Sexual Desire, Friend or Foe?

There are some subjects in the Buddhist environment that I feel rarely get looked at from a lay (non-monastic) prospective. The subjects that I have found difficult to understand, is how to deal with sexual desire. 

Buddhism has always been a great platform for asking questions and getting answers, as at almost every teaching I've ever been to, time is left at the end for questions and answers. But how many people have the courage to stand up and ask the question that really perplexes them, when it has the potential to be the most embarrassing question you could ask, especially to a Nun or a Monk. 

In my few years on the path, I have heard lots of questions and answers, but have never heard anyone ask this question. 

For me, most of the people who have taught me are monastics, meaning they have taken vows of celibacy, making it seem (at least to me) more difficult for them to understand the situation, when this may be far from the truth. 
For those of us who are trying to overcome sexual desire whilst being in a relationship, it can feel like opposing ideas and can cause a great deal of confusion.

I have always read, and heard that abstaining from sex would allow you to overcome the urges of the body and mind, speeding you along on the the Dharma path. But how do you cope with these desires and can they be overcome?

Here are a few different approaches to dealing with sexual desire;

In this approach you abstain from any kind of sexual action, for a set period of time (excluding sex with your partner, but only when they initiate it). This forces you to be strict with yourself and you soon notice desire creeping up on you, and it can be difficult, as it takes time to heighten your awareness to these desire. You treat these desires like you would a negative thought, by just letting them go when they arise in the mind. After a while this becomes easier as you start to see how the mind latches to sexual desire over the simplest things, often an image or small thought that we habitually feed. 
The pros for this method are a heightened awareness of desire, that allows you to (over time) control whether or not you wish to feed this desire, where as before you would feed it habitually and instinctively.
The cons are that this can possibly lead to you developing an aversion to sexual desire, and as you are in a relationship it will have a negative effect on your intimacy, if done for prolonged periods of time.    

Another approach would be, that sexual desire is natural and therefore we should just continue as we are, as we are not monastics. This approach is interesting as we go back to having no awareness of our desires and to a large extent allowing them to control us. This is how almost all the population deals with sexual desire, as It requires no focus or effort, and looks appealing as we get what we want, but it can have some dangerous effects. 
The pros for this are that you will have more desire and the opportunity to fulfill this, with or without your partner and feel enjoyment, for a limited time. 
The cons are that you could over time notice how much more you wish to engage with the desire on a physical level and this can become an unquenchable thirst, that can, if unchecked, lead to addictions to a number of things, not to mention putting a huge strain on your partner. Your partner may struggles to cope with this growing thirst, that at times seems to lack any kind of inclusion of his/her own wants and needs, as you go "deeper into this hole" of wanting to satisfy your own sexual desires at any cost. 

This last approach falls somewhere in the middle, and looks at the situation more evenly. You understand that sexual desire is natural and not a negative thing, but are aware that it needs to be kept in check. So you use your awareness of the desire to keep tabs on it.
Using this technique, you can choose when the time is right to feed the desire.
Often when you lose yourself in the act of union, it is due to the enjoyment you feel in seeing the other person enjoying themselves, and vis versa. It's rather strange as the desire you have seems to transform into a desire to satisfy the other person. This is then mirrored and you are both working to make each other happy, and I feel this where you get lost, you both feel like one as you are abandoning your own desires in place of the others, and there is a real power in that.

Seeing and hearing about nuns and monks abstaining, lead me to feel that I had to do the same in my own life, in order to follow the Buddhist path. But it really it made me think, and explore sexual desire to the extent that I landed at a middle way approach, that foster a sense of control and awareness, that doesn't blind me to everything else that's going on. 

While writing this post, I felt the need to ask someone who I respected as a long term lay practitioner, to comment on the questions I had been thinking about for a while, so I sent a question to Ken Holmes Author/Translator of the newly released; Ornament of Precious Liberation (Tibetan Classics) originally written in Tibetan by Gampopa. 

Question; 
In the monastic environment, sexual desire is tamed and seen as a way to develop as a practitioner. But as a lay person overcoming or dealing with sexual desire can be difficult, as to have a functioning relationship with a partner one needs this to connect on a physical level. How do or would you approach dealing with this?

