Quote:
Originally Posted by james73
being addicted to anything "good" or "bad" is bondage. the dopamine/oxycontin flood is a symptom of the illusions the mind creates for us and we get addicted to it very easily. It's a good question, "is it a bad thing?" and one I wrestle with a lot. Is being "addicted" to sunsets and warm soup a bad thing? well, they're better than crack but once you start thinking "i must have that sunset to be happy" then you are on the road to not appreciating and being grateful for being alive.
I practiced this is a monastery once, in Kathmandu, every morning was a beautiful sunrise at 5am or so and we would all go to take tea and watch it - in silence of course. And then one morning I decided this was merely an illusion. I sat in a corner facing a wall, still on the rotating planet, still feeling the sun come up, but without that "sunrise kodak moment". Just being. That felt like freedom and space. That was more of a divine revelation, to me, than the blah blah worshipful beauty of the dawn sky.
You could argue the "fall" was the first illusion - we're naked, we need clothes, and everything else since then has been just all in our minds.
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What if a person were addicted to saving people's lives? Can't you admit that would be a good if a life-saving addict saved you or someone you love? Perhaps all good feelings involve dopamine or some similar chemical reaction. Would you then condemn all good feelings? Maybe you had a dopamine rush when you turned away from the sunrise. Shouldn't you condemn that too? Sounds like you were practicing life-denying asceticism. Perhaps that is an addiction too. Taken to its logical extreme only death would satisfy that addiction. I'm not trying to get personal or advocating drug addiction with my questions, just following the logic. Only God is absolutely good. Everything else is more or less good. So while addiction is perhaps not as good as being addiction-free, it is itself perhaps better than something else, say telling lies to justify invading a foreign country.