Chuck Bass teaches me about Buddhism

im going to come out and say it-- I learned something really great from watching gossip girl last night.

One of my few times actually watching the show and it blew my fucking mind. Besides all the cute clothes, core bitchiness, and odd resemblance to The Hills... there were bits of wisdom.

So my revelation came when Chuck was trying to comfort that one girl with the really bad hair extensions and said this, "The world you’re looking at only exists from the outside."

Wooooow!

How many worlds have we created with our expectations that are only real because they are not fulfilled?

This is one of those revelations that feels really good, at first.

you start to realize that everything you want may not really exist in the form you imagined. every rose has its thorn. a life full of money, gossip, and parties only seems substantial when you don't have it. Chuck, for example, has all those things, and yet is probably the most empty person, and fills his void with drugs and girls. Yet everyone around him envies his lifestyle. go figure.

"what makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others."

is there a way to have goals that aren't distorted by our wild imaginations, and have a world to strive for where our vision is attainable?

I was going to ramble on about how to pick goals that suit you, and research people who are happy. but then i realized the question above can be put more simply-- what should we want?

In our culture we are brought up to be very goal oriented. find out what you want and then do it and then happiness will inevitably follow. but how many times has that actually worked?

again like in gossip girl...

i want money, i am going to be ruthless until i get it, and yet now everyone hates me. what happened?

why didn't things work out?

is it because money was the focus...?

okay lets try it with a different goal:

i want to have a better relationship with my friend, i am going to talk to her about what could be better in the friendship and point out things that need to change, and then... she resents me.

shit! this scenario didn't work out much better.

this is when realizing that there is no perfect world becomes depressing.

it is sad to think that most of the things we want can not be fulfilled (even the ones that seem to have the best intentions).

I remember when i was in my Buddhism class in college and the professor goes, "everything is nothing. you have nothing. you don't have a relationship with anyone. not even your mom."

we all giggled. and someone even said i didn't realize it until now but I HATE BUDDHISM.

i will admit, i left that class a little depressed, and thought how can this be a religion... it makes me so sad.

But as i let the truths of what Buddhism was saying settle in, i realized that everything is nothing. it is actually freeing. we don't need anything because everything out there is nothing.

at the root of all this unhappiness are our desires. our desire to be like someone else, our desire to have a bunch of money, our desire to have a perfect career. they are all bullshit and we keep thinking that if we drink in more stuff, then we will get closer to being whole. but if we can stop wanting all this shit then we can actually be whole.

to come back to the question --what should we want?

we shouldn't want anything.

is that realistic though?

you may be thinking, well food is a desire, shelter is a desire, relationships are a desire, and those all are necessary for our existence.

but i think it is maybe the unrealistic-ness of these desires that gets us into trouble.

for example, i used to think that i couldn't live without chocolate. and like most girls we go in search of chocolate when we are sitting alone watching gossip girl. (oddly enough).

it again becomes this desire to take in something to fill a void.

i think this should be our task -- categorizing our desires.

is this what i really need... or is this just something that i am using so that i can avoid a much greater emotion?

"when we cannot find contentment in ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere"

this ended up being a really long post, but in short: examine your desires.

are you wanting something that doesn't exist?

are you wanting something because you think it will make you whole?

are you wanting something because of misguided emotions?

"what we think we need and what we think we want is all bullshit" -my dad (the politically incorrect buddhist)

to try and end on a happier note...

if you can control your desires, happiness is within your grasp.

right now pretend that you had everything you ever wanted.

let yourself smile and think that you have it.

you can see that happiness is a state of mind and is not truly contingent upon what kind of car is really sitting in your garage.

go about your day today pretending you have everything, live in the world you have always dreamed of.

if it feels good and makes you happy then why not keep that mentality going every day, because believe it or not you just found a way to be happy.

IF YOU WANT TO BE DIFFERENT, BE DIFFERENT

last week i went and saw a documentary on a guy named Frank. he was overweight, recovering heroin addict, claimed "hadn't seen his penis in 10 years", and was just downright unhappy.

the movie was about him doing a 42 day cleanse that focused on changing his diet (to vegan/raw) and changing his lifestyle (exercising & saying positive affirmations).

at the end of the showing Frank was actually there! and he did a little q&a. one person asked why and how did you decide to do this cleanse...

