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Sense Pleasures Are The Tail Of The Snake?
JaySon
Florida Veteran
in Philosophy
I partook in many sense pleasures today and I feel great.
Ajahn Chah said that sense pleasures are like grabbing ahold of the tail of a snake. It will eventually swing around and bite you.
I suppose I will get bitten soon then.
1
Comments
Don't be tempted to suck it out.
Well I was hoping it would be a corn snake or something
I've also heard it described as honey on a razor blade. It's sweet to lick but it cuts.
It probably depends on what you're talking about.
Did you take a nice hike up a mountain and enjoy a stunning view or did you drink 9 pints of strong lager!
Feel free not to respond if it was a little more R-rated than that
Haha. More like... Ate half a pizza, drank half a bottle of mountain dew, spent 9 hours on a business side project I didn't even need to do (chasing fortune and making my life more complex than it needs to be), and spent several hours on my phone just consuming mental trash.
But I did get a 1 hour meditation session in this morning. Guess that counts for something.
mmm mmm pizza.......
Buddha trained as an ascetic yogi as was fashionable at the time for warrior princes who had left hedonism ...
His order of sannyasins conformed to the prevailing fashionable spiritual ideology of the time and place.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Śramaṇa
As far as I am aware we can live 'in the world but not be of it' if we have detachment. If we are swamped by our snakes or licking honey off razors addiction, then we may need to move towards more discipline ...
Being addicted to asceticism is just as detrimental and ignorant as unbridled pizza eating. The Middle Way is very balanced and pragmatic ...
I suppose I have this attitude because it is the attitude of the teachers I most study.
They talk about perfect virtue and make vows of perfect virtue.
They say you will never develop the higher levels of concentrated absorption without vinaya-like virtue.
I've tried to stick with it, but I find that I get too wound up tight and tense off a virtue-only practice.
It really does feel like asceticism.
If there were a way for me to perform all wholesome actions and not have a tension headache all day every day then I would.
As it stands I don't know how to relax and be at ease without at least some sense pleasures.
Good work @JaySon!
No need to get hung up about some sense pleasure I reckon.
For me, renunciation is something that has happened naturally over the last few years.
I have found that if I've tried to push myself too much into asceticism I have crashed and burned!
The middle way perhaps?
Be patient.
As one of my teachers says "it will happen when the right causes and conditions come together".
If you keep leaning in the right direction it will slowly occur.
Sense pleasure is like an itch that goes away after you scratch. It always comes back until a permanent cure is found.
http://buddhistteachings.org/scratching-the-itch
I will then change my name to Eileen Dover
hides
EVERYTHING - In Moderation.
Including Moderation.
(I think I'm pretty Moderate in my Moderation....
)
The Middle Way entails mixing our unskilful scratching with skilful itch encouragement. For example regular practicing of skilful relaxation via Chi Kung, yoga or body based mindfulness meditation, such as walking relaxation meditation.
Just cutting off ones sensual 'itch' to breath, as the Buddha did in his unskilful ascetic episode just led to headaches ... Come to think of it he nearly died from lack of pizza, when he was indulging in Guatama ascetic 'spiritual' anorexia nervosa. Oh Buddha!
http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/22316/buddhist-pranayama-practices
http://ocoy.org/original-yoga/how-to-meditate/the-breath-of-life-the-practice-of-breath-meditation/buddhist-tradition-of-breath-meditation/
Someone should invent tv-watching meditation, I'm sure it would be a great hit!
Loving kindness TV meditation. Whenever someone pops into the screen. "May you be blessed". Lol
Then there is always the exhortation to oneself as in this poem by Patrul Rinpoche, a 19th century wandering Tibetan wise guy. This goes out to all us dwellers in distraction fellow travelers:
“Advice from Me to Myself”:
Listen up, old bad-karma Patrul,
You dweller-in-distraction.
For ages now you’ve been
Beguiled, entranced, and fooled by appearances.
Are you aware of that? Are you?
Right this very instant, when you’re
Under the spell of mistaken perception
You’ve got to watch out.
Don’t let yourself get carried away by this fake and empty life.
Your mind is spinning around
About carrying out a lot of useless projects:
It’s a waste! Give it up!
Thinking about the hundred plans you want to accomplish,
With never enough time to finish them,
Just weighs down your mind.
You’re completely distracted
By all these projects, which never come to an end,
But keep spreading out more, like ripples in water.
Don’t be a fool: for once, just sit tight. . . .
If you let go of everything—
Everything, everything—
That’s the real point!
Can we even be expected to live EXACTLY like the Buddha teached in this day and age? I find other religions or faiths start to fail or become less populated because they stick to views that are no longer relevant in this time and people can no longer relate. I think you can still be loyal to whatever you believe and yet modernize it a little
I think MOST things are okay in moderation as long as your not hurting anyone, inlcuding yourself and your mind, personally.
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Nagarjuna:
When you discover your own reasons for keeping whatever virtues you won't feel a sense of loss of the pleasure things. If you are only trying to keep up with someone else, even a great teacher, then your reasons for giving anything up aren't your own. When you choose to do it, then it's not longer a loss or a painful process. It is what you are meant to be doing for yourself. When you choose to enjoy something, do it guilt-free and then move on. No need to think about it hours or days later. It isn't as much the pleasure that is a problem but rather our attachment to it. Our sadness when we realize we don't have it anymore. Our quest to do it again. Enjoy it and move on to the next moment. Like a fabulous sunset that you can never retain. Even if you take a photo, they often do not do the experience justice. Just enjoy, and let go. You can't get that moment back again no matter how hard you try. The next fabulous sunset is just that-another one. Not the same as before. So attempting to hold onto it does nothing. And in fact may result in you missing the wonder of the next moment.
This is the bite - having equated relaxation / ease with sense pleasure, one is required to continue feeding the cycle.
I would like to elaborate on what @Zero said.
The ease or relaxation that we are aiming for in Buddhism, is independent of sensation and feeling. It is closer to the space between or emptiness. It is unconditional ease. A letting go of the tension. The impediments generate tension, disquiet, craving but when we free ourselves of their influence then we are closer to the unborn or uncreated state ...
I feel like my life is a game of ping-pong in which the ball constantly goes back and forth between selfishness and altruism.
Sense pleasures the selfish ping pong paddler craves.
This is a different proposition to the original which I read as, 'where's the bite'.