Answer;
I think the answers to this are both complicated and simple. Sorry!

The simple answer is that a lay person is not required to do without sex but to live a sexual life that is moral and causes no harm to others. The moral guidelines are outlined in the well-known teachings on the 10 non-virtues and 10 virtues. There are two main points: first is not to cause suffering to another person. The second is to respect natural energies and live in harmony with them. There is nothing "wrong" with sex for lay people, if handled according to those guidelines.

The complex part is in the very nature of sex itself. To understand it, we need to have a LOT more real awareness of being embodied: we are a timeless mind "squatting" in this particular flesh and blood carcass, with all its hormones and chemistry. The choice is whether you want the chemistry to dominate you or you to dominate the chemistry. It is also interesting to become more mindful of what happens when making love / having sex. There is the need for affection and also the urge towards that letting-go of control and lucidity for the moment of "swoon" of orgasm. One learns a lot from observing the mind and feelings on the way towards getting frisky, foreplay etc. and after it is all over.

The monastic choice is to live without all the angst of sex and the yogi's journey (not for everyone, by far) is to sublime the sexual chemistry and biology into meditation knowledge.



Conclusion:
Sexual desire for lay practitioners isn't something we need to abandon, as I had initially felt. But this being said, we shouldn't allow it to go unchecked as there is a chance it may get the better of us. In today's society with the technology we have, getting access to sexual content has never been easier. This has lead to a rise in desire based addiction in our communities, as sexual content is now so readily available on laptops, tables and mobile phones. Also advertisement for men and women always appear to use sexual desire as a way to sell things, so we start to see a rise in desire from this too. So learning how, and when to feed your sexual desire has never been more important.

The process required to control, or understand the desire is, an awareness of our mind and body. As Ken states "We need awareness of being embodied".
By simply being conscious of our sexual desires, we will naturally be able to notice, and decide if it is appropriate to allow it to escalate. 
As time goes on, your awareness of the desire will become more acute, and you will find it easier and easier to handle. On the odd occasion you may find a surge in desire for some reason, this could be due to a chemical imbalance from food or something else, but do not let this take you off your stride, keep going and it will become more and more manageable as you start to make friends with your sexual desire.

I don't feel I have covered all aspects of this subject in this post, but I hope that by sharing my though's and feelings on this will help in some small way. This has been a subject of interest for me, and by writing this blog post has allowed me to contemplate it more. 

If you have any questions or thoughts you would like to share please contact me, my email is in the blog description.     

Why So Selfless?

Its easy to see that with all the problems going on in the world, that we should ensure that we look after number one and not give, give, give and end up being taken for a mug. I mean you hear these stories all the time about people being treated like doormats. So why would the Dharma path want us to look into and analyse selflessness?

I am not sitting here writing this claiming to be someone who has realised, let alone experienced emptiness (where you are able to see the true nature of reality and its interconnectedness). But i'm writing this from a point of view where, I feel it might not be a bad concept to consider after investigation. I'm also not a scholar, so if there are any flaws to what I have written, please let me know.
This I hope will allow you to explore the subject yourself. 
I would never expect someone to read my blog and think "yeah that sounds right", I would implore you to investigate if, what I have said is correct on a more deeper level. 
The Buddha never told people to believe what he said blindly, he always told them to investigate and check what he taught, like you would check gold to see if it was fake, before buying it.

So why be selfless? Well that's a good question, but lets start with, why is thinking about ourselves all the time such a bad thing?
Well upon analysis, when we think about ourselves only or mainly, we start to find more things wrong with what we want, I mean where else are you going to find problems when you only think of me, me, me. So when we want something and we don't get it, it makes us unhappy. This can be seen in almost anything, from not getting the food we want, down to people not doing what we want them to do. Its like playing a game and only you matter, when clearly this is not the case as there are other people playing the game too.

So the question is, do the others count? Well this then becomes a bit of a grey area for most people, as often we care more about people we are connected to in some way. So we could get a response of yes, BUT, only if I know them or they are friends or family. I understand this view, as its the way many of us have been brought up and why not. But the question then becomes, why are we thinking about these people and caring about them more?
Nine times out of ten its because these people add value to our life or we feel obliged in some way to care about them. So we have this clear structure in place and some of us may not have a big structure, others may have a very big structure and care for and know a lot of people.
So we are left with the remainder of society as people we do not know, don't care about or we have a neutral feeling about them.

