DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Overcoming urges and desires of the flesh

**Daruhuw** · 06-02-2010, 09:15 PM

I see it as causing to cease those unwholesome behaviors which have arisen, and sustaining the cessation of already-ended unwholesome behaviors.

What exactly are these unwholesome behaviors? Is it something the OP said? I don't see anything in that post that is unwholesome except the aversive attitude towards the sexual urges. That is what is causing dukkha -- not the urges themselves.

(For the record, Sobeh, this is just a general post, not directed at you specifically, but at a general mindlessly Puritan mindset I come across from time to time on Buddhist forums. I think you probably mean something different that what I initially interpreted your post to suggest.) The reason I bring this up is because, IME, when you seek to manipulate or eliminate aspects of your physical experience directly, you are working on a very superficial level. People do this all the time, and it's the very thing we are meant to grow out of in Buddhism. The Buddhist path is one in which we correct our unskillful relationship with whatever we experience, rather than attempting to apprehend and manipulate the experience itself. Any resulting change in our experience (decreasing of unskillful body/mind-states, increasing of skillful body/mind-states) is a side-effect of this practice; we achieve it indirectly, as collateral but not as the goal. The goal is to get at what is deeper -- the clinging/aversive relationship with our life, that keeps us ensnared in the compulsive world of samsara.

The reason we approach it this way is because, if we don't stop to question our motivations for trying to change ourselves, we will be blind victims to our conditioned prejudices and impulses. We end up trying to change ourselves without any understanding of what is driving us. This manifests itself in both everyday life as well as our attitude towards the practice life. Buddhism is meant to go beyond our own peculiar hang-ups about sex.

To give an example, experiences early in life can cause one to have an unskillful relationship with sex. It can be addictive (clinging) or repressive (aversion), or some combination of the two. If we go after the sexuality itself, rather than mediating the underlying thought-constructs that make us relate to sex in such an unskillful way, we add in the third kilesa (ignorance), and establish a precedent for further suffering. What if the sexual urges don't go away? There is no guarantee that they will, just as there is no guarantee that we will not experience fear, sadness or anger. If the underlying infrastructure of aversion or clinging is still there, we will suffer no matter what we do.

06-02-2010, 09:15 PM	#17
Daruhuw Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 553 Senior Member	I see it as causing to cease those unwholesome behaviors which have arisen, and sustaining the cessation of already-ended unwholesome behaviors. What exactly are these unwholesome behaviors? Is it something the OP said? I don't see anything in that post that is unwholesome except the aversive attitude towards the sexual urges. That is what is causing dukkha -- not the urges themselves. (For the record, Sobeh, this is just a general post, not directed at you specifically, but at a general mindlessly Puritan mindset I come across from time to time on Buddhist forums. I think you probably mean something different that what I initially interpreted your post to suggest.) The reason I bring this up is because, IME, when you seek to manipulate or eliminate aspects of your physical experience directly, you are working on a very superficial level. People do this all the time, and it's the very thing we are meant to grow out of in Buddhism. The Buddhist path is one in which we correct our unskillful relationship with whatever we experience, rather than attempting to apprehend and manipulate the experience itself. Any resulting change in our experience (decreasing of unskillful body/mind-states, increasing of skillful body/mind-states) is a side-effect of this practice; we achieve it indirectly, as collateral but not as the goal. The goal is to get at what is deeper -- the clinging/aversive relationship with our life, that keeps us ensnared in the compulsive world of samsara. The reason we approach it this way is because, if we don't stop to question our motivations for trying to change ourselves, we will be blind victims to our conditioned prejudices and impulses. We end up trying to change ourselves without any understanding of what is driving us. This manifests itself in both everyday life as well as our attitude towards the practice life. Buddhism is meant to go beyond our own peculiar hang-ups about sex. To give an example, experiences early in life can cause one to have an unskillful relationship with sex. It can be addictive (clinging) or repressive (aversion), or some combination of the two. If we go after the sexuality itself, rather than mediating the underlying thought-constructs that make us relate to sex in such an unskillful way, we add in the third kilesa (ignorance), and establish a precedent for further suffering. What if the sexual urges don't go away? There is no guarantee that they will, just as there is no guarantee that we will not experience fear, sadness or anger. If the underlying infrastructure of aversion or clinging is still there, we will suffer no matter what we do.
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