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Example of how deluded we are.
jll
Veteran
My teacher asked us a question recently. If your lover spit
into a cup and ask you to lick the saliva, how would you react?
But how do you feel when your lover gives you a passionate
french kiss?
into a cup and ask you to lick the saliva, how would you react?
But how do you feel when your lover gives you a passionate
french kiss?
0
Comments
and I think most women would be repulsed if I tried to "spit" into their mouth.
a kiss from your lover is the feeling of lust, a mind fabrication.
You won't take salvia from a glass but we are ok to take salvia from our lover's mouth...at the end the reality is you are getting the salvia...the rest is the story your mind is making up, and then you are in delusion...
Your teacher gave a great example jll...
And the actual physical sharing of saliva, or other bodily fluids for that matter, in the usual and proper context is just a lot more pleasant.
I think it's a good example of how we project meaning onto things and how those meanings affect our mood and emotions unnecessarily.
The question of control v. mutuality is by far the most dominant and pressing question of our era.
Also, your posts seem to imitate the style of your teacher.
In brief, this style tries too hard to pry open & get into people's heads. It is intrusion; trespass.
Why did I post a 2nd time? Due to the delusions of your so-called 'teacher'. :-/
too many sutras, why you don't just say the exact sutra?
"Come, bhikkhus, abide contemplating ugliness in the body, perceiving repulsiveness in nutriment, perceiving disenchantment with all the world, contemplating impermanence in all formations."
— M. 50, trans. Ven. Ñanamoli
The Blessed One said this: "This is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow & lamentation, for the disappearance of pain & distress, for the attainment of the right method, & for the realization of Unbinding — in other words, the four frames of reference. Which four?
"There is the case where a monk remains focused on the body in & of itself — ardent, alert, & mindful — putting aside greed & distress with reference to the world.
"And how does a monk remain focused on the body in & of itself?
[6] "Furthermore, as if he were to see a corpse cast away in a charnel ground — one day, two days, three days dead — bloated, livid, & festering, he applies it to this very body, 'This body, too: Such is its nature, such is its future, such its unavoidable fate'...
"Or again, as if he were to see a corpse cast away in a charnel ground, picked at by crows, vultures, & hawks, by dogs, hyenas, & various other creatures... a skeleton smeared with flesh & blood, connected with tendons... a fleshless skeleton smeared with blood, connected with tendons... a skeleton without flesh or blood, connected with tendons... bones detached from their tendons, scattered in all directions — here a hand bone, there a foot bone, here a shin bone, there a thigh bone, here a hip bone, there a back bone, here a rib, there a breast bone, here a shoulder bone, there a neck bone, here a jaw bone, there a tooth, here a skull... the bones whitened, somewhat like the color of shells... piled up, more than a year old... decomposed into a powder: He applies it to this very body, 'This body, too: Such is its nature, such is its future, such its unavoidable fate.'
"In this way he remains focused internally on the body in & of itself, or externally on the body in & of itself, or both internally & externally on the body in & of itself. Or he remains focused on the phenomenon of origination with regard to the body, on the phenomenon of passing away with regard to the body, or on the phenomenon of origination & passing away with regard to the body. Or his mindfulness that 'There is a body' is maintained to the extent of knowledge & remembrance. And he remains independent, unsustained by (not clinging to) anything in the world. This is how a monk remains focused on the body in & of itself.
~MN 10
"Now what, monks, is the allure of forms? Suppose there were a maiden of the noble caste, the brahman caste, or the householder class, fifteen or sixteen years old, neither too tall nor too short, neither too thin nor too plump, neither too dark nor too pale. Is her beauty & charm at that time at its height?"
"Yes, lord."
"Whatever pleasure & joy arise in dependence on that beauty & charm: That is the allure of forms."
"And what is the drawback of forms? There is the case where one might see that very same woman at a later time, when she's eighty, ninety, one hundred years old: aged, roof-rafter crooked, bent-over, supported by a cane, palsied, miserable, broken-toothed, gray-haired, scanty-haired, bald, wrinkled, her body all blotchy. What do you think: Has her earlier beauty & charm vanished, and the drawback appeared?"
"Yes, lord."
"This, monks, is the drawback of forms.
"Again, one might see that very same woman sick, in pain, & seriously ill, lying soiled with her own urine & excrement, lifted up by others, laid down by others. What do you think: Has her earlier beauty & charm vanished, and the drawback appeared?"
"Yes, lord."
"This too, monks, is the drawback of forms.
"Again, one might see that very same woman as a corpse cast away in a charnel ground — one day, two days, three days dead, bloated, livid, & oozing. What do you think: Has her earlier beauty & charm vanished, and the drawback appeared?"
"Yes, lord."
"This too, monks, is the drawback of forms.