When looking into this sense of self on one of my retreats, it dawned on me that this sense of self was like a big fence put up to protect me and the ones I love, but actually the feeling I had was that this fence was holding me captive and out there was the freedom I needed and I really didn't need to be protected. I just felt I needed to protect this sense of self and really what mattered was everyone equally (me included). 
There are some things I feel jump over the self fence from time to time, to make you realise that this cage of self that we live in isn't right.
For me it happens when I watch a great movie, as while I know what I am watching is fiction, I start to feel upset and want to help with all of my heart if the characters is suffering. I mean these characters are not my friends and I have no reason to care for them, but you really care instinctively. It's this kind of experience that I feel shows that our true nature is that of selflessness and compassion. There is no reason to feel this way about a fictional character, but it bursts through us, as you are absorbed by the experience. So maybe its not such a bad thing to be more selfless, maybe its a natural thing we are working against, and wow is it tiring.

What about giving to much and neglecting yourself? 
Well for me I feel that we take selflessness to literally. Not many people have realised or understood emptiness completely, so we are left with what we have. If we are all interconnected then we must look after everyone, and here is the kicker, this includes ourselves. I feel a large amount of problems arise from people giving to much to others while neglecting themselves. Therefore we should look to take care of others and ourselves to the best of our ability. This can often mean using skillful methods. For example; If someone you know keeps taking advantage of you, confront them and explain to them calmly and kindly that it feels that they are taking advantage of you. Express that you wouldn't do this to them and that they shouldn't do this to you. This will make the person think about what they are doing. This may be a habituated pattern that no one has ever told them about and they may welcome this as an opportunity to change. It may just upset them, but you have tried to help them while preventing yourself from being a victim. 
Being selfless doesn't mean helping people feel happy while re enforcing negative patterns in others and in turn being a doormat. 
I feel it's about making people happy, if you can help them, if you cannot help them, as it makes more people unhappy or another unhappy, then you cannot help them. You would in effect just be making a mess, helping them to make others miserable.
In Buddhism they say a bird needs two wings to fly, compassion and wisdom. Compassion alone can cause lots of problems. But when you use wisdom and compassion you are really looking at the whole picture and acting in a more well thought out and wise way. 

In the natural environment we see how clearly everything is in harmony with everything else most of the time and a certain amount of respect of this is evident. When some natural disaster happens to the environment, it does everything it can to bring everything back into equilibrium with everything else. It functions as a living breathing thing in many ways. Now the same can be said, I feel of us, when we spend our lives trying to solidify this sense of self or us and them, we are in fact driving a wedge between us and everyone else, that is bringing us out of harmony with everything. When what we all need to do is live in a more harmonious way with everyone to allow our natural flow to develop. This way if someone needs help, everyone helps the same way nature does to it's environment. Imagine that if everyone helped each other regardless of all the reasons not to, how life would change. As everyone would pitch in, the load would be much less to deal with and the love that people would do it with would make it even easier. No more helping people because it made us feel good, but instead because you know if you were in their shoes you would want someone to help you too. Seeing everyone and everything as part of a bigger picture, we would naturally want to help as everyone is in essence a part of us. There would be no reason not to, as we are all connected.

It would seem we overlook how much we are connected to everything and everyone around us, a lot, as we get caught up in our daily lives. People we do not know, harvest crops and food so we can eat. The environment provides us with oxygen, the trees and plants are connected to the earth, sun and air so without them they could not function, and as a result we could not exist. But also without us and all the other creatures, animals and mammals creating CO2 the plants and trees would not be able to live long ether. I know that we all know this information, but how often do we reflect on this woven tapestry of life?

