<HTML><HTML> From: Jon Johanning >From my perspective, at least, it's not really about replacing desires and their satisfaction, but looking clearly at the whole desire-satisfaction process and seeing what it's really all about, against the background of all reality (if you want to get really grandiose about it). ^^^^ CB:  I suppose I have at various times thought about my desires in relation to bigger questions, but I'm game to do it again. I guess Brain probably tried to us to do this already. You know in late high school /early college I remember thinking it is hard to really show that life has meaning.  I thought I had existential ennui. Periodically, with the ups and downs of life, I have revisited that falling into a kind of desirelessness. > ...then sort of. The assertion "we must share the same self" is a bit, > I > don't know... The self is rooted in the fact that there are individual > members of the species , individual bodies. Excellent observation -- that is what the concept of "self" we all start out with is rooted in. That self is inevitably launched on a course toward death (which the existentialists also made much of). Hence, it raises the question of how we relate to our own coming deaths, and how we generally use all sorts of ways of evading the issue. ^^^^^ CB: I saw a quote of Sartre recently: "Freedom is what we do with what has been done to us. " Then there is the famous saying from Imhotep, the Egyptian physician: "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. " ^^^^^ There's an old Buddhist sort-of-chant-thing that goes: " I am of the nature to grow old.    There is no way to escape growing old.    I am of the nature to have ill health.    There is no way to escape having ill health.    I am of the nature to die.    There is no way to escape death.    All that is dear to me, and everyone I love,    are of the nature of change.    There is no way to escape separation from them.    My deeds are my closest companions.    I am the beneficiary of my deeds.    My deeds are the ground on which I stand." That's what Buddhist theory/practice is really about. ^^^^^ CB: OK. My first thought is sort of since I'm going to get sick and die, and all my friends will go away, I better make hay while the sun shines.  Is that what they are trying to get me to think ? </HTML>