Temptation – Sensual Desire

I want to talk about temptations today. I am sure you all heard the story about Buddha was visited by Mara just before he was enlightened. Mara is not some evil creature. Mara is the temptation in our hearts. Buddha knew it was temptation and ignored it so he was enlightened. We, on the other hand, do not recognize temptation.

We always say we are supposed to enjoy so if it feels good, it must be good for us. Not true. A lot of things feel good at the moment. For example, we all want to meditate on a daily basis. How many of us actually take the time to do it? We don’t because we prefer that last piece of news or show or sleep or game or what have you. One of the biggest obstacles for us is sensual desire. We have five senses and they are physical in nature. There is nothing wrong with enjoying what you see, what you taste, etc. The problem comes when we try to want what we are sensing. For example, if there is a beautiful flower, by all means, we should enjoy it. But if we want to take the flower from the plant, that is when we must stop.

Sensual desire actually also affects your meditation sessions. It is a sensual desire that wants to move this way or that way to be just a little bit more comfortable. Nothing wrong with being comfortable but if you are not, please don’t keep adjusting. When you start adjusting you lose concentration. If you actually do let go of that sensual desire to adjust, you will have a peaceful meditation session. The joy that comes from that meditation session far outlasts the sensual gratification from the physical world.

Let’s take the example of food. Say you love pizza. You begin to eat pizza from your favorite pizzeria. You are taking down a few slices. Now you are full. Can you continue? No. If you did, you will eventually throw up. You lose the pleasure of anything that lasts too long. So sensual gratification wants something else as soon as it is satisfied. It is a momentary enjoyment that does not last beyond that moment.

Buddha gave a few solutions to overcome this. The first solution is to let go of the want. If we recognize the sensual desire and decide to ignore it, we will have a lot more joyful time. For example, sitting in a position that may not be comfortable, will allow us the opportunity to learn about sensual desires. Because moving around to find a comfortable position is no different from people working 80 hour days or getting bored when there are no live sports on TV or looking for constant excitement. Once you get out of one situation the next one will start bothering you. Just like during meditation if we move our right leg when it bothers us, a few minutes later left leg will begin to bother us.

Another solution Buddha gave to keep sensual desires in check was moderation in eating. Stop eating after a certain time. In those days they used to start their day around 4 in the morning so he suggested stop eating afternoon. In our times, we should try and stop eating say latest by 6 pm. It allows us to control ourselves and also gives us intermittent fasting that is supposed to be good for our body.

Another solution was to not seeing the whole and seeing just the parts. What does that mean? Say you like someone and have a lust for that person. Instead of seeing the whole person, if you only see their hair or their teeth, the lust actually goes away. Similarly, if there is a luxury car you are drooling for, instead of seeing the car, if you only see the tires your desire will actually reduce.

Q: When I meditate, before I can even label the thought, the next one comes in. So there is this constant flow of thoughts that does not allow me to concentrate.

A: This happens when our mind is agitated and we have not settled down in our hearts. The best way to approach this is to stop and go back to the sensation of our breath. If your mind is muddled for some reason, spend more time on breath sensations. This will allow the mind to settle down. Just like when you have a muddy water glass, you need to let it sit for the soil to settle down at the bottom and the glass to be clear.

The root of all evil: Self-Cherishing & Self-Grasping Ignorance

Now that the holidays are over, let’s examine what brings delusions in our lives and how to reduce them. I am sure during the holiday season, most of you at some point confronted your delusions. These come in any form such as anger, jealousy, hatred, attachment, ignorance, greed, etc. If we look at the root of our delusions, usually it boils down to Self-Cherishing and Self Grasping Ignorance.

Self-cherishing is a mind that thinks “I am important”. Self-Cherishing is nothing but a belief that our happiness, our comfort, our views, our thought process is superior to that of the other person. In other words, it is the same a supremacy. Let’s explore this a little. When we have a disagreement with someone it is because we consider our opinion to be superior to that of another person. Because of our ego or “me” delusion, all of our viewpoints are tainted. If we have tinted windows on our car, everything outside looks of that color. Look at all the wars in the world; they are rooted in this belief of supremacy. Let me tell you an interesting story. A few years ago, I was getting a massage. My masseuse asked me how my day was going. I casually mentioned I was dealing with some not so competent insurance people. Out of nowhere, she said do you think you are smarter than everyone else? I said most days I have this Smartest Person In The Room syndrome. What she said next was very profound. She said the universe gives you what you want. You want to be the smartest person so it sends you people who are not as up to speed! I thought it was a unique way to look at the world. But in essence, it was supremacy that was bringing frustration. Geshe Kelsang Gyasto put it wonderfully; “The moment we let go of our obsessive concern for our own welfare, our mid naturally relaxes and becomes lighter.”

