At my age (60+), I have the privilege of witnessing how people have gone through decades of their life, and what they have become. When I watch people across the lifespan, from early childhood to old age, certain things occur to me, sometimes with troubling clarity. I have been working with seniors living with dementia in the last couple of years, and have the precious opportunity to talk to people, and study their life.
I have always been passionate about life. And despite my exposure to Buddhist ideas, and that I am fond of certain Chan (Zen) ideas, I am still maintaining that passion and desire are valuable, and central to our being.
When I see people my age or older floating around me like living dead, with no substance and weight, I do not see the lightness of not having a purpose, a direction, and passion, as a post-enlightenment state. I feel very sad, especially when I know these people and have eye-witnessed the characters they once were.
It also hurts me deeply to see much younger people gradually surrendering to the common sense world, and allow increasing parts of their being, and their lifeworld, to be buried in red dust.
The common sense world works by trapping us in illusions (such as believing that the sun rises every morning in the East), threatening us that we will lose something valuable if we do not conform, or seducing us with promised satisfactions that will eventually prove futile and pointless.
Many of us buy into these illusions, succumb to the threat, and give in to the seduction. We trade what is most precious, and therefore priceless – our life, our being – for some trivial reward. Well, the common sense world is very good at marketing its reward schemes: $$$ (to buy what?), power (to do what?), status (who and what for?), et cetera and many of us gladly sell off our own life and being without even doing the arithmetic.
I have seen people sitting on an enviable pile of success, wealth, or power. Some of these people I happen to know reasonably well. Yet these people are often not living life, but lifelessly performing roles in an absurd script. They resist insight and liberation like a plague. The most painful irony is that these are the people who are endowed with material conditions that would allow them to access and realize abundant life just with a turn of their mind. And they have chosen not to.
The choices we make and the action we take define us, or make us who we are. Subjectivity and the world is connected in a fascinating network of contingent relationships.
I am always mindful of the weak, deprived, and down-trodden, and how they apparently have less options, life chances (Max Weber), or the conditions for choosing a better life. Choosing life, keeping the passion, and insisting on being oneself are more difficult when you don’t have money to pay rent. I have tried to simplify my project by focusing on increasing options, life chances, and people’s capacity for positive choice. I believe that even the most marginalized and oppressed may be able to learn and adopt strategies and skills to make a difference, individually and collectively.
If SSLD is the answer, what is the question?
Can an apparently mechanical model consisting of instrumental logical formulations be a pathway to spiritual awareness and transcendence?
Postscript:
If you feel you have lost your passion for life, or that you are losing your passion, you owe it to yourself to pay attention, and do something about it. I am happy to be of help.
Website: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-do-people-lose-passion-life-a-ka-tat-tsang