Sense Pleasures

[JustARandomPanda]

Thank you for that informative, courteous reply.

[Daeluin]

In other words...you get the best of both worlds.

I imagine evolution as a tiny center point shared by every opposite between yin/yang. We live on a giant yin planet in a void of yang (is that correct?), and all life happens in the balance between.

 

"To oppose something is to maintain it."

To cultivate something outside of this center point "resonates" with the opposite point, yet also creates it's own alive world of balancing yin and yang. Maybe like western cultures and eastern cultures each have their own gravities, not unlike many colliding galaxies, chaotic but simply seeking balance around a common center.

 

Letting go of the extremes and returning to yourself maybe lets you hone in on this center point, this edge between opposites in which all life evolves.

 

One extreme could be strongly needing to feel sensory pleasure, it's opposite rejecting it completely. The balance is in the center of the self, sensing all around equally, perhaps favoring things while mindful to return to the center, yet not rejecting the natural flow within either.

 

But the mind likes to keep the things we experience tucked in it's memory. Continuing the planetary metaphor, couldn't our life itself be its own planet, our experiences like asteroids flying by. Yet maybe one asteroid's orbit gets smaller and smaller each pass by, until it is in close orbit.

 

Isn't this what we do with our minds? I see a door or hear a word or phrase or taste a meal or wish for something often enough that the response it invokes becomes habit, a rut, an expectation, never to go away unless it is singled out and kicked away. We can get so caught up in ourselves and our habits that we can't see past the countless satellites orbiting our planet. Couldn't this explain why the "enlightened" say the rest of us don't really see reality for what it is? Could it be possible tiny things we don't even think about, like colors, the earth, our friends become so tied into our memory that when we re-experience them we are "living" more in that memory than the present moment?

 

Aikido legend O Sensei was once asked how he would respond to an opponent with a gun. O Sensei replied he could see the path the bullet would make so as to have time to easily avoid it.

 

Is it possible that in living and sensing so intensely in the present moment, not using the mind at all to translate (and thus not caught up in attachments, etc), one may experience events in extreme vivid detail as they unfold, even to the point one is able to sense what is to come?

 

p.s. love this thread

[z00se]

I don't know much about this but here are my thoughts on the subject.

 

I suspect that the whole bit about giving up desire or other kinds of sense pleasure mostly happens as a result of deep meditation practice. Not the other way around. With enough deep meditation desire eventually is replaced with centering calm.

 

The calm gives one the ability to enjoy the pleasures or whatever but without the attendant graspy 'desiring' that went with it before hand.

 

In other words...you get the best of both worlds.

I think perhaps that's what the Buddha and Lao Tzu was really trying to teach. Giving up the 'desiring' so that we may finally truly enjoy life to the fullest.

 

This sounds like a very good answer but.... it feels so great when you desire something so much then you get it. If you wanted a girl for a long time then finally you get her it's awesome. If you have an itch and you can't get it but then finally you do it's paradise. When you wake up in the morning and get to stretch it's just so nice. When you are dying for a ciggerette, some food or to reach some acheivement and you finally get to have it... IT'S WONDERFUL!

 

I feel it's all part of life. If you don't have a strong desire you don't have the same happy feeling or relief after you get it.

[Mal]

If you give a man a fire he's warm for the night, if you set a man on fire he's warm for the rest of his life.

 

ROTHLMAO sorry I just noticed that. Subversive, true and funny I love it

[markern]

This sounds like a very good answer but.... it feels so great when you desire something so much then you get it. If you wanted a girl for a long time then finally you get her it's awesome. If you have an itch and you can't get it but then finally you do it's paradise. When you wake up in the morning and get to stretch it's just so nice. When you are dying for a ciggerette, some food or to reach some acheivement and you finally get to have it... IT'S WONDERFUL!

 

I feel it's all part of life. If you don't have a strong desire you don't have the same happy feeling or relief after you get it.

 

Your perceived desire will actualy increase because mindfulness and equanimity allows you to feel it in its fullness. You will also feel the reward much more but the disapointment goes away more quickly altough it is still felt.

 

IME when I have been able to be realy mindfull is that at first I feel bad feelings more because I take them in in their fulness. However, despite being felt stronger it does not realy bother me so much when I am mindful. It is more like there is pain than I am in pain. Also the bad feelings passes a lot more quickly than when I cling and attatch to them. When I am mindful of positive emotion they become much stronger and they stay longer unlike the negative feelings. As far as I understand this is "correct" experience according to budhist theory. As mentioned read shinzen youngs articles about escaping INTO life and about equanimity. They are in the articles section: http://www.shinzen.org/

 

My teacher, as far as I understand him at least, confirms this view and having been a budhist monk for four years he should know what the theory says.

