I'm reading Phillip Moffitt's Dancing with Life (2008), in which he writes about Buddha's "Fire Sermon" and how all of our life involves "burning". While everything and every process involves "burning," the evil of craving (or excessive desire) makes the necessity and unavoidability of burning into suffering.
In a sense, this seems quite right, if "burning" can be seen as energy. Everything is a form of energy in a sense. (Einstein, right?). All transactions, whether physical or mental, are energetic transactions. This leads to the question: how well do we manage these energetic transactions? How do we gain warmth from them and not get burnt, as Buddha seems to ponder in the Fire Sermon? I suspect that these issues go to some very fundamental issues on how we approach life, although, most of us, most of the time, conduct it unknowingly. Perhaps writing and thinking about it will make it more accessible. Indeed, the task should be to see life as a constantly ongoing energy transaction. Energy, after all, is eternal delight (Blake).
rev'd 08.14.19
In a sense, this seems quite right, if "burning" can be seen as energy. Everything is a form of energy in a sense. (Einstein, right?). All transactions, whether physical or mental, are energetic transactions. This leads to the question: how well do we manage these energetic transactions? How do we gain warmth from them and not get burnt, as Buddha seems to ponder in the Fire Sermon? I suspect that these issues go to some very fundamental issues on how we approach life, although, most of us, most of the time, conduct it unknowingly. Perhaps writing and thinking about it will make it more accessible. Indeed, the task should be to see life as a constantly ongoing energy transaction. Energy, after all, is eternal delight (Blake).
rev'd 08.14.19
