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Sexual desire.
I've been practicing for probably 6 months now, and I've noticed my sexual desire start to decline. im married, and feel as thought sex is an empty act, just fuel for a physical attachment to physical pleasure. I definitely understand that there can be a middle path, enjoying it without getting attached.. But I just really don't have the wish to do it anymore, and feel as though I've let go of the craving. Would you say this is a normal thing? My husband has been very understanding with this, as he knows I'm a very spiritual person. I'm lucky to have someone supportive of my beliefs, even though he considers himself agnostic.
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Loss of sexual desire is surprisingly common, although sometimes not openly discussed.
I feel that when we examine the pre-practice drive for sexual contact.. ie satiation of sexual urge, then it is quite reasonable to notice that urge subsiding. However, there is also another reason for sexual contact, which is to deepen the connectedness and resonance you have with your spouse. This desire is not unwholesome, and can lead to a different kind of sexual exchange... one that is rooted in selflessness, awareness, mutual connectedness and deep love.
I suggest you pick up a book on Tantric Sex, not with the intention of creating new urges, but with the spirit of understanding the deeper possibilities of inter-human connectedness and how sexual exchange can be an expression of your own inner awareness.
Good luck and happy humping,
Matt
Also, as we get older, our bodies and minds develop, and part of that is a lower sex drive. This too is natural, and it can sneak up on you quicker than you might imagine! I agree with Matt to explore new ways, new avenues. If not Tantra, then perhaps just setting aside more time to intentionally be intimate. It doesn't have to lead to sex, but of course...once in a while, it just might!
Be patient, and refrain from drawing such conclusions so quickly. It is not the case that sex is necessarily an empty act, nor must it be the result of grasping attachment. Instead, we often bring grasping attachment to sex. A completely different issue!
Well, I guess it's normal
There are SO many reasons why we woman can have fluctuating or diminished sexual desire, and this could be due to any one or any combination of them.
If you think that your sexual desire is due to your Buddhist practice, ask yourself this:
Have ALL your other desires diminished EQUALLY to your sexual desire?
- If YES, then it could be either (1) depression, and/or (2) your Buddhist practice.
- If NO, then likely it is due to one of the other many reasons a woman can have diminished sexual desire.
Your husband may be understanding, but for many spouses that rubber band only stretches so far for so long. Don't neglect his happiness.
1) Entertainment: to satisfy the rise of an inexplicable craving (lust)
2) Love: the intimate uniting and entanglement with a deeply loved other person
3) Strategy: to procreate
4) Duty: authority pressure
"The practice" can easily reduce and even remove all but one of those purposes, thus the causes of the desire.
Buddhism enhances love. It does not diminish it.
To restore the desire, although perhaps due to a different cause than before, focus/concentrate on the intimate joy of being wrapped up, enraptured, engulfed, and entwined with a person who you see and believe to be a wonderfully awesome life attached to your own life so closely as to be another part of you. Focus on the beauty in the other that you do not see so much of within yourself.
Even if you do not realize it, to truly love another is to love yourself. But if you merely love yourself, you will never truly love another. Buddhism will teach you to love others and how to manage and guide piti, the rapture.
I still see it as entertainment. Not that it is wrong in itself but it is still done for pleasure mental or otherwise
Are you suggesting that sexual desire (or any kind of desire) cannot be fully abandoned by one who practices the Noble Eightfold Path?
There is a story in the Suttas of a layman (Ugga of Vesali) who had several wives prior to his attainment of Non-Returning (the third stage of enlightenment, where all craving for sensuality has been irreversibly abandoned). Once he attained that level of enlightenment he could no longer perform the sexual act because the "fuel" (i.e. craving) was removed. Because of this he gave his ex-wives three choices: Return to their home familes, remain as his "sisters" or re-marry.
Many things influence sexual desire, including youth (puberty), reproductive instinct & fear.
If one is content & feels safe with a partner, then naturally sexual needs can diminish as more refined emotions develop.
Personally, I cannot see why two mature adults cannot cease to express "love" on a physical level.
The matter & outcome depends on those two individuals.
Most of the experience is deep looking, gentle touching, heartfelt talking... only a tiny percentage of the exchange is rooted in organ/organ contact, but all of it is sexually fluid.
The idea of fear, instinct and urge being a part of the sexual drive can certainly be true of it, but even if that diminishes, there is no explicit need to remove sex. It can very directly be an alert, loving and deeply spiritual exchange that does not confuse or create fear or attachments.
With warmth,
Matt
Did I say something wrong?
First let me point out that the actual fundamental concept of Love is the concept of a desire to support, maintain, build, or have something. That desire is very often accompanied by many associated desires and mistakes. The most common, and only true sin, is the mistake called lusting (wanting/desiring so much that time is not given to complete thought). Often a desire to possess is also invited. The desire for sexual engagement and many other forms of teasing and building of a relationship tend to accompany what is founded in love, but they are NOT the love itself.