The second reason we experience our delusions is Self-Grasping Ignorance. It is just a fancy way of saying we grasp at ourselves and its inherent existence. When we talk about wisdom teachings we will dive deep into inherent existence. Self-grasping ignorance is also known as separation. We have created this boundary around us separating ourselves from other living beings. This is similar to a saying that goes; my cold is worst than yours because it is happening to me! If we erase the boundaries around us, the world would be a much better place. How so? Let’s look at it. We strongly identify with ourselves and grasp it so tightly that nothing is more important than our I. If our boundary only includes us then we focus on our happiness over all else. If our boundary includes our family then all of a sudden we are willing to make little sacrifices for the greater good of our family. Most people stop there. If we all begin to erase boundaries around our community we would all try our best to make sure everyone in our community is better off. If you think about the war analogy I just pointed out, it also applies here. There are wars because there is separation. We all identify strongly with something or other. Man, Woman, American, Indian, Republican, Democrat, Black, White, Brown, Hindu, Christian, Jew, so on and so forth. The politicians of the world are actively creating more identities based on race, gender, and so forth. We are actively trying to divide the world instead of uniting it. That causes delusions.

In other words, if we begin to identify a little less with ourselves and start erasing boundaries around us to include more living beings, we will begin to notice that our delusions are decreasing. Similarly, if we reduce our self-cherishing, we will reduce our delusions.

Stress Less

As the holidays are fast approaching, we are getting into the most stressful season of the year in the Western world. So today let’s discuss how to keep the stress at bay and more importantly, how to make sure that you keep your mental peace amid all the chaos.

Before we talk about tackling stress, let’s discuss how stress originates in our body. Stress comes from trying to control people and situations. Getting other people to behave our way is not really working and is never effective. The only thing we can control for sure is our mind. There will be always things to worry about. So if wait for things to settle down, we will be waiting for eternity. Our thoughts carry us all over the place and they bring stress in our lives. If we gain mastery over our mind and thoughts, we find deep peace. Our mind is like a crazy wild elephant. It destroys everything on its way, it thinks about scary thoughts that will most likely never materialize. Someone put it nicely, anxiety and worries are misuses of the imagination.

But we live in the real world so there will always be things out of our control. If we learn to control our reactions to situations, we will be able to avoid stress and bring happiness and peace. In that spirit, I found this stress handling quadrant. I am going to share this document on the screen. This document is courtesy of Tashi Nyma a Buddhist Monk out of Dallas, Texas. No need to copy this document – I will email you a copy at the end of this session. Those of you who are watching this on our YouTube channel or on LinkedIn, please email meditatedenver@gmail.com and I will email you a copy of this document.

As you can see, this is called the Four Quadrant Practice. The first quadrant is Avoid. We want to avoid as many situations as we can that can create stress in our life. For example, is looking at our phone 10 times an hour really necessary? Once people start looking at their phones, all kinds of stressful situations arise. They say an average American looks at their phone 96 times per day. That is insane!! Going on social media all day is another one of those things that we can avoid. What I found helpful was to limit my social media interactions to twice a day. And I am trying really hard not to get into an argument on social media. I limit checking my emails three or four times per day. Again, it is different for everyone but no one expects you to respond within minutes.

The next quadrant is Adjust. Let’s adjust our behavior to avoid stressful situations. For example, because I am in a High-Risk COVID group, I started getting stressed out when COVID increased in the last two months about shopping. So we adapted to a 100% online or curbside pickup model for the last 6 weeks. It eliminated all the unnecessary stress. You might want to limit the duration of meetings if that stresses you out.

The next quadrant is to Adapt. We adapt to the situations that we can avoid or adjust to. For example, you may not be able to avoid a meeting with that annoying coworker. Take some deep breaths before you begin the meeting. Go for a walk if you have an option.

The last quadrant is Accept. This is if all fails kind of category. Accept that you have to take that meeting and it may go bad. Prepare yourself and change your attitude towards it. There is no reason an external situation should give you stress. Train your mind. Essentially, this is what we started the session with.

So as you can see, there are ways to stay out of stressful situations. We must make sure that what the world brings does not need to disturb our internal peace. Hopefully, with some practice, we can all experience that peace within. I would like you to do this exercise as homework with the worksheet. It would certainly make you think if nothing else.