BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Buddhism Do Not Complain for 1 Month

No, but it involves [censored]-sniffing...
or was that tooooo much information....? :lol:!!

EDIT NOTE:
DANG!! I did it again!!
Answered the last post on the previous page!!
Jill, the secret handshake.. pooey-smelly fingers!
I sound like a real idiot!!

(that's because I am a real idiot... no imitations here, the genuine article!)
Sorry ladies!

Okay, blew it already. I have already complained that planes are germ farms and that I am sick of being sick.

But it felt good to get that off my chest. That and all the phlegm.

Lisa, it sounds like Mensa is my kind of oddball people.

I did show my Ferengi sketch thing to Dan and he does agree it's funny when you look at my interpretation of his responses to things. That is really how we talk. It's like people having two different conversations and then we just get frustrated. And frustration leads to anger. And Anger leads to the Dark Side. And so on.

This has been very enlightening for both of us, my doing this 'no complain' effort.

Maybe someday one month will be in my grasp. Maybe someday two days will be in my grasp. heehee. Gots to keep your sense of humor.

Alexandra, I too, am a genuine idiot. No hydrogenated, pre-processed idiocy here!

Jilly that is so great that you're figuring things out! Sometimes you can really think you're communicating but then a light bulb comes on and you say OHHHHH!!!!!

It's like today I was at the bike shop with Bob and the bike shop owner. Bob has known the bike shop owner - Jerry - for maybe 20 years, so longer than he's been with me. They know each other up and down and sideways.

But we were all looking at this new bike rack we had, which connects to the back of the car. Jerry was asking how the bike rack fit into the hitch, how you knew when it was seated properly. Bob started on some sort of esoteric description of alignments and holding pins and such.

Then I said, "I laid down with my head underneath the bumper, and as Bob slid the hitch connector, I could see when the holes lined up."

Jerry pointed at me and said "SHE answers the question that I was asking!"

So even though Bob and Jerry have known each other for decades, sometimes you still just don't quite speak the same language. Bob thought he was answering what Jerry asked - but Jerry didn't understand what Bob was saying.

Yes, we all have different mental maps. And we all think ours are the right ones. lol

I guess we should celebrate that we all communicate as well as we do, when we are at our best.

In most of life, we tend to self-select our companions for those with mental maps like our own? To me, it's like a menu. If I like most things on the menu, I will eat at the restaurant. Those people with the most menu stuff I like can become close friends.

The menu that only has one thing i like on it might be like a certain kind of friend - like a tennis buddy kind of thing.

Along these lines, I am not going to be looking for friends who "do not complain" as such. But I will also try to steer clear of energy-sucking conversations in general.

If i complain about something in my mind but don't say it, does that count?

well, I was about to say that it depends...
But as we're on the Buddhist forum, then I think, yes it does, in relation to your Kamma.....

If you think about complaining about something...
"Drn it! I hate these shorts! They make me look like a potato-head!" isn't so bad... and we can check that thought before we say it... saved by the bell!!

But if we're thinking along the lines of cursing someone specific, or being unkind, mental states also accrue Kammic consequences... That's why Right View, or right Understanding is the primary First Virtue on the Eightfold Path. It's about harnessing our Mind-patterns and training them to be...
good dogs, instead of wayward puppies chewing their way through the house....!
We may not always be successful...(there goes the remote!) but catching them (the thoughts) young, before they grow too big (become spoken) is by far the best way to go...!
And thought Kamma is obviously not as bad as spoken kamma....

Negative Thought kamma = slap on the wrist...
Negative Verbal Kamma = slap upside de head...
Negative Action Kamma = sparked out with a southpaw uppercut...!

It has to be remembered that you have to also be Mindful of the Intention of the thought...
The worse the Intention in the thought, the worse the kamma...

For example (and obviously, it doesn't apply here...)
If someone is deeply angry, and thinks: "I am going to give that dirty rotten SOB a piece of my mind...
That's better than -
"You wait until I have my hands on that dirty rotten SOB - I'm gonna give him such a beating...."

Is better than -
"He'd better keep out of my way. If I see him again, I'm gonna kill him, no sh1-t...."

It's an extreme example, but you see how the Intention has got progressively worse....

The provocation might be identical in all three scenarios... so the 'understanding' of what has happened, may not have changed...
But the Intention has...

Does any of this make sense....?

Hmmm. Yes. Let me ponder.

Right I think it's a learning process.

For example if you go around thinking "I hate old people! Old people are so slow! I don't want to look at old people!" then on one hand yes it's better to think that than to say it. But on the other hand, if you allow yourself to focus on such negative thoughts all the time, and build them up, then 1) it's likely they will slip out sometime and 2) it wears you down inside. There are so many better things to fill your mind and world with, rather than relishing anger ...

But yes it's not easy - and it's a daily thing to think about.