Actual Love is a matter of wisdom. That is actually the only reason anyone ever feels love at all. It is a wisdom given by nature itself as well as the other desires accompanying it. They all serve a purpose, a single purpose associated with the wisdom of loving.
The Eight Fold Path, as you know requires Wisdom. So is Love wise or not? Of course it would depend on what/who was being loved, but I will testify and logically prove if need be, that one can have no wisdom of any use without also having love. No one can be rational at all without Love. And no one ever has been or ever will be.
In your example from the Suttra, Ugga did not love his wives, he merely had them around for the entertainment (craving) of sex or perhaps the wisdom of procreation (a form of self-love). When he lost his craving, he had no concern for maintaining them or their relationship to him. Such a man, in my world, would not be allowed to marry because he lives merely as a mindless animal lacking the responsibility of having wives and children.
{{why do I always have to log in twice on this forum to post a msg??}}
Depends on your definition of the English word "love". In the English language the word "love" is used to mean all sorts of things. Sometimes the Pali word "Metta" is translated as "loving-kindness" which has nothing to do with sex. In Theravada Buddhist cosmology, there is a certain type of heaven realm known as the "Brahma Loka" where beings are without gender. It is a mind-only realm. The beings there experience four types of emotions: Metta, Karuna, Mudita, Uppekha. As far as I know the beings there don't engage in tantric sex.
I'll bet Ugga had Metta towards his wives, this was why he allowed them to stay as his "sisters" or go as they wished. That is real love. If your wife left you tomorrow, would you think "that's wonderful, I hope she is happy wherever she goes" or would you think different kinds of thoughts?
There is bliss when the winds of Roma and Kyangma [the two channels beside the spine] enter into the central channel [in the spine],
There is bliss when the bodhichitta [pure sexual energy] descends from above... and the translucent tigle [sexual energy] pervades from below.
When the white and red [male and female essences] unite in the middle [at the heart],
And the joy of a leakless body satiates one,
The whole body is suffused with undefiled rapture.
Sixfold is the bliss of the secret yogas." - The Song of the Snow Ranges
:eek::eek::eek:
:dunce:
buddhist erotica 2010
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Marriage is about becoming one and the same person in spirit even though occupying 2 bodies. But if you lose the urge to open your eyes, to use them, do you cut them out? Do they stop serving you even when you do not enjoy them? Your eyes are devoted to you as you should be to your eyes. A truly married couple is similar.
A wife is not a mere accessory to be kindly dismissed when no longer interesting (except in some cultures).
Yeah I know, I meant what I said in a tongue-in-cheek way.
Don't ask me I'm not married, nor do I want to be.
Milarepa was a solitary practitioner. Tummo practice has nothing to do with an actual sex act with another person.
Also written by Milarepa :
"I place no faith in feeble companions.
I spend my winter months in mountain retreats,
Eating the roots of mountain herbs
In the company of friendly mountain deer.
I spend the spring midst rocks and ravines,
Eating nettles and wild leeks,
Kept company by friendly foxes and blackbirds.
Summer months are spent on cliffs and snow mountains "
(Miraculous Journey)
.
The same reason people call sex crude
I don't understand why people try to demonize sex as some crude act. Sex is sex and is probably the most impassioned expression of love there is.
Actually, let's just cut all that down to:
Sex is sex.
Its really not that difficult to maintain, it requires simple deep listening and patient deep looking. The rest just makes sense.
With warmth,
Matt
I don't get it
I get it
It's a fundamental component in creating the chaos used to manipulate change in what people think and believe; "obfuscation".
Social engineering via media control:
Taboo concepts are maligned and obscured so the concepts can be replaced and forgotten, first by demonizing the concept, then un-defining the words, then redirected focus, then by connotating a preferred replacement, then by declaration of the "new reality"; the new definition.
1) Love (especially Christian love) => forbidden as it impedes people from judging others thus disables hidden control through suspicion propagation.
2) Maligning/Demonizing - "Love is a form of insanity. It causes SO much self-defeat and codependency."
3) Un-defining - "Love means different things to different people. Everyone has the right to mean what they want by what they say. It's natural evolution of words."
4) Connotating - "Love is really just a physical craving. It is only a chemical reaction, much like chocolate reaction." and "I love my car. I love a good time. I love cake. I love my job...." and "Making love = having sex"
5) Declaring the new reality programming - "The deepest, most impassioned form of love is very giving and compassionate sex."
After a few generations, people assume it never meant anything else and eventually it doesn't.
It is using Anapatasati in a social sense. The mind/governance/citta manages the emotion/governed/vedana and is a form of hypnosis of the masses (getting past their own judgment and filter).
The exact same formula is used against Christianity itself and many other newly forbidden ideas.
You don't; but some people do. And vice versa.
You don't, because you're attributing negative qualities to it as if they're inherent.