When everything from the human cells, to this incredible universe seem able to live in harmony with its surroundings to a large degree, why can't we see that wanting to look after number one isn't going to and hasn't worked for a very long time. 
When we look after number one, we neglect everything else around us, from the environment to the people we live around, and with that we actually make ourselves more lonely, isolated and afraid by thinking of just ourselves. Why can't we flow with harmony and realise we are all connected. We need to love and nurture each other as a collective regardless of all the decisive reasons we create. 
Selflessness and compassion are at the heart of all major religions and maybe there is a very good reason for that, maybe, just maybe its the way for us to end all mental suffering forever. If that is true, maybe it is worth thinking about at least once in our lifetime.

Why Can't We Talk About Death

Where do you start with a topic as profound as death? Well here goes.

Most people think Buddhists are pretty morbid, as we talk about death and impermanence a lot.

As a Buddhist I have to agree, at least on the fact we talk and contemplate death and impermanence a lot. But studies have shown that Buddhists like Matthieu Ricard (Said to be the happiest man in the world) are indeed incredibly joyful and happy people. So why is it that they are so joyful and happy, if they think about death and impermanence a lot?

Well from my understanding, thinking about death is incredibly scary, but what happens when the fear settles is that it can shift your prospective and can make you see life in a completely different way. For me, I've always woken up and got on with my day, planning my day, week, month, year and even years ahead. But day after day I still wake up thinking that I will reach the end of my day and this although normal, really isn't intirely true. It's logical to plan I agree, but not once do we contemplate or feel, I could die today or my lover, mother, father or friends could die today.

When we contemplate death it makes us aware of how at any given second we can loose, not only our own life, but also the lives of the most precious people in our life too. 

Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water here, I'm not saying give up your jobs and spend life with the ones you love trying to protect them from any dangers, or become a full time meditator, monk, although if you wanted to do that, that's also fine. What I am saying is that if we get over the initial sadness of the thought, what is left is a feeling of "wow my family and friends won't be here forever, I should really spend more time with them and forgive them more for the small trivial things". But also when we realise we won't be around forever too, we start to forgive ourselves for mistakes more too. It affects everything.

Thinking about death and impermanence for just a few minutes a day can make life seem more precious and wonderful. Have you ever watched a sunset and been amazed at its majestic beauty and thought, I wonder how many of these I'll see in my life?

Life seems to us like it will go on forever, we very rarely give life a second thought. It's the most precious thing we have and it can be gone in an instant. 
To me It's incredibly interesting to observe that we plan everything out in our life down to the last detail. We plan seeing friends and going to places and yet we never give a thought of our own death when it's more certain than anything else.

My life was changed the day my Dad (who was the healthiest person I knew) was diagnosed with incurable cancer. I could see that he felt robbed of his life, having been so careful, not to smoking or drink and always having check ups with the doctor and eating well. He died within ten months and it shock me to my core. It forced me to see that a long life wasn't guaranteed. It made me question my life and led me to go on a quest to understand the nature of reality, but that's a story for another time. 

My father’s greatest gift wasn't that he left me some cool stuff or that he loved me dearly. His gift was showing me my own mortality and that gift is priceless, and for that I am eternally grateful.

The main point here is that seeing death up close, shock me into seeing that we all die and that we never know when it will happen. Who knows, we may argue with our loved ones and storm off and have a heart attack and die. Our dearest friend, we fell out with over some silly trivial thing may die and we will regret not trying to resolve our differences for the rest of our life.

Equally as important, is that we feel that we can put things off and off until later, thinking we can do what we want when we retire, and so on. Thinking about death can give us the kick you need, to do the things we have dreamed of, like traveling or a career change or something else we dream of doing. Overall I find a lot of positives for contemplating my own mortality.

I attend the Death & Dying day at Samye Dzong Buddhist Center in London every year, for a day of reflection on death and dying and it's not limited to Buddhists, there are all sorts of great people and things going on, from the Death Cafe's,Will writing talks, Funeral Planning down to Buddhist approach to death and dying.There are also exhibitions on certain aspects of death too, so its very interesting.

A friend of mine Charlie Morley, who happens to be an amazing Lucid Dreaming teacher and author on the subject, is often giving a talk (despite a very busy worldwide tour). One year I forget which one, he did an incredibly powerful meditation.

