Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

to perpetuate themselves; beliefs in things like creator gods
are "positive" precisely because they allow you to avoid
taking the time to examine issues like creation. Belief in
entities like a soul are "positive" because they allow you to
avoid having to understand the complex workings of reality.
Once you have the "answers", you are free to spend your
time on other things like how to further shorten the distance
between reality and desire, like a mouse on an ever
shrinking wheel.
In the end, most of our advancements as a species can be
seen to be nothing more than shortcut-taking in order to
avoid the need to understand reality. It's a completely
senseless state of being and yet it is one that has come to
define our existence as human beings. We seek out pleasure
for the purpose of becoming better able to seek out
pleasure; we chase away displeasure for the purpose of
becoming better able to chase away displeasure. In the end,
we haven't the slightest bit of understanding about the
nature of either, except that the one is to be desired and the
other is to be avoided. Even that "understanding" is based
primarily on what allows us to continue our development of
habitual shortcut-taking - displeasure slows us down,
pleasure speeds us up. There is no rationality to our
preference beyond this, nor is there any foreseeable benefit
to come from it. We are not just like mice running around in
a wheel, we are like mice winding up our own mouse traps
until they snap on our necks. Instead of moving closer and
closer to satisfaction and peace, we move faster and faster
away from them in our quest for pleasure and against
displeasure - less and less satisfied with what we have until
death puts an end to the cycle for us.
I don't think it is at all a good thing to take shortcuts. Our
propensity towards "whatever works" has rendered the
system broken in a very fundamental way, as we never truly
understand anything of what we experience - preferring
rather to put it to use to obtain more of it, and quicker. We
are like children who see a rainbow and immediately run to
find an imaginary pot of gold at its end; instead of
appreciating reality because it is real, we prefer illusion
because it is more.
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