How can I overcome maddening sexual lust?

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly via Sayalay Susila (sayalaysusila.net)

Tiger Girl with full Japanese back tattoo or irezumi (Arisu Nomura/imageof.net)

  

Question: How can I overcome sexual lust, which is recurring again and again despite experiencing progressive calmness in my meditation?

Answer: Contemplate this fathom-long body.  And develop the jhanas, the absorptions, to overcome maddening sensual cravings.

• Singing Birds and Stinging Bees: SEX Slavery

Shorter Sutra on the Aggregate of Distress

Wisdom Quarterly version, Cula-dukkha-kkhandha Sutta (MN 14)

Ssshh, don't talk or think about "cookies."

Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was staying among the Sakyans at Kapilavatthu in the Banyan Park [Afghanistan]. Then Mahānāma (3) the Sakyan [the Buddha's cousin, which the Commentary claims was already a once-returner when this discourse was delivered] went to the Blessed One.

Arriving he bowed, sat respectfully to one side, and said: "Venerable sir, for a long time now I have understood the Dharma taught by the Blessed One in this way: 'Greed is a defilement of the mind/heart; aversion is a defilement; delusion is a defilement.'

Sexual craving is like a jungle thicket, hard to escape. A banyan park is better (Kiran Gopi)

  

The Buddha (ArunHaridharshan/flickr)

"Yet, even though I understand the Dharma taught by the Blessed One in this way, there are still times when the mental/heart states of greed, aversion, and delusion invade my mind/heart and remain.

"The thought occurs to me: What within me is as yet unabandoned so that there are times when these invade my heart/mind and remain?"
 

"Mahanama, that very [greed, hatred, and delusion] is what is as yet unabandoned by you so that there are times when they invade your heart/mind and remain.

• NOTE: Previously mistranslated, the point of this sentence is that the mental states that invade Mahanama's mind/heart are precisely the ones he has yet to abandon. In practical terms, this means he does not have to look for another quality lurking behind them but, instead, can focus attention on abandoning these states directly whenever they arise. The remainder of the discourse gives a lesson on how craving, aversion, and delusion can be abandoned by understanding the object on which they most frequently focus: sensuality (Ven. Thanissaro).

If fat is sexy, is fatter sexier?

"For if that were abandoned by you, you would not live the household life and would not partake of sensuality. It is because it yet remains unabandoned by you that you live the household life and partake of sensuality.
 

"Even though a disciple of the noble ones has clearly seen as it actually is with right view that sensuality is very disappointing, associated with much despair and great drawbacks, nevertheless -- if one has not attained a rapture (piti) and supersensual pleasure [sukha, both associated with the first and second absorptions] apart from the ordinary five sense strands, apart from unskillful mental states, or something more peaceful than that [any attainments beyond the second absorption] -- one can be tempted by sensuality.

Paris (Bryan1974/flickr.com)

"But when one has clearly seen as it actually is with right view that sensuality is very disappointing, associated with much despair and great drawbacks, and one has attained a rapture and supersensual pleasure apart from the ordinary five sense strands, apart from unskillful mental states or something even more peaceful than that, one can no longer be tempted by sensuality.

"I, too -- before enlightenment, when still an unawakened bodhisattva -- saw as it actually was with right view that sensuality is very disappointing, associated with much despair and great drawbacks. But as long as I had not attained a rapture and supersensual pleasure apart from the ordinary five sense strands, apart from unskillful mental states, or something even more peaceful than that, I did not claim that I could avoid being tempted by sensuality. 

"But when I saw as it actually was with right view...I claimed that I could avoid being tempted by sensuality."

Why? The Five Hindrances

The Five Hindrances (nīvarana) or "obstacles to enlightenment" make one blind, whereas the Seven Factors of Enlightenment (bojjhangas) give rise to internal light and wisdom (S.v.97f.). The "Discourse on the Hindrances" points out how the methodical development of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (satipatthānas), when practiced and brought to culmination, rid one of the Five Hindrances (A.iv.457f.).

Types of People in Yoga Class (video)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Flama (TheFlamaSub)

Meditate, do yoga, and surf like Ruah Yoga (NY) in Bhayekapada galavasana.

Exotic Jess Lizama gets her Zen (serene being) on while we grunt away. Okay, now Ananda balasana (baby pose), everyone! Here she goes with Ricky Rebel for The Flama on Instagram. They bring up the question, What is yoga? It's a bunch of poses, yes? No, it's so much more.

It's an ancient practice summarized by the Sage Patanjali 2,000 years ago. Patanjali formulated an eightfold path (ashtanga) mirroring the very popular Buddhist path in India. Like Buddhism, it is composed of interlinking factors. The paths go well together, but they are not the same and do not lead ultimately to the same place. Too bad people fail to realize that, doing one thing thinking they're doing another. If "zen" is dhyāna (Pali jhana) then any serene practice might lead one to the first few mental absorptions. But that's where it will remain without the Buddha's teachings on taking it further, taking it beyond, taking it beyond the beyond to complete liberation.

• Try a free week of yoga (Yoga Works)

(W/WQ) Rāja yoga ("royal yoga," "supreme union," also known as classical or aṣhṭānga yoga) is one of the six schools of dharmic (astika) Hindu philosophy. Its principal text is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. It is concerned with the cultivation of a seer/viewer's (ṛiṣhi) mind using various limbs, such as meditation (dhyāna, dhyana) and concentration (samādhi, samadhi). Its object is to further one's acquaintance with reality, achieve awakening (moksha), and eventually enlightenment (kaivalya). Note that what the Buddha and Buddhism calls "enlightenment" is BODHI. By developing insight on top of serenity (jhana, meditative absorptions), one finds "liberation" (moksha) in NIRVANA, the going out of all suffering, not yet another pleasant rebirth with Brahmā.

