When this becomes boring, you think, "Now I am hungry; where is the refreshment stand?" Then you stuff yourself with as much junk food as possible, hoping to find some satisfaction in the ice cream, popcorn, coke and chocolate you are devouring.
You take refuge in these things as a way out of your depression and boredom, only to end up fat and sunburnt.
Taking true refuge involves a changing in our attitude; it comes from seeing the ultimate worthlessness of the transitory phenomena we are ordinarily attracted to.
When we see clearly the unsatisfactory character of the thing we have been chasing after, our compulsive striving for them will automatically diminish and the driving force of our grasping will subside.
We cease to be tossed this way and that by the changing fortunes of our life and gain the space to begin tapping our inner potential.
It cannot be said too often that there is nothing wrong with pleasure. It is our grasping, exaggerating, distorting and polluting attitude towards pleasure that must be abandoned.
Simply stated, renunciation is the feeling of being so completely fed up with our recurring problems that we are finally ready to turn away from our attachments to this or that and begin searching for another way to make our life satisfying and meaningful. Thus the cultivation of renunciation, or definite emergence, involves detaching ourselves from those sticky habits of attachment that hold us back from experiencing our fullest human potential.
Renunciation does not mean that we should give up our pleasure - far from it! The whole philosophy is that, as human beings with virtually unlimited potential, we should aim for the highest possible pleasure. What true renunciation is based on is the realisation that our ordinary pleasures are second rate. They are inconsequential when compared with the extraordinary bliss to be had from awakening the energies latent within us and realising our deepest potential.
