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Craving for Sensual Pleasures
I find myself submitting to excuses and compromises in the case of indulging in lust. It is clearly hampering my progress walking the path. I've read meditating on Asubha-kammatthana is one method to see the impermanence of form and stem craving. I feel I already know the answer to this dilemma, to remain more aware and allow these impulses to fade, but I am still so ignorant and fall into the trap of sensual pleasure. So please, any suggestions or encouragement to assist me in this would be very welcome.
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And yeah, just keep doing what you said yourself. See the urges, be mindful to them, then let them fade naturally. Sometimes they won't fade. But you will survive it.
when you see the craving arise, look inside and see the craving sensation in your body (somewhere in your chest or belly).
Recognize this as the craving and look at how it feel, how wide it spread in your body.
after you do this for a few minutes, something to remember to help you not cave in is "okay, i will enjoy sex one day, but when i do, it's not going to be because of this conditionned sensation of craving, it will be just because this is something that i genuinely want to do in that future situation".
All you have to do is look at the sensation with equanimity, what this does is it tell your subconscious mind: I see the conditioned sensation, but i'm fine and i don't need it anymore. So the subconscious mind will realized it's not something that you want so it let go of it...
ps: look at it with equanimity for a bit doesn't mean stare at it for 2 hours and obsess over it.
it just mean look at it, realize what it is, be fine with it, and move on with your life (even if it's still there)
This view might be at odds with the vows taken by some monks, but are you a monk?
Craving is not the problem, nor does it need to be "abolished" (which I am told cannot be done anyhow).
The problem is that when we crave, we think there is something wrong and we have to fix it. We think we have to do something to make that craving go away. Or we get ourselves busy in something else so we don’t have to be aware of the craving.
As Pema Chodron advises: "Don’t indulge. Don’t ignore. Don’t speed right past. Stay present with the feeling." It's okay to crave. And if we are able to free ourselves through mindfulness, even better. If not, well then, there's always another time.
Samsara is Nirvana. Right?
-There is the compulsive eating. Eating because of the conditionned reactions.
When a certain situation happen (you react with stress to something, you are sad, it's a morning habit, you walk in front of a ice cream shop etc......) you eat not because of the natural hunger but because of the conditioned reaction programmed in the subconscious mind.
The idea is to become free from the false self, these conditionnings that dictate your life rendering you a slave of your own mind.
and do whatever it is you want to do, but not because your mind is programmed to do so but because the real you want to do it.
I read an insightful article today about addictive behaviour by Ven. Ñanavira, I hope it is of benefit to you: http://nanavira.xtreemhost.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=75&Itemid=49
With Metta,
Guy
I don't understand why people ("Buddhists", Atheists, whoever) try to disprove the existence of God through logic and reasoning. That is what seems absurd... how can you prove that something that is purportedly omnipresent, omniscient, and eternal doesn't exist? Why would you try to use our mind's laws of reasoning, pattern recognition, logical extrapolation, etc. to analyze something that by its very definition is impossible to know? Why even enter the foray of proving or disproving God? What's the point?
The statement that "something eternal can not exist" is a logical statement, which is why it is completely missing the point that the concept of faith involves not knowledge or understanding, but the lack of a need for knowledge or understanding. God can be eternal, know the nature of man, be a man (Christ), all at the same time, simply if you make the decision to abandon past patterns (attachments of the mind, so desperate to make sense of things) and decide to simply believe/accept/decide/whatever, that God is external, exists, knows the nature of man, is omnipresent and omniscient, all at the same time. If one can attain true utility from believing that the sky is solid matter, then to say he is wrong for doing is so is silly. There was a time when we decided that the sky was not solid matter, and instead was atmosphere. What if atmosphere is solid matter? What if solid means un-solid? What if the sky is the ground?
To truly understand how faith in a God or Heavenly Father or whatever works, you have to understand that you don't always have to understand. You have to understand what it means to abandon our logic and patterns and think laterally. You have to understand what faith means. Faith is not ignorance, it's a decision to let go of knowledge and understanding. It's not idiocy or stupidity, it's a lack of attachment to logic. It's a choice to quiet our mind and feel something to be true, instead of knowing something to be true.
