[Charuru]

I'm tempted to point out that we evolved emotions for a reason. They're basically sugar methods for typically socially beneficial reactions.

Too much rejection of emotions may at best lead one to be a Buddha, or perhaps just dull, or maybe even worst, a sociopath.

[ahoyhere]

Just to be clear, Buddhism is not about the elimination of emotions. It's about recognizing that feelings are not real things, to believe and rely on, or to be afraid of.

[insane_loaf]

Interesting. This sounds quite similar to transcendental idealism, then. Or even Stoicism, or Vedanta. I think Plato would agree with this idea too, seeing his cave metaphor: We are prisoners in a dark cave, facing the wall. A fire burns behind us, casting off shadows from object passing between our backs and the fire. The shadows aren't real (actually, they're the absence of light), but to us, they _seem_ real. Same idea in The Matrix.

Nice.

[jjs]

Plato thought that true reality lay in universal abstractions called Forms, or Ideas.

The Buddhist sutras take the position that "objects of mind" are just leaky abstractions created by our limited minds, which struggle to make sense of the world. The greatest fallacy, in this view, is conflating the "objects of mind" with the real objects (+) they supposedly represent.

(+) Buddhist philosophers in India developed a concept of atomism, which leads to existential riddles like, "If I look at this pile of atoms, and see a chair, is the chair inside my mind, or outside?" (If you answer either way, you're wrong! ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_atomism

http://deoxy.org/koan/76

[warpwoof]

And, in fact, the way (the way I know of at least) of going about realizing that at a deep, fundamental, instinctual level (instead of just agreeing with it on the conceptual level), is to turn toward your emotions and observe them directly.

There are lots of Buddhist meditation techniques, but, from what I understand, the most fundamental technique is simply observing your experience. It's not about trying to change your experience or get to some idealized state, but to really just look at your experience as it is, rather than how you wished it to be.

Many people have the misconception that meditation is supposed to be some peaceful, blissed-out state. That does happen sometimes, but a large part of it is also sitting with emotions raging inside of you and turning your attention to look at those unpleasant emotions again, and again, and again, resisting the urge to get the hell out of there and find something, anything to distract yourself.