We listened to some calming music and he talked us through the meditation. He asked us to imagine we had been given a week to live. There was a pause, as we took this in and reflected on it. He then asked us to think of things we would like to do in that week, including connecting with long lost friends, forgiving family members etc. He then finished by saying that what we had thought of doing in the meditation, we should try do in the following week or weeks. It was an incredibly powerful experience for me and I'm sure many others. Heaps of people had tears in their eyes, including me.

Charlie then shared how profound it was for him when he first did that meditation.

It allowed him to find a good friend he grew up with who went to prison for murder. Charlie had lost contact with him as he couldn't come to terms with what his friend had done.

Having reflected doing this meditation, Charlie decided to track down and visit this old friend in prison, having searched and found him they reconnected after many years and Charlie said it was one of most amazing experiences of his life. How incredibly profound. 

This, I think this is another clear sign of how incredible reflecting on death and impermanence can change our lives.

When I talk to people about death, their reactions are often very similar, saying “its morbid and depressing”, but I wish I could show them the amazing production going on behind that dark curtain of fear, and that’s what has prompted me to do this post. 

Is Going On Retreat Selfish?

Recently I was asked by a dear friend, doesn't it seem selfish to go on retreat for long periods of time (not sure that was the exact wording, but it was along those lines). It really caught me off guard and made me really think about this.

My conclusion is that we all have a part of us that burns bright inside, an inner light shale we say. By going into retreat, it allows a person time to reflect on where this light comes from and helps us peal away and understand what obstructs this light. In my own personal experience it's my own selfishness and attachment that prevents my light from flowing like a wild river.
When I leave the retreat I feel that my light or love flows better, and I'm a better person to everyone around me and this echoes out as those around me. 

To me, understanding myself doesn't just help me, it helps everyone I come into contact with and that doesn't seem selfish to me, it feels the opposite.

It was a lovely question that really made me think about this topic deeply and has made me appreciate why I go on retreat more. So i'm thankful that I was asked this question.

The Power of Prospective‏

How many times have you been in really annoying positions and felt angry or just plain frustrated?

I have felt this way, many times and it can make or break your day.

Why should we allow what we think is an external event to ruin our day. The first thing we should understand is that what is happening is not really external, its internal. This may seem strange but through habitual patterns we are allowing ourselves to get annoyed or angry. Our prospective of a situation is the main reason we get angry. 

 

I will share with you an example of how to relieve stressful situations that can be applied in a number of different ways.

 

I was travelling around Sri Lanka, on a public bus that was not only very hot but very packed. My partner and I were very tired and carrying our backpacks on our way to the next hotel. After a while people would push and shove and my frustration and anger began to grow and grow.

I got in such a state of rage that I was about to just shout angrily at the people around me.

But something strange happened. At that very moment it dawned on me, that we were all experiencing this frustrating moment together and that I could chose to be happy or angry. I tried to find something to change my mood. I noticed that the bus was playing music and I just decided to dance. It was a little forced to start with, but everyone around me began to smile and this made me happy and everything changed. This bus ride went from horrid to fun and when the bus stopped next, some people sitting down, offered us their seat and we happily accepted. This example can show that no matter how mad the situation is you can always change how you see it and make it more fun!

You can change the way you look at things, in order to reduce stress and anger, why not give it a try you might surprise yourself.

How Meditation & Awarness Can Help Roller Derby

When playing roller derby lots of people have to deal with a number of emotions, ether before and during the bout. These exaggerated emotions such as anxiety, stress and anger can cause you to lose focus and not play to the best of your ability. While all emotions are 100% normal, staying focused and calm is key to getting the most out of yourself, as when in states of anger during a game, you are wound up in that anger and you will lose sight of the real goal of working as a team. Being focused, calm and assertive you will be able to calculating every move and minimise mistakes.

Meditation & Awareness is very simple and can be adapted to help you in any situation. I will explain how these can be used before and during a game below:

Before the game: You wake up and its game day and you start to feel anxious about the coming game as its important to you, you feel a little sick and struggle to eat. When feeling this way its important to know this is really normal and most people suffer with this. There is a simple way to relax yourself and this would be to do a breathing meditation or listening meditation to calm yourself. I have covered these meditations in previous blog posts (My first meditation & Listening meditation in the August section) if you wish to see how to do these. These meditations will allow you to relax. If you learn to do this regularly or even if you only do this on game day you will see some benefit, even if it calms you only to allow you to eat well, as this will allow you to have a good solid meal that will keep you alert during the game.