"Effort" to practice Buddhism (sutra)

Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Nyanatiloka Thera, Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines (4th Edition edited by Ven. Nyanaponika, BPS.lk)

The Buddha in gold, brass, and stone, Thailand (MarmaladeToast flickr.com)

  

Under a sprawling pipal tree -- bodhi!

The Four Right Efforts (samma-padhāna), which together form the sixth factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, are the effort: (1) to avoid, (2) to overcome, (3) to develop, and (4) to maintain. That is to say:

One endeavors, strives, makes an effort to avoid unwholesome states (generally, those states motivated by greed, hatred/fear, or delusion/wrong view) that are not yet present.

One endeavors to overcome unwholesome states that arise. 

One develops wholesome states (generally, those motivated by nongreed, nonhatred/nonfear, and nondelusion) -- such as the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

 

One endeavors to maintain (and consummate, bring to culmination, fruition) wholesome states that have arisen. 

SUTRA 

"Numerical Discourses of the Buddha" (Anguttara Nikaya)

Intensive sitting meditation is one kind of striving (meditationguidance.com)

 
"The meditator rouses the will to avoid the arising of harmful, unwholesome things not yet arisen... to overcome them... to develop wholesome things not yet arisen... [and] to maintain them, without allowing them to disappear, to bring them to growth, to maturity, and to the full perfection of development. One makes (a balanced) effort, rouses energy, exerts mind/heart, and strives" (AN IV, 13).  
 
NOTE: It is critical to bear in mind that overexertion is not right effort. The Buddha did not succeed under the Bodhi tree by overexerting as so many assume by not reading carefully. It is exactly because of struggling and overexertion that he could not succeed. Only when Siddhartha relaxed and began making a balanced-effort, which included the purifying meditative-absorptions (jhanas) he had fearfully been avoiding for years, did he finally reach the path to insight and enlightenment. He let go, allowed bliss of absorption and, remaining attentive, emerged to practice Dependent Origination -- the systematic pursuit of the 12 causal links that make up suffering. Siddhartha had set originally off to find the solution to the problem of suffering, so he asked: "Why is there suffering?" The practice of Dependent Origination answers this question through mindful application, insight-practice (vipassana), which begins as the fourfold setting up of mindfulness (on body, feelings, mind, and mind states). In this connection, the Buddha once taught a famous lute player to neither over-tighten nor under-tighten the strings of the instrument. Balance is the way to get the right sound -- balance between overexerting and underexerting.

Hi, I'm meditating (Kirsten Johnson)

(1) "What now, O meditators, is the effort to avoid? Perceiving a form, or a sound, or an odor, or a taste, or a bodily or mental impression, the medtitator neither adheres to (clings to, is entranced by) the whole nor to its parts. And one strives to ward off that through which harmful and unwholesome things might arise, such as greed and sorrow, if one remained with unguarded senses. And one watches over the (six) senses, restrains the senses. This is called the effort to avoid.

 

(2) "What now is the effort to overcome? The meditator does not retain any thought of sensual lust, or any other harmful, unwholesome states that may have arisen. One abandons them, dispels them, destroys them, causes them to disappear. This is called the effort to overcome.

 

(3) "What now is the effort to develop? The meditator develops the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, bent on solitude, on detachment, on extinction, and ending in liberation (deliverance, emancipation, nirvana), namely: mindfulness, keen investigation of phenomena, energy, rapture, tranquility, concentration (collectedness of mind), and equanimity. This is called the effort to develop.

 

OK, breaktime! (Vincenzo Rossi/flickr)

(4) "What now is the effort to maintain? The meditator keeps firmly in mind (attention) a favorable object of concentration, such as the mental image (nimitta) of [light, or the cemetery meditations of] a skeleton, a (very repulsive) corpse infested with worms, a corpse blue-black in color, a festering corpse, a corpse riddled with holes, a corpse swollen up. [In this way, one frequently given to lust is temporarily freed of lust so insight may dawn and permanently free one of hindrances, fetters, and defilements.] This is called the effort to maintain" (AN IV, 14).

Insight Meditation Society (East Coast)

Seven, Wisdom Quarterly, Insight Meditation Society (Dharma.org); BCBSdharma.org

Insight Meditation Society (IMS) is a Buddhist meditation center (open to all people of all traditions).

 

On Valentines Day in 1976 a small group of young Buddhist meditation teachers (including Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield (West Coast), and Sharon Salzberg, all friends back from Asia) and dedicated staff opened a retreat center outside of Boston.

They found an ideal place in an old, stately mansion in idyllic Barre, Massachusetts. Armed with few resources and imperfect operational knowledge, but passionate about the Buddha’s teachings, they set about creating an environment where the Dharma could flourish and take root in the West. 

Teachers at IMS like Myoshin Kelly, Sharon Salzberg, and Leigh Brasington (Dharma.org)

 

And so began IMS, now a large and successful short-term Retreat Center with a Forest Refuge center for instensives.

Over its history, IMS has become a spiritual home to thousands of practitioners. It is now regarded as one of the Western world’s most respected centers for learning and deepening meditation practice.

 

The organization operates two meditation retreat facilities and also promotes a growing school, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Two are set on about 200 secluded acres in the quiet woods of central Massachusetts, and the third is right next door. More