/me hands himself a mirror

I'm starting to get a little pissed off at myself. I've spent the last day or so psycho-analyzing those around me. I like to tell myself I'm trying to help, but I'm not sure I really am. Sometimes shoving truth (or maybe only what I perceive as truth) down people's throats isn't the best way to help them.

I think I need a strong dose of truth shoved down my throat though. Likely I'm just analyzing people around me because it's so much easier and impersonal then examining myself. If I examine myself, there are implications, I have to make changes. If you don't examine yourself, if you keep your eyes blurred a little bit, that idealized version of self you hold in your mind looks just like the real you! However if you look closer, maybe focus your eyes a bit, they sure don't fucking match up. You can either adjust yourself to match your idealized self, you can adjust your idealized self to match your real self, or you can just live with the discrepancy.

Living with the discrepancy results in all kinds of poor decision making. It is the least favorable result if you ask me, and humorously, is also the result you get if you don't do any self-analysis at all. Which is what I've been doing. Seriously, who am I to be giving advice or cautioning anyone about anything when I can't even straighten myself out? It's time for that pointing finger of mine to do a 180.

I would say the majority of the self-incongruence begins with addiction, or more specifically a lack of discipline. I have a distinct lack of discipline. I'm not sure how or when this started, but I can actually acknowledge that something is harmful to myself, and do it anyway. Well now that I put it like that, it sounds like a lack of self-respect. Which is the exact opposite of what I was just harping on about on someone else's blog.

I felt they were grasping/craving (any research into Buddhism will explain these concepts) existence. Who knows if I was right or wrong, in the end it doesn't matter. When I look at myself I see the opposite. Grasping for non-existence. Buddhism is the middle path between what is defined as eternalism and annihilationism or nihilism.

1. self-doctrine clinging: first, one assumes that one has a permanent "self."

2. wrong-view clinging: then, one assumes that one is either somehow eternal or to be annihilated after this life.

3. resultant behavioral manifestations:

(a) rites-and-rituals clinging: if one assumes that one is eternal, then one clings to rituals to achieve self-purification.

(b) sense-pleasure clinging: if one assumes that one will completely disappear after this life, then one disregards the next world and clings to sense desires.

So (a) would be eternalism. I'd like to expand this idea and suggest that reproduction is a form of eternalism, lasting fame is also a form of eternalism. The false belief that one, or ones ideas, or ones seed, can survive forever.

(b) would be annihilationism or nihilism which is probably the side of the fence I'm leaning on. It would certainly explain my many self-destructive tendencies.

The question is, what the fux do I do about it? According to Buddhism this is rooted in the idea that I will die and be dead when I die and thats the end of my story.

I want to clear something up real quick first though. It's fairly out of character for me to act like Buddhism (or anything, or anyone) has all the answers. I don't think anyone has all the answers and even if someone did as soon as they tried to transmit those answers through words the meaning would change and the message would be lost. However, Buddhism has provided me with more wisdom and hope then any other school of philosophy or religion has even come close to doing. It's certainly provided me with more wisdom and hope then our education system, our society, and the religion of my family's choosing: Christianity. So, at least for the time being, I'm gonna stick with it.

Sidenote: My co-worker just tried to tell me she was sick from work for two days because she's type 2 diabetes, ate too much fruit, and had a reaction from high blood sugar levels. FOR TWO DAYS?!?!?! I know a thing or two about diabetes, and I know, this is some BS. Whatever, she's a bona fide hypochondriac. She can think whatever she wants.

So. Me having a ton of harmful addictions of which I am not in denial is the result of thinking that death is the end. I think this makes a lot of sense. I mean, who really cares what happens, or what you do to yourself if you're just going to die anyway. The real snag is, how do I fix this. How to I alter a core belief of my own that when we die, it is the end. I really have no information to suggest otherwise, yet continuing to believe this will get me nowhere but an early grave. Then again, look 2 posts back and an early grave seems to be all I'm after.

I think I'm searching for the early grave because I have difficulty seeing the value in life. What I'm not sure about is whether or not this is my true perception, or a result of my addictions. Maybe if I did not have so many addictions demanding my attention I would be able to more clearly see the value in life.

Then again, not seeing the value in life may go back to the root cause of believing that after we die it is the end. If after death, it is the end, and as time goes on forever, everything dies, then the end value, no matter what, appears to be zero. The same as the start value. From zero you get -1 and+1, and so the universe began. When the universe ends, -1 and +1 converge to zero, and we're back to where we started. From this philosophy comes the view that it doesn't matter if you are a + or a - because in the end you will still be zero. This is not to say I think it's ok to be a bad person, I certainly think causing others to suffer is wrong, though I can't really explain that belief if nothing matters in the end.

Hmm. My belief that causing others to suffer is wrong clearly shows me that I think now matters. People suffering now matter. People feeling good now matters. But this leads right in to me having addictions that please me now but harm me in the long run. Yaaarrgghh. Apparently I am more of a nihilist then I thought.

The Buddhist philosophy gets around the whole "nothing matters because we all die" mentality by throwing rebirth in there. They say there is no constant unchanging self (in fact, there was no self to begin with) which is reborn (not eternalism) but there is rebirth in some form (not annihilationism/nihilism). This is by far the most confusing and hardest to swallow pill there is in Buddhism. I still haven't swallowed it. There are actually endless debates on the Buddhist board that I read regarding rebirth. So many in fact that they posted a few stickies on rebirth and changed the whole forum rules regarding conversations on the topic. This is always the topic that turns me off of Buddhist wisdom. Every time I remove Buddhist, from my religion field on Facebook, you can bet it's because of rebirth.

I seem to be at an impasse. I require new information to break the root cause which is the belief that death is the end. As long as I believe that death is the end, I will continue to whittle away at myself, I will continue to dig my own grave.