[JustARandomPanda]

[Mal]

Everyone is a Buddha, don't sell yourself short.

[mYTHmAKER]

I don't know much about this but here are my thoughts on the subject.

 

I suspect that the whole bit about giving up desire or other kinds of sense pleasure mostly happens as a result of deep meditation practice. Not the other way around. With enough deep meditation desire eventually is replaced with centering calm.

 

One does not - cannot give up desires. At some point they leave on their own accord.

Edited September 22, 2009 by mYTHmAKER

[JustARandomPanda]

[z00se]

That's what I said. Well actually what I said was that they don't ever leave but rather the graspy, needy quality attached to them leaves of it's own accord.

 

I feel that i've my desires have subsided before but the behavioural pattern is still there. When i feel the beginning of wanting to eat some unhealthy food i just spiral that thought down to my spleen and it's gone. I've felt fear and anger beginning to appear but it just got sucked into either my dantien or microcosmic orbit like a wurlwind sucks in something... depending on which wurlwind had more sucking power, thats where it went and i just felt a serge of energy in that place. However it felt strange and weird to me. Maybe only because i've begun that feeling. It makes me feel a little empty, strange and out of place.

 

All in all i guess it can make my life easier to live how i want to live it because the desire isn't pulling me, but I can't say it's an enjoyable feeling because i don't have the desire-acheivement/fix pleasure response. Maybe i feel it's a little mundane... or maybe i should just continue and wait for the benefits of future acheivements now i can more easily avoid unhealthy temptations..... Although even though i don't have the desire for something i still "think" i should have it because i always have? it's a behavioural pattern. But then when i do have it i don't get the same acheivement/fix pleasure response that i'm after as when i'm desiring. I'm not sure if i like it or not

[goldisheavy]

[mat black]

You're a Buddha too. Don't be shy now.

Everyone is a Buddha, don't sell yourself short.

The inherent nature of Buddhahood is there in all beings as a potential. However, until one has actually realised and been certified to fruition of Buddhahood, cultivation is necessary. This includes for example the cessation of birth and death, perfection of compassion and wisdom as well as the ten perfections of a Bodhisattva among other things.

 

For one to claim to be a Buddha prior to certification and realisation of anuttara samyak sambodhi is, as Master Hua says, the height of stupidity.

 

Potential Buddhas we are, realised Buddhas, not yet. The difference is important, it is good not to confuse the two.

Edited September 23, 2009 by mat black

[Marblehead]

The inherent nature of Buddhahood is there in all beings as a potential. However, until one has actually realised and been certified to fruition of Buddhahood, cultivation is necessary.

 

Potential Buddhas we are, realised Buddhas, not yet. The difference is important, it is good not to confuse the two.

 

Lovely post. Thanks you Mat!

 

Happy Trails!

[Vajrahridaya]

Lovely post. Thanks you Mat!

 

Happy Trails!

 

I agree... perfectly understood without ambiguous new age excuses like, "You are already enlightened, you just don't know it!" Well if that we're true, by the very definition of enlightenment, I would know it! As when you enlighten a room, you can see everything clearly. So, when my inner being is fully enlightened, I can see that it is fully enlightened very clearly.

 

 

No... we are not already Buddhas, we have the potential, just as a light switch has the potential to be turned on, but it takes the right tools, namely a brain, body and some fingers, as well as the right height to reach the switch, then lo and behold!! The room has been enlightened!! "I can see clearly now" the darkness is gone...!!!

 

Warning: This is a metaphor and not to be taken for the real thing.

 

That's what I said. Well actually what I said was that they don't ever leave but rather the graspy, needy quality attached to them drops after awhile.

 

You are spot on Sereneblue!! Spot on!

[mat black]

"You are already enlightened, you just don't know it!" Well if that we're true, by the very definition of enlightenment, I would know it! As when you enlighten a room, you can see everything clearly. So, when my inner being is fully enlightened, I can see that it is fully enlightened very clearly.

No... we are not already Buddhas, we have the potential, just as a light switch has the potential to be turned on, but it takes the right tools, namely a brain, body and some fingers, as well as the right height to reach the switch, then lo and behold!! The room has been enlightened!! "I can see clearly now" the darkness is gone...!!!

Warning: This is a metaphor and not to be taken for the real thing.

Edited September 23, 2009 by mat black

[DalTheJigsaw123]

[mYTHmAKER]

[billb]

[JustARandomPanda]

Does he speak from experience or from what he thinks.

