over circumstance and the absence of something. If you conquer your fear of flying you experience happiness at your having conquered this fear. That happiness is an expression of your power over fear. How many unhappy people have you met whose unhappiness expressed their power over something? Happiness is absolutely a feeling of power.
Irena: Well, that's one way to describe being contented - in a position of power.
Dan Rowden: That's right - power over that which made us discontent.
Irena: You are describing a kind of ego gratification which is not happiness but egotism.
Dan Rowden: The desire for happiness is egotism. That feeling of power one experiences, which again is happiness, is egotism. That which stems from ego is necessarily egotism.
Irena: Fine, you are probably right. But assume i know a little about two kinds of ego behaviour. One being egotism the other egoism.
Dan Rowden: Well, I regard that distinction as part of the gibberish of academic psychology. It might have its place somewhere in that great malaise, but not, I would argue, in this discussion.
Ego, Happiness and Samsara:
"Happiness is the transition from one form of suffering to another. Suffering is the transition from one form of happiness to another. Samsara is made of these transitions."
Desire is expressed in the individual because the ego - the concept held in mind of an inherently existent, separate self - has a continual and necessarily unending need to ground itself in reality, to substantiate its existence, to give itself permanence and therefore security (generated by the perception of separation). The ephemeral nature of things, however, constantly steps in to destroy that security and hence desire constantly arises. This is the basis of the forming of attachments. Attachments give a foundation and support to the idea of our existence; they ground us, our egotistical selves, in "reality" and therefore provide security, a concrete sense of being. "Happiness" is that state in which this desire for substance and security is sublimated, in whatever context that might occur. Unhappiness (suffering) is that state where ego feels insubstantial or disconnected from reality in some way (lacking in something it perceives itself as requiring). The desire for happiness may be characterised as the ego's will to security in being.
But happiness only lasts as long as the conditions upon which it is based continue to exist. Therefore happiness is not only, itself, ephemeral, it is dependent upon those continued conditions. Herein lies the beginning of a need for control of one's environment, physically and psychologically. Happiness is a state of such control and therefore, as I said before, a sense and type of power. I don't there's too much need for me to elaborate on the personal and social consequences of that need for control.
The reason the desire for happiness is delusional is that the entire above state of affairs is delusional in that the "ego" conception of self is false (i.e. there is no separate, inherently existent self) and all psychological phenomena that arise with this falsity as their basis, are also necessarily false.
I mean, we can get bogged in terminology and semantic pedantry if we want to, and some of us probably do want to so as to avoid the crux of the issue, but rather than worry about whether we should characterise something as a "need" rather than a "want" and so forth, we should look to the essentials of the issue. We could quite easily characterise the desire for happiness as an essential need of the ego, because, frankly, it is - which is to say it is as natural to the ego as the spreading of roots is to a tree - but the point is the ego itself is not hard-wired into mind whereas certain biological needs like breathing are hard-wired into our biological natures.
We might be stuck with the need to breathe and take water, but we're not stuck with the delusion of the ego or any of the psychological phenomena that emanate from it, the desire for happiness being one of the more prominent ones and also being one of the most significant sources of suffering.
Alex Meyer: But the lack of psychological understanding in "most people" [you spoke of], has nothing to do with the question of happiness being necessarily mindless. Would you disagree that it is possible to feel happiness, and at the same time be aware, and conscious about the psychological implications of that feeling?
I often find that I can recognize a feeling, and because I recognize it, it is easier to control it and sometimes ignore it. I do no longer need to succumb to the feeling. I am not perfect though, and do not always immediately recognize the feeling, but that is irrelevant to the issue of the possibility, that the state of happiness doesn't need to be mindless.
Dan Rowden: Actually, it has everything to do with people being mindless. A psychological phenomenon that is occurring, and is valued, that is happening in an absence of any understanding of its nature, is necessarily mindless. One cannot truly understand the basis of happiness and experience it, for to really understanding happiness is to understand the basis of ego and of Reality itself. If one is experiencing happiness, understanding is necessary absent in the moment that happiness is being experienced.
One can understand happiness and have a memory of the "feeling" but that is not to be in a "happy" state. One cannot be happy and mindful at the same time. Understanding is dependent on the absence of ego; happiness is dependent on its presence. You can't have both, not in any pure sense.
Alex Meyer: Also, mindless happiness will kill any motivation to seek truth. So perhaps happiness should be sold with a warning-label on the package... As David Quinn pointed out in the forum, though, if the will to truth/wisdom is strong enough, mindless happiness will eventually become tiring, and not so mindless after all.
Dan Rowden: Happiness - and the desire for it - is transcended. Till that time, one is still engaging in mindlessness to some degree - namely, the degree to which one experiences happiness.
Edited by: Rhett at: 11/20/03 10:24 am