Maddie

This is huge. I think the most emotionally unstable patients I get consistently are the ones that do the most energy work.

Yes that is a good point and an oversight on my part. Hunting provided much of the protein, and gathering (a mostly female activity) provided most of the other nutrients and vitamins.

Actually the bonding aspect is a part of the evolution from our hunter gatherer ancestors. The oxytocin produced in the brain due to attraction and sex (commonly called falling in love, but saying my brain is making oxytocin thinking about you does not sell Hallmark cards) were an evolutionary adaptation. The woman had an evolutionary/survival reason to bond with the father of her children so that he would stick around to hunt and protect to ensure that the carriers of said DNA grew up to pass along more DNA.

Thought I'd bump this topic since it was being discussed on the meditation thread.

Without getting into meditation specifically I do realize that mindfulness can be quite uncomfortable and most people actually seek to do the exact opposite of mindfulness. *Granted it can be rough so sometimes concentration can be a nice break (eight fold path speaking) or chanting.

This is an interesting and important topic which probably deserves it's own thread. But now I would like to redirect this thread to the various problems of meditation.

The important thing I think when talking about lust is to make a careful effort to distinguish lust from aversion to lust. This can also be very subtle.

I'm not exactly sure how in the west we became so neurotic about lust and sex but we did.

I think I used to view lust more like what you are stating. I think what changed my interpretation of lust was over the years of meditation I began to see how subtle it could be. This was a big surprise to me.

Sometimes the complication in communication is finding out what each person means by the words they use.

Yes I was expecting the issue of judgment (right or wrong, good or bad) to come up relatively soon. These are counter productive terms in my opinion. I prefer skillful or unskillful. I think lust being viewed in the context of right or wrong though is a western guilt based paradigm, and as opposed to belonging to desire, relates more to the inverse of desire which is aversion (the other of the three poisons)

I see. In my understanding lust is a type of desire. I see desire as the root cause according to the second noble truth. Then desire manifests itself based upon the various conditioning of the individual mind. As far as healthy vs unhealthy go this depends on ones point of view. For the perpetuation of the species lust is very effective (of course that begs the question of why does the species need to be perpetuated but this gets more into the attachment to being which is another issue in the 12 links). But in regards to healthy in terms of Nirvana (ultimate peace of mind and contentment) then lust is a detrimental obstacle.

One thing I've noticed so far is what the terms seem to mean to various people. It seems that to some the word "lust" means when sexual passions are at their highest. I on the other hand though meditation have come to see that lust can be and often is very insidious and subtle. Both men and women seek to control. I think the yin/yang issue isn't control vs non-control, but merely the means used to control.

I think its when people try to make what the Buddha said was unknowable, knowable polarities of thought spring up.

This is correct, but that statement was more of an issue of defining terms than a judgment.

While two different topic, few things seem to bring up guilt and judgment like lust related topics do. I would say there is lust, and stuff like this is the aversion to lust. Having a feeling and then in the same mind having an aversion to the same feeling makes things rather complicated.

Desire is still desire regardless of degree.

Just one thing I want to point out so it does not get lost is that by saying that the Buddha did not specifically say there is no self is not the same thing as saying that the Buddha said there is a self. There were many questions the Buddha left unanswered. He would also not answer if he would exist or not exist after final Nibbana. Later when people did attempt to answer this question it gave rise to schools of thought that either said Nibbana is either annihilation or some other form of existence like a heaven. Again both questions that the Buddha simply did not answer.

What do you think motivated humans to create this mental stimuli in the first place?

Perhaps the confusion here is in the words. When I use the word "lust" I am thinking categorically, as a type of craving. Hunger is a type of craving for food, thirst is a type of craving for drink, lust is a type of craving for sex. Now these various forms of craving can have different levels of intensity of course. There can be mild hunger where a snack would be nice but not necessary, whereas there can be unbridled hunger where someone might murder in order to get something to eat. The same could be said for lust. In its mild form someone might think someone attractive is "cute" whereas lust of the intense passionate variety can be quite intense and led to the point where it is "unbridled". I think we have been missing each other in the terms.

I agree that perhaps what humans identify with as being the "self" has evolved over time, but this does not seem to be relevant to the topic of lust. If by eating you mean you mean "mastication" the intake and chewing of food through the mouth for sustenance then yes technically you are correct, but if by "eating" the broader topic of taking in nutrients is the main point then coma patients do indeed "eat" even if it is via artificial means. But again these issues seem to be off toipc.

What about the workplace crush? Maybe somebody at work has a crush on another person at work, but they don't act on it and they try their best to push it out of their mind. Yet the fact that the crush is there is indicative of some form of lust, but the fact that it is not acted upon would suggest that it is bridled. I would even argue that the third precept for lay people that states abstinence from inappropriate sexual expression is another form of bridling lust.

Stating that eating is necessary for survival while sex is not is a scientific fact and not a matter of opinion. By important what do you mean?

That's not how going into heat works for animals LOL. Back when I was a kid and my dad had the unfortunate task of having to babysit his own kids occasionally, not wanting to be put out by the task too much he would watch his HBO movies with us there. These movies had a lot of nudity and sex but as kids not having had lust kick in yet we just thought it was weird. Therefore I would say porn does not give rice to lust, but rather lust gives rise to porn and then pouring simply conditions further lust.

As it relates to personal survival the difference between food and sex is that eating is unavoidable for survival, while sex is not necessary to survive personally.