During the game: How often have you been upset angry or just frustrated during a game? I'm sure you are all very passionate about the sport and these kind of emotions are common for any sports player. But how can you calm yourself and stay focused during a game situation? This is where awareness comes in really helpful. When you notice during a game that you are feeling upset, angry or frustrated learn to do an awareness based exercise that takes only a few seconds or minutes. There are any number of ways to do this, but, I will explain one and you can take it and run with it. Trial this technique if you so desire and if it does not help then please don't use it. Simply stare at the floor and bring your focus to your deep breaths and the sensation it is having on your body, just count each circular breath (breathing in, then out being one circular breath). Try not to focus on anything els and this will prevent you running with the anger or frustration. You will notice that this should calm you and allow you to stay focused on the game. These techniques may not work straight away but you should see some level of calmness from the start. The more you do this the better it will get and I'm sure it will improve your game. As I said earlier there are lots of ways to use this awareness technique. Chose any focus object that you can find if the breath isn't helping you. I am using the breath as an example as its easy to find as we all breath.

I hope that this will help all you derby players out there, happy skating.

 

Transforming Greed, Anger and Ignorance

The Buddha taught that there were three poisons in life, however, he did not feel they should be destroyed but merely transformed, to allow us to be more positive people. By transforming these three poisons we can be more positive and rid ourselves of those negative emotions that cause us to feel down, alone and generally unhappy with our lives. Below I will explain how to transform each of these poisons into something positive.

Greed: Greed can ensure that we only look out for ourselves and keep everything to ourselves, even when we can see others in need more than ourselves. The Buddha taught that greed should be transformed into its opposite, generosity. By being generous to others in their hour of need, not only makes the person receiving feel happier, it also make the giver feel happy knowing that they have helped another person become happier. It can be said that by giving to others can be infectious and I feel that this can be the case, as the joy that is felt, knowing you are helping others is very enjoyable. One must also approach generosity with wisdom also, but this will be explained later.

Anger: Anger is caused by a feeling of not getting what we want or not being in control. The Buddha taught that anger should be transformed into compassion. When we get angry at people for doing certain things we are doing this based on assumptions that this person is doing this to us and wants us to be unhappy. But when we look at the situation from a compassionate angle we can see it from a much more positive way. For example; You are walking down the street and some person tries to snatch your bag or steal your wallet. At first we are in fear of losing our items and often our life and this fear changes to anger very quickly. However, when we look deeper this person may be doing this for a number of reasons, and they are trying to make themselves happy also. If we could really see why people did things, we would see that they too are only trying to be happy. Compassion allows us to try and understand things from other peoples prospectives (this does not mean that we condone the actions taken). Often we only see how things affect us and this can cause negative emissions that only suffice to make us feel unhappy and often cause horrible physical symptoms.
Compassion can offer us a way out from anger and its negative affects.

Ignorance: Ignorance is something that can be destructive not only to ourselves but to other people too. The Buddha taught that ignorance should be transformed into wisdom. Here is an example; We see a homeless man on the street and feel that we may seem tight or stingy so we give the homeless guy some money. This may seem like a good idea, but when we look deeper we see that by giving the man money we are trying to make our selves feel better about ourselves. The reason this is ignorance is that we are not looking at the root of the problem, but merely treating a small symptom by giving this person money. Upon deeper reflection by giving this person money you are allowing them to feed their addiction (I understand that not all homeless people have addictions, but to assume all don't have addictions is more destructive to those who do). So the wiser thing to do would be to help him by giving him some food or drink or giving money to a homeless shelter in the area that will allow homeless people to have a place to sleep and a meal to warm them. This can be applied to many situations by reflecting on what outcomes our actions will really have. Acting without thinking about the outcome is ignorant. Acting after thinking about the outcome is wisdom.

By just making small changes to how we do things or treat people can make a big difference to other peoples lives and in turn your life too. So turn these poisons around and see the benefits in the lives of all sentient beings.