You would be considered fortunate that desire isn’t a distraction then. So far it has somewhat worked with my homosexual ones.
Or as he said that sleep and sexual desire are just products of the illusion of an “i”
That we only expertise this desire because we believe that a self exists and that it desires another self and when you realize that there isn’t a self or an other then sexual desire will vanish. That is why sexual desire is a lie.
I don’t think that sexual desire or sleep is so much a product of a belief of “self”. I mean the lowliest creatures, even bugs appear to have sexual desires. Do they have a false belief of “self”?
No one has ever believed their way out of desiring sex.
The link said that sexual desire vanishes when the false conception of the self does as well.
I’m more interested in your thoughts than what the link says.
Think about this. This fake self they talk about is constructed by our higher functioning brains that have a sense of past and future, which are also described as an illusions. And you’re (or the article, whatever) saying that sexual desire is a function of this sense of self. So what is driving all the other creatures of the world to hump each other? I’ve seen dogs humping their stuffed animals. Do they think that stuffed animal is another self? Do they need to do doggy meditation to get over that?
To be honest I don’t really know. I just know that I have a habit of taking whatever a Buddhist says as “it must be true”. From this to “value doesn’t exist and nothing is worth it because it’s just an imaginary construct we made up so nothing in reality is worth it”.
I don’t know why this self is fake, and the other one is “true”. Tolle said that there is the me and the self I can’t live without, maybe only one is real. My question is why not both? Split brain experiments seem to show that you can have two “minds” operating independently. As for other animals it’s hard to prove a sense of self since that is a very subjective and personal experience. In insects even less so. Plus there are some very biological aspects to sexual attraction so I don’t think it’s tied to a sense of self, I mean I know that Buddhist practice rewires and alters the brain, so maybe you aren’t making it false so much as changing biology somewhat to alter your experience.
But to me it’s not something to get rid of, I happen to like it. Sometimes it’s a bother, but most times it’s not. As for calling it false just because it goes away when the object of desire is gone is just not even wrong. IT’s temporary, and thoughts about the person can still bring the desire and arousal back. TO be honest I’m not a biologist or psychologist but something about that just seems off.
But a Buddhist said it so it must be true. It makes me think about the kinks of sex and wonder if we really are attracted to those aspects (like manliness or power) or if it’s just our ideas and conception of something that we superimpose on reality. So in a sense you aren’t into them or those things, just the ideas you have about them which are in your head. So your kinks and sexual desires are false.
Or to quote:
Very much so, you know.Everything around you is an illusion in fact. For example, if you are one light year away from the earth and you see the earth, you see events from one year ago. So what does that mean? Every event is so unreal that our perception of stuff mattering is almost comical.
One more thing is what love are we talking about here? Is it love towards the immortal stuff like music, science and art? or are we talking boy-girl love here?
First, let me come to the latter part
Human beings are fickle.
It is said in Bhagavad Gita
“canchalam hi manah Krishna
pramathi balavad drdham
tasyaham nigraham manye
vayor iva su-duskaram”(Translation - Oh Krishna, the mind is fickle, turbulent , obstinate and restless. To control it seems more difficult than controlling a full blown storm)
Arjun mentions a problem that we have all faced at some point in our lives. We just cannot control our mind. One minute, I’m thinking of focussing on work and the next minute, here I am on Quora answering random questions. How many days have you procrastinated stuff? As Arjun mentioned, its easier to control a storm than to control the human brain.
This is the fickle mind that we are dealing with. It is just impossible to create a “real” bond between one such human mind and another….especially when one has choices in choosing another mind - that is, your love towards your mother can be true because , one can have only one mother…thus in fact your love is towards maternity than towards the mind of the mother itself…no one would love their mother if the mother wasn’t kind and loving….would you love your mother if she had harassed you verbally and physically as a kid? No…because, you love the concept of maternity…which is care…and not the human being, that is the mother itself.
Now coming to lovers, a person has more than one choice for another human being as a “lover”. Now he/she categorizes a lot before choosing one …and that narrows it down to around a million rather than a billion choices. Now can we trust our fickle mind to bond “really” with another such fickle mind? The answer is no, the bond is not real. It is an illusion.
