If you try to be very good, pure, clean, moralistic and virtuous (like the heroes in comic books and fairy tales are), it doesn't work because it gets boring after a while. You start to feel like you have to sin in order to "live a little". Otherwise life gets boring and feels too repressed.
But on the other hand, if you live a hedonistic sin of constant pleasure and sin, catering to your carnal desires all the time, you start to feel like you are corrupting and defiling yourself. At that point, you miss having a spiritual life, having virtues and morals, and the benefits of having a good clean healthy lifestyle.
It's like you have to sin in order to appreciate the value of moral virtues, and conversely, you have to abstain from sin and guilty pleasures, in order to miss them again and be tempted by them.
How can you win? How can you have a stable balance in the middle, when both sides are constantly drawing at you?
I wonder how Buddha dealt with this.
It's like the grass is always greener on the other side, as if our mind is playing tricks on us.
This even applies to simple matters. For example, if you stay home too much, you start to miss going out and feel like you need some motion and fresh air outside. But if you are out all the time, you start to miss the comforts and conveniences of home and having a personal space.
Also, when you are in a relationship, you miss the freedom and non-attachment of being single. But when you are single, you miss the love, companionship and comfort of having a partner.
Either way, you always want what you don't have at the moment, both in the simple things and larger areas. Why is that?
It's like when you look deeper at life, everything seems to be a paradox, contradiction and oxymoron. Kind of like everything in existence is a "union of opposites" as depicted in the Chinese Ying Yang circular symbol.
Any of you notice this or think about it? Is there a philosophical, psychological or spiritual explanation for this?Statistics: Posted by Scepcop — 23 Mar 2014, 17:57
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