One day you wakes up and a desire is gone. That's it gone

 

He claims to speak from direct experience of having attained Buddhahood. But then he rejected Buddha-attainment as being yet another false Ego Trip. Or at least that's how I understood what he said about his journey to Realization.

[King Kabalabhati]

I think it's about finding out WHAT EXACTLY IT IS about desire towards pleasure that makes them not good for spiritual progress. So to experience something to the fullness while being conscious of your own feelings, then understanding that there will be no further fulfillment through that pleasure, that's it. If the desires don't just drop off as you advance then you're not ready for enlightenment.

 

Now its a different thing to discipline yourself about desires. I think the first step is to be "under" the desire and let it throw you off balance as desires and addictions normally tend to do. The next step is to discipline yourself, maybe quit doing the thing you get the kicks out of for some time and to experience life without the treat. Then eventually it's probably time to get back to it again, this time with more awareness and the underlying conscious intention to live it to be able to leave it. This is probably the most difficult and critical step and many probably return to step one.

 

Not to say this is the only way around desires, but it could be

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Edited September 23, 2009 by TheSongsofDistantEarth

[JustARandomPanda]

[Unconditioned]

Let me clarify things, according to what Buddha taught:

 

Let alone enlightenment, just to even attain the jhanas, you need to abandon sensual desire, together with the other four hindrances (ill will, sloth-torpor,restlessness anxiety, doubt).

 

You have to abandon your resolve for sensuality. Your mind must be released from passion. You must discern: 'Passion is abandoned in me, its root destroyed, made like a palmyra stump, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined for future arising.'

 

You have to make the Bodhi resolve. This involves cutting of desires and getting rid of emotional lust.

 

Selfless compassion for living beings is not sensual desire.

 

Don't fall into the pit of love and views.

 

According to Master Nan Huai Chin:

"Desire is very crude, so if desire is not cut off, you cannot realise the fruit of enlightenment. How can you cut off desire? First Buddha teaches us not to eat after noon."

 

Also you must cultivate deep meditation.

 

Why? "You have to _______" ... why?

 

Why would you try to push away desire just because someone else said it is the way (even someone as important as Buddha)? That's just replacing one thing for another (sensual desire for spiritual desire).

 

To follow blindly is to be blind. To understand why, and see that for yourself, is a very different story.

 

Sexual desire is human, period. To deny this is to run away from reality. There may be esoteric reasons for denying lust such as energy work or whatnot but that is different than self-realization (in my opinion). To attack desire is attacking a symptom. Why waste time on the symptoms, go to the root, cut off your egoic head and desire will take it's natural course.

 

Here's an excerpt from the platform sutra that I couldn't agree with more (http://web.mit.edu/stclair/www/platform.html):

The Master said: "Fa-ta, it is my constant wish that all the people in the world will always themselves open the wisdom of the Buddha in their own mind-grounds. Do not cultivate the wisdom of sentient beings. The people of the world have errors in their minds, create evil with stupidity and delusion, and thus cultivate the wisdom of sentient beings. If people in the world are correct in their minds, they will give rise to wisdom and illuminate it, and open up for themselves the wisdom of the Buddha. Do not open up the ,wisdom, of sentient beings! Open up the wisdom of the Buddha and then transcend the world."

 

The Master said: "Fa-ta, this is the one-vehicle Dharma of the Lotus Sutra. Later on in the sutra the Buddha's teaching is divided into three [vehicles] in order to benefit the deluded. Depend only on the one Buddha vehicle."

Edited September 23, 2009 by Unconditioned

[mYTHmAKER]

 

[b

 

Songs, Mat Black, Santi, VH, Marblehead, Lucky, Xabir, CarlsonZi, etc... the list of people who know and have attained far deeper realization is long. I read all these posts from them and it's a bit intimidating. Their posts constantly make me aware of how little I've really attained and how little I know. Sometimes now when I post I feel like a clueless, braying Jackass. I guess there's a button being pressed I wasn't aware of until now.[/b]

 

Being in a clueless state is a very good state to be in.

It means you are open and receptive.

He/she who knows knows not , and he/she who knows not knows.

[Marblehead]

Yeah SereneBlue,

 

Don't sell yourself short.

 

You are on a quest right now and there are many questions. At least try to understand the questions. We don't always get the answer we are looking for right away. Some of the answers are hidden in flowery words, some of the answers are already within your essence but haven't yet been realized.

 

I think having questions is good. It keeps us mentally active so we don't become brain dead.

 

Enjoy your journey.

 

Happy Trails!