To get this concept, try looking at a quarter. Look at it and say to yourself "this is a mouse." It may sound silly, but if you look at the quarter and assign the concept of mouse (tail, fur, squeaking, etc.) to the quarter with your heart, with NO mind, they can become one thing. Just as a baby learns that the feeling in his tummy that makes him cry is "hunger," or a need for food, we too can learn to connect things in a completely arbitrary fashion. People who learn languages as an infant/child supposedly use a different part of their brain to connect words to ideas. If you hear people around you talking in your native tongue, it can be extremely distracting and difficult to turn off the relation to the words that are being spoken...different words simply trigger understanding in the brain, which is why it's hard to turn them off. If the people around you are speaking in a different language that you do not understand, it is quite easy to push the noise to the background. The word IS the idea. There is no conscious translation process...they are simply one thing. You can't logically prove that the word "house" is the idea "house" yet in our mind they are one and the same...it is an arbitrary assignment of two ideas.
What this proves is that we have the power to create our own logic, which is exactly what we do. We create logics for useful purposes. If they are not useful, or harmful, we throw them out. If creating the logic that God can be two contradictory things at once is useful, then by all means, do so. Just because creating the logic that "hungry tiger" and "loving, safe, and compassionate" are the same thing would ...well...be quite silly, this does NOT mean that creating and believing other arbitrary logics, such as the nonlogical concept of God that was being criticized, can't be useful. If a belief in a God helps someone, gives
them strength, peace, whatever, then who cares if the paradigm that explains God would be silly to explain other concepts in our world. Who cares if it's "wrong" in other scenarios? Let go of reasoning, logic, MIND, if using it is not useful. I don't see how it is useful to use MIND to disprove someone's beliefs if those beliefs are not causing suffering.
Great article, thanks Guy!
-ignorance conditions..
-arising of karmic formations in the mind (mental formations of afflicted virtues and nonvirtues). Conditions...
-consciousness. Conditions..
-name and form. (comes into the mothers womb). Conditions..
-six senses.. Conditions..
-contact with what is sensed. Conditions..
-feeling. (joy attachment aversion indifference). Conditions..
-craving. Conditions..
-grasping. Conditions (through grasping karma and existence of body speach and mind)
-existence. Conditions
-birth through the five aggregates. Conditions...
-death
We can try to work with craving but really through prajna (wisdom) paramita we realize that all phenominen are empty. That works at the level of ignorance and then a chain reaction destroys the other 11 links at each level..
Mental formation and existence are the karma group...
Ignorance craving and grasping are the afflicting emotions group...
All the others are the the suffering group..
It sounds to me like they are all present all times though you can think of them happening in turn somewhat (birth death maybe preceded in womb by senses developing)..
Source (I havern't personally realized this): the Jewel Ornament of Liberation by Gampopa..
But anyway, I have problems with craving and sensual pleasure myself, and when I cave into the cravings, I always end up feeling remorseful and guilty, so it definitely is something I should try to at least curb in some way.
The suggestions about being mindful of the craving and staying present with it, might end up helping me if I'm only able to apply them.
That makes a lot of sense, and it echos what I've heard in podcasts. When it comes to a specific thing -- one teacher mentioned sitting at a stoplight and craving a latte from a nearby Starbucks -- staying present and not giving in likely means the craving will go away in time.
In my case, I'm struggling with a less tangible issue: I crave excitement (or stimulation). Boredom is the enemy. I've been seeking an external source to satisfy this craving (computer games, books, etc.) I recognize that this is a cause of suffering and that letting go is necessary, but I am at a loss as to how to proceed.
Grim, I've struggled in the same ways. Always needing to be busy, to do something, to be entertained. I had to turn inward rather than keep trying to satisfy this outside. I mindfully admit that the reasons I was constantly seeking external stimulation is because I didn't like being with myself. I wasn't satisfied just BEING. I started meditating more, and doing body scans, really going inside my body and staying there (I have lots of issues that involve mentally detaching from my body, too) and I've found so much excitement in meditation! It's not always fun or easy, but I'm NEVER bored with it.
I'm not sure if this is a Buddhist teaching or not, but it's something that I have learned in life that I feel goes along with Buddhist teachings. To know what is right or wrong for us, we have to experience life. Right now, you are thinking that craving sex is wrong because you have been TOLD it's wrong. But is it really wrong for you? Try it. Have sex. Give in to your cravings. If it fulfills you, then keep doing it.
If however, it doesn't fulfill all you want it to fulfill, then stop doing it. Then you have learned firsthand that this is wrong for you. Only then will you really have the desire to WANT to stop.
I feel like this goes hand in hand with what I've learned about Buddhism so far. Aren't we supposed to question everything? Didn't Buddha say, [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"Make a proper investigation first"? [/FONT]To me, a proper investigation would be to figure it out for yourself and not to act the way people have told you to act.[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]