Pooh: I love honey. Don't you Piglet?
Piglet: But, Pooh, I brought honey for you last night. You did not eat it!
Pooh: Ah, I already have had two jars of honey by the time you came.
Does Pooh-bear really love honey? If he really loved it, he would have been able to eat it even after having two jars. I know, some of you may be thinking it is simple. It is the famous law of diminishing return. When you have more of something that does not give you as much fun/money any more!
Why does that happen?
Because we no more crave for it. Because we feel saturated. Because it does not feel as good anymore.
Ancient oriental philosophers took this argument to the next level. They suggested that we do not love or hate things or people or events. We love or hate the sensations created in our senses due to these things or people or events. When Pooh has had two jars of honey, the next jar is not going to create the same sensation as the first jar.
So does Pooh love honey? No! Pooh loves the "sensation" that honey creates. Replace honey with anything else that creates the same sensation, Pooh will love that as well. The same logic goes for hate as well.
My father discussed this with me a few weeks back. I felt numb thinking about it. It is as if, and correctly so, there is an opaque layer between me and the things/persons/events I am interacting with. I can not directly interact with objects/persons/events. They create sensations in my sense-organs and those sensations are the things I react to. (Note that in Oriental philosophy certain parts of the brain are also sense-organs as it senses different thoughts!)
When I say "I like xyz", it means nothing; and when I say "I hate xyz", it means nothing! How do we live in this opaque cocoon? Especially when we know that our feelings are impermanent (or anicca/anitya)? After one night, Pooh will get back his craving for honey.
This will need further musing. But as of now, there are two observations.
- First of all, we do not love/hate the objects/persons we interact with. We love/hate the sensations these objects/persons create in our sense-organs.
- Secondly, these sensations are fleeting and highly impermanent!
