How to break and go beyond emotional and sexual desire
There is a sequence on the path of breaking and going beyond emotional and sexual desire. How can we break and go beyond the exterior temptation of our body and mind?
First, we start to cultivate “being aware but unaffected and immovable”. This means that you can feel and be aware of everything, but your heart stays still and immovable. You can hear all kinds of sounds, you can feel every experience, even a smile or a glance from others. You are very aware and clear. “Being aware but unaffected and immovable” – your mind doesn’t discriminate. You won’t distinguish a sound as being good or evil, identifying that a sound is coming from a car or a train – this is a distinction. In that state, you can hear sounds, but you aren’t moved. Begin cultivation with “being aware but unaffected and immovable”, through this our meditative power will gradually become stronger.
After practicing like this for a while, attaining “movable but not dwelling” will come naturally. I can move, but I won’t dwell into any state. I won’t stay in and be attached to any state. When situations arise, we need to remain pacified within the situation to deal with them. Then, when we are pacified, we need “moment real, moment empty”. “Movable but not dwelling” – if we need to stay within the situation, then we need “moment real, moment empty”, and from “moment real, moment empty” to “form and emptiness are not distinct”. This is the cultivation sequence.
During your cultivation process, all the above states need to be concretely guided and taught. Right now, this is only a general explanation, a general overview. This is a path to liberate your body and mind. But this path can’t be completed easily.
how to maintain our right thoughts, and right views and insights
Therefore, in our consciousness, we need to understand how to maintain our right thoughts, and right views and insights. For example, in Buddhism, there is a method to treat the attachment to the five skandhas. It’s to keep being aware of “suffering, emptiness, the impermanence of all things and no self”. If we are interrupted in our cultivation because we are affected by feelings and perceptions, then, we can sit here and think: everything in this world is impermanent. Many things we can’t control. We must recognize that our emotional and sexual desire are as illusional as ourselves.
Buddha mentioned humans have ten sufferings: birth, aging, illness and death are the first four – the suffering of birth, the suffering of aging, the suffering of illness and the suffering of death. The fifth one is the suffering of gathering with people we dislike. This means that you face people you dislike every day, and can’t see people you like. You must be face to face with the people you dislike. This is the suffering of gathering with people we dislike. For example, meeting people we hate. The sixth suffering is being separated from loved ones. People you like are very far from you. Every day, you experience the separation from loved ones – this is called the suffering of being separated from loved ones. Seventh, the suffering of not getting what you want. You can’t obtain what you like and want. Eighth, the suffering of the strong attachment to the five skandhas – this is for example, physical sensations such as pain, cold, numbness and swelling. Ninth, the suffering of deterioration. This mainly occurs in the state of heavenly beings. Heavenly beings in the area of light and sound have the light transformed body. This light-transformed body will still eventually deteriorate, because it is still within time and space. Within time and space, there is still birth and extinction. Thus, the light will deteriorate and dissipate. This is called the suffering of deterioration.
When those beings come to an end, they will deteriorate – their light-transformed body will deteriorate. Finally, there is pervasive suffering – this also happens in the state of “heavenly beings”. However, beings who attained the heaven of the samadhi of neither associative thought nor non-associative thought are in the undulation area. This means that every undulation of their consciousness is a life. They no longer have a light-transformed body nor a physical body. But their consciousness is still constantly undulating – thus, it’s called pervasive suffering. They try to meditate and be immovable. The undulation of their consciousness lasts very long, just like Arhats’ samadhi of extreme tranquility and extinction – it will last many eras. Nevertheless, at the end they will still exit Samadhi. The movement of the consciousness is called the pervasive suffering. Once there is a transformation, they exit from Samadhi. When exiting samadhi, they will feel extremely painful. Thus, the pervasive suffering is at the level of consciousness.
Humans have the first eight sufferings. We can’t feel the suffering of deterioration and pervasive suffering, because we don’t even feel the suffering of birth and extinction of our consciousness. Let it be born and extinct and let it keep changing – we let it be, because we are too coarse. We can’t feel the pain from the birth and extinction of consciousness. This is just like in your imagination. Let’s think: think how much we humans suffer? Think that we have already reached middle age, when looking back at the past, it’s just like a dream. We didn’t do anything meaningful. We just lived dazedly, and wasted our time with all sorts of enjoyments. Are we going to live better than now in the future? Think once we get old, our body will deteriorate, our mind will become chaotic and unaware, we will be full of sickness. We won’t live any better than in the past. Thus, we should save all the time to focus and work on our cultivation now. Don’t let ourselves be surrounded by all kinds of chaotic thoughts. Let’s accumulate some good fortune and karma, for our future and