This illusion is created because we want it to be created. As things stand, no “normal” human being will like to admit that deep inside they are lonely. How much ever you claim to love a person, all the person can do is stand by and watch during some of your sufferings. Sure you’ll claim that him/her “being there for you” is a great sign….but no, its not a great sign…its a sign of weakness…if your mind is strong enough, you won’t need anyone to “be there for you”
Popularisation of idiotic things like mocking the guy who eats alone or mocking a guy who is single and forty years old in our sex-minded society is what has led to the popularisation of the concept of love. People want to believe that they have found their true lover….so that they aren’t “forty, single and eating alone”…
To sum it up - Love towards abstract things is ironically real…mainly because abstract things are a perception of one’s own mind…and hence your mind is totally attached to it.
Love towards “real” things is ironically an illusion…mainly because both of your minds are fickle
To be honest I don’t really know. I just know that I have a habit of taking whatever a Buddhist says as “it must be true”.Can't really have much of a conversation about it then, can we?
I mean I linked that paragraph that explains it all.
There is no falsity of sleep and sexual desire! It is a mandatory hardwired compulsory function of the evolutionary process.
Sleep is required for physical and mental restoration. Sex is required for procreation. These natural physical requirements are causal to survival and evolution.
Both behaviors are a result of billions of years of natural selection. Those who sleep and procreate get to survive. At extremely small scales mitosis (cell division) is the procreative function, but that does not offer much in the area of evolution and selection for survival skills.
Those complex organisms which did not sleep and did not have sexual procreation are extinct. The male/female DNA mix insures variety in offspring, and natural selection does the rest.
Any philosophical considerations are secondary to these natural functions.
I mean I linked that paragraph that explains it all.
Wow. One paragraph that explains it all. Careful with all that power.
But can we be sure about that? Like isn’t sexual attraction meaning that you are attracted to “another” and that Buddhism and other schools say that this is an illusion? That there is no separate and concrete other you are attracted to and that therefor it’s an illusion? Like there is no “little man” or “soul” or core essence to a person that can be called an unchanging self, so then what are you attracted to? It would be your idea of them in your head, which would explain sexual kinks as well, as those are more of an idea rather than anything to do with the actual object or situation of a kink (you like the idea you have of it in your head, but the reality isn’t that idea). There are some Buddhists that argue that the body is an illusion but I don’t know what they mean by that and I don’t really want to know (at the risk of causing even more damage to me).
The paragraph I quoted says something similar in that you think you love your mother but you just love maternity or “care” and that if she mistreated you a lot you wouldn’t love her.
Xain said,
But can we be sure about that? Like isn’t sexual attraction meaning that you are attracted to “another” and that Buddhism and other schools say that this is an illusion? That there is no separate and concrete other you are attracted to and that therefor it’s an illusion?
What illusion? Is the peacock’s tail an illusion when the male displays his physical prowess, promising strong healthy offspring.
Contrary to this “illusion” bit, physical attraction is very physical by definition.
If anybody wants to know about “mutual attraction” perhaps they should study the mental phenomenon and ablitity for “empathy”.
This is the ability to place oneself into the shoes of another. I f you see a person hurt themselves, they wince from pain. The interesting things is that you, the observer, also winces from the same chemical process responding to pain. Except it is not you who actually feels the pain, but your mind has the ability to identify and emotionally respond. This is a form of “clairvoyance” and is present in many animals.
Empathy, noun, the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself:By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self.
This, of course, explains reason why porn is so popular. It allows one to vicariously experience the chemical body responses of having sex, without actually performing the sex.
The key words you use is self and another, which the point being argued in the link are false constructs. The reaction is physical but what causes that reaction? In this case they say it’s this false construct of a self.
It reminds me of the Broward Meditation calling it a picture world that we live in, in a sense being into the image we have of something based on experience rather than how the thing actually is in reality. So we like the idea of someone that we have in our heads or certain traits (because nothing is inherently “hot” or everyone would find it so).
You are missing the points being made.
What if the points being made are false? What if they are constructed as an image in your mind? What if you have some idea of what is true based on your experience rather than what is true in reality?
I don’t know. I mean I don’t think sexual desire is false just because it is temporary, it’s just temporary.
But then again:
Desire and liberation are in the same locations as the appearances of life. But that life differs as to whether it is the life of opposition and trouble that is centered on desire, or whether it is the peaceful and free life with its roots in the no-self. If the practitioner perfects study, he becomes free from all instinctual desire. This is because it has gotten rid of the life criteria of “I”. The love and compassion that are the perfection of the conditionally-produced life is the light of no-self mind, so leaves no place for the sexual appetite and its images. Therefore, according to the extent to which one has escaped from the bonds of such instinctual appetites, one can estimate this extent of practice by the practitioner.
But Xain what about this???
The Case for Genetically Engineering Ethical Humans