Franks answer:

"I was so desperate. I had nothing else going for me. it came down to why not? why not do this.

And when it came down to it all i had to say was yes.

YES.

it is this little word that changed my whole life. "

This made me realize that it was a split second where Frank had to be brave and say yes, and every yes after that was easy. so in reality we only have to be amazingly strong for one brief second. come on we can all do that!!

everything besides what you want are just distractions. Frank could have let his desire for meat stand in the way of him experiencing his new cleansed self. or he could have let the comfort of his bed prevent him from going on a 30 minute walk. or he could have let his fear of the unknown stop him from finding the power of the infinite.

"if it is important enough to you, you will find a way. if it is not, you find an excuse"

in most cases it is fear that stops us from change. we almost always know what we want or what we should do but there is this little word that we use that ruins everything.

in place of saying that we will actually do something we say...

i am trying to loose weight.

i am trying to make him/her not apart of my life.

i am trying to be more positive.

"do or do not-- there is no try"

if there is something in your life that you can physically write down and enumerate how you want it to be, then the only thing standing in the way is you.

maybe you are not at rock bottom yet (and maybe that means something too). But in Franks case, he was done. he was fed up with what his life had become and he wanted to be different, so he became something different.

its like that annoying calculation of how to loose weight... calories in has to be less than calories burned. and there is truth in that.

sometimes the biggest things are just that simple.

if you want to be different, be different.

curious about the documentary...??

http://mayibefrankmovie.wordpress.com/index/

peace is in pieces

if happiness is when expectations meet reality, then is unhappiness when you fall short of your vision...?

yesterday i taught my first yoga class. and it wasn't as i imagined. like anyone, i had these daydreams of me standing in front of the room saying the most brilliant things and everyone beaming back at me with gratitude. yes, i wished it had gone better, and i wish i had said certain things, so in short i had some minor disappointments, but when i got back in my car i was not unhappy. my class had definitely not met my romanticized expectations, but for some reason i felt okay about it.

but as the day progressed i let my mind get away from me. i started to be negative nancy and was questioning my character and if i had the balls to be a good teacher. (maybe this is when being a psych major isn't the best thing) because then i was going back to my days of public speaking in intermediate school... and when i would blackout during a speech and end up repeating the same paragraph over.

i remember it like it was yesterday, it was my current event on television parental guideline ratings.

"The television industry designed a TV ratings last monday. the content levels are suggestive dialogue, crude language, suggestive dialogue, crude language, suggestive language, crude dialogue..... suggestive dialogue, crude language...."

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it was awful.

and then i went back to my seat and the boy sitting next to me (im pretty sure it was Wilkie Johnson) says, "ummm you know you repeated the same line like 3 times"

GOD IT WAS SO BAD. it makes me want to cry right now just writing this. hahaha

anyways.....

so not getting all freudian and bullshit, but i obviously have/had a fear of public speaking and having people watch me as i make an idiot out of myself. so reflecting on that i was saying to myself yesterday, WHY THE FUCK DID YOU PAY ALL THIS MONEY TO BECOME A YOGA TEACHER!!!???

not going to make this posting about concurring your fear and bla bla bla... but i do think putting myself out there to be a teacher and going after what i want in spite of my obvious lack of public speaking skills is changing me for the better.

what i really want to talk about is how to appreciate steps.

i have come a long way from the days of my current events speech, and even progressed from the person i was yesterday when i was teaching my class.

rome wasn't built in a day. and i can not expect to be the person i want to be in a matter of moments.

i see others, as well as myself, putting all their eggs in one basket and claiming that this one thing is going to be the turn around of their entire lives. but i think it is a bunch of little things that get us to where we want to be. it is that one oreo we put down that makes us that much thinner, it is that one article that we read in the newspaper that makes us that much more interesting, and it is that one loser job that teaches us that little thing that changes our mentality forever.

"peace is in pieces"

for me happiness is when we find a way to live with our progress. when we are happy that we made this one hour better than the last.

and for that one moment when we do get to that place where all our expectations are presented in reality, that is euphoria, but sadly that only lasts for a second.

so for now i am going to be totally happy teaching my not so perfect yoga classes.

"the art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them."