Your cause-effect list seems to be a continuance of the conflict theorist's view of social evolution. I wonder if it is also (and perhaps more) accurate to say that concepts evolve to fit the needs of a culture, whose interpretations become more refined with continued exchanging and examining.
ie... the meaning of Love isn't a manipulated element of control, but as the members of a culture look deeply at their experiences of love and share them, the underlined meaning expands and even procreates new definitions for sub-shades of the initial meaning (such as puppy love, romance, familial love, platonic love, compassion, object love.) The idea that love means one static thing across any phenomena (subjective realities or objects) creates an ignorant clinging.
The most direct problem that I see arising from your conceptual reprogramming model, is that it is an expansion of meaning, not a shifting in meaning. For instance, karma also means cause and effect, such that for some this is what it means. This does not change the actual archetype of the original pointer word karma/kamma, the pattern within the natural phenomena remains the same. This shift only impacts the resonance during communication, not the patterns themselves.
What do you think?
Matt
It is much like the gambling issue. Being only aware of the possible good and ignoring the probable bad cannot be the road to profit nor enlightenment, but rather mere usery and consumption.
What does being aware really mean, if not being accurate and un-deceived due to being aware of the possibility of the deceiver (especially in the face of overwhelming evidence left behind).
"What did you mean when you said, 'I love you?'"
"Oh well, I meant what a lot of people mean when they say that."
There is a difference between penetrating the truth of reality, and "painting it over with a preferred truth of guilt"
In this continued exchange with you for instance... I do not say that all companies that gamble are legitimate or cheating. I do not say that love's evolution is controlled strictly by "the man" or by "innocent exchange"
Rather, if you look moderately upon the phenomena, you'll find that neither extreme is absolutely true, and often the less dramatic view is more pervasive. I bet that most of the popular internet gambling places are legitimate, and most of the concepts that have undergone evolution have done so out of wide social observation and expansion rather than manipulation.
Does this seem reasonable?
With warmth,
Matt
If you are the victim of deception, how do you gauge to what degree you are still being deceived? If you can only see some of reality, how do you decide how much you are not seeing?
I lost almost the entirety of my life to my blindness of my blind overseer. A hope that kept me faithful to a fantasy of altruism above. After I learned of the means of such things, and finally gave up hope that it was just an exaggerated nightmare. The reality became clear that blindness was feeding blindness with long standing intent and there was nothing else left of altruistic Man.
The Shaolin's retreated up high away from all other people for a reason. It wasn't merely the noise. Mankind has never known one single day of sanity because he began to believe in the profit of deception.
This is a great question!
My answer to this is that you stop trying to see that which you do not see, and see accurately what you do see. If somebody tells you that "Love means XXXXX" then what you are seeing is a person who relates "Love means XXXXX". You don't need to accept or reject that person's attributions to the meaning of Love, it is as simple as everyone sees a different version of reality.
Alternatively, if you see "XXXX is possible, where people are shitty" you don't project truth by saying "XXXX is definite, because people are shitty"... that is more ignorance and binds you to cling to solid definitions of phenomena.
I knew a woman who was deeply sexually discriminated against by the engineers of a company she worked for, so much so that she won a lawsuit against them and was deeply troubled. One day, years later, she was eating in a diner and felt a visceral panic attack when some people in suits walked in. Now, it would be ignorant to say all people who wear suits will treat her poorly, but that doesn't change the visceral response. Rather, for her, it was a matter of doing just what I suggest... looking at what actually created the unhappiness, then realizing that phenomena is self-standing, not a pattern that governs all suit wearers.
Someone who does not have a reaction to the phenomena is better suited to tell us if our reaction isn't necessary, and then point us in the direction of the right view, where the phenomena are not interconnected except when they actually are.
With warmth,
Matt
In your sample, the "truth" is not about what love means or doesn't. The only truth was concerning how the person used the word and what he believed of its concept and consequences. The issue in such an encounter isn't about what is true or not, as much as what the person before you is thinking or desiring regardless of what is or isn't otherwise really true.
You left the truth completely out of your mental vision because you were trying to see what was there; the accuracy of the "truth", when you should have been observing what wasn't there but being presumed - by both his and your own vedana/citta dynamic.
A word is merely a communication tool. It is critical to ensure that both parties use the same definition. It is not so important what that definition is.
The most fundamentally used concept behind the word "love" is still the concept of devoted support for the joy and life of another. That was the intent when it became a part of marriage vows and promises between people.
There is no "true meaning" of a word. There are only assigned meanings, presumed meanings, and instilled confusions.
Could I also point out that we are in the beginner's forum here.
Such in-depth discussion might be more appropriately conducted in the Advanced forum?
I'm all for engaged discussion, but consider where your discussion is going and what it's leading to - and then whether it is immediately helpful, constructive or even comprehensible to the OP with relevance to their post.
NO.
.
With warmth,
Matt
But as I mentioned much earlier, I agree this "love discussion" really should be a different thread.