"Again, one might see that very same woman as a corpse cast away in a charnel ground picked at by crows, vultures, & hawks, by dogs, hyenas, & various other creatures... a skeleton smeared with flesh & blood, connected with tendons... a fleshless skeleton smeared with blood, connected with tendons... a skeleton without flesh or blood, connected with tendons... bones detached from their tendons, scattered in all directions — here a hand bone, there a foot bone, here a shin bone, there a thigh bone, here a hip bone, there a back bone, here a rib, there a breast bone, here a shoulder bone, there a neck bone, here a jaw bone, there a tooth, here a skull... the bones whitened, somewhat like the color of shells... piled up, more than a year old... decomposed into a powder. What do you think: Has her earlier beauty & charm vanished, and the drawback appeared?"
"Yes, lord."
"This too, monks, is the drawback of forms.
"And what, monks, is the escape from forms? The subduing of desire-passion for forms, the abandoning of desire-passion for forms: That is the escape from form.
MN 13
I like this commentary from the above link though as it really hits at the core issue:
§14
Contemplation of the body's unattractiveness is not a popular meditation. People are happy to try to rid themselves of anger and hatred because they are painful. This can be done by the well-known meditations developing loving-kindness (metta). But meditating upon the nature of this body dulls the appetites rooted in greed — and greed is often associated with pleasure. And isn't pleasure what this life's all about?
Safely bagged by Mara — Death and Lord of the sensual realm!
The Buddha didn't send his monks to meditate in a cemetery over dead, bloated corpses for no reason.
we are talking about the living... I don't feel aversion for the living.
In the second case, the activity is shared and mutual, and the intention is the tender, mutual, shared, gentle gratification of both parties.
The question forces contemplation of the difference between exploitation and communion, between control of another and communication with another, between pornography and love, between serving and sharing, between disgust and joy, between hell and heaven, between acting with intention that represents a whole lotta self and acting from an intention of no-self.
Just how deluded is humanity?
Sufficiently deluded to act all too often with a whole lotta self....
and miss out on the beauty, the joy, and the wonder of acting with no-self.
What is the goal of Buddhism? To help one learn the difference!
I found the question inappropriate and demeaning in a way. Maybe I'm missing something. I don't look at other people and see ugliness- I see them as works in progress.
-----------------------------------------------
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble.
Washington Irving (1783 - 1859)
then i just keep making out. it was only thinking and interpretation, which brought me to stop.
my body was saying yes yes yes keep kissing this is awesome.
Just like we can become slowly immune to penicillin, we can become more immune to bacteria by exposing small amounts of it to us. Thus, kissing = good.
And on another note, did you know celibate nuns have a much higher chance of breast cancer?
that's a shame. i wonder if celibate monks have prostrate cancer?
That's how I read it. (Thanks for the food chunks detail, MG. (now that was sarcastic--my "thanks", I mean.))
We can experience disgust. We can experience bliss. And the circumstances are almost the same. Sometimes the circumstances are exactly the same and all it takes is looking at the same thing from another perspective.
All our fixed ideas are delusions. That’s the lesson.
Maybe your teacher was trying to pass a fixed idea like “the human body is disgusting” or “sexual desire is a hindrance on our path to enlightenment”.
If that’s the case he misses the point of his own example (imo).
about the nuns, that's probably because women who don't have kids have a slightly higher risk of developing breast cancer.
http://ehealthmd.com/content/what-causes-prostate-cancer
It took the spell check for me to see that one!
With Metta
It's a classic style of teaching to reduce our lust for the body to look at our reaction to the parts and fluids of a body outside of the context of the person of our attachment. I don't think teaching that makes the teacher deluded or anything I just think its a poor analogy.
When there are sexually active laypeople in an audience, it is not appropriate or moral to attempt to persuade those laypeople to renounce their sexuality.
This is not dhammic.
When a human being gives up sexuality, it is appropriate they do it via their own insight; via their own sense of unsatisfactoriness towards it
Try to see the world clearly, like a Buddha, rather than viewing the world idiosyncratically.
The Buddha taught laypeople as follows.
:coffee:
The Teacher knows full well there is a difference between "swapping spit" by kissing, and simply spitting into a cup and handing it to a lover. The difference is in our perceptions, not the end result, and that's the teaching.
I am interested in how quickly people rejected the teaching because the image made you uncomfortable. But you'll remember the teaching, won't you? A vivid mental image is one way of breaking through words to the understanding.
The point that the teacher is making about emptiness of the skandhas is a valid one. It is not the way I would teach it, but Jil is not my student and I'm not that teacher.
Someone asked Master Tozan, "What is essence of Buddha-Nature?"
Master Tozan answered, "The cowshit in the fields and the Buddha in the temples is the same."
Compared to this old fart of a Master, the one Jil is listening to is hardly extreme.
I called the example itself deluded, because it is eternalizing the form of spit, approaching the spit as an independent object outside of its context. This isn't helpful. Such as "we kill mosquitoes, but gasp and are appaled when someone kills their babies." Here, killing is the eternalized pattern of mind without context driving it.
Perhaps if the OP title was "an example of the irony of context", the context of the teaching would be the kiss, not the cup.