Donald Trump as The Hungry Ghost
I read this passage, and it reminded me of Trump, always wanting more, but never satisfied.
The Hungry Ghost Realm from The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Chogyam Trungpa
Then we have another realm of mind, that of the pretas or hungry ghosts. To begin with, we get into the luminosity by working up not aggression this time but intense greed. There is a sense of poverty, yet at the same time a sense of richness, contradictory and yet operating together simultaneously.
In the hungry ghost realm there is a tremendous feeling of richness, of gathering a lot of possessions, whatever you want you do not have to look for, but you find yourself possessing it. And this makes us more hungry, more deprived, because we get satisfaction not from possessing alone but from searching. But now, since we have everything already, we cannot go out and look for something and possess it. It is very frustrating, a fundamental insatiable hunger.
It is as though you are completely full, so full that you cannot eat any more, but you love to eat, and so you begin to have hallucinations of the flavor of food and the pleasures of eating it, tasting it, chewing it, swallowing it and digesting it. The whole process seems luxurious, and you feel extremely envious of other people who can really be hungry and eat.
This is symbolized by the image of a person with a gigantic belly and extremely thin neck and tiny mouth. There are different stages of this experience, depending on the intensity of hunger. Some people can pick food up, but then it dissolves or they cannot eat it; some people can pick it up and put in in their mouth, but they cannot swallow it, and some people can swallow it but once it gets into their stomach it begins to burn. There are all sorts of levels of that hunger, which constantly happen in everyday life.
The joy of possessing does not bring us pleasure anymore once we already possess something, and we are constantly trying to look for more possessions, but it turns out to be the same process all over again; so there is constant intense hunger which is based not on a sense of poverty but on the realization that we already have everything yet we cannot enjoy it. It is the energy there, the act of exchange, that seems to be more exciting; collecting it, holding it, putting it on, or eating it. That kind of energy is a stimulus, but the grasping quality makes it very awkward. Once you hold something you want to possess it, you no longer have the enjoyment of holding it, but you do not want to let go. Again it is a kind of love-hate relationship to projections. It is like the analogy that the next door neighbor’s garden is greener; once it becomes ours we realize there is no longer the joy or appreciation of beauty as we saw it at the beginning; the romantic quality of a love affair begins to fade away.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Response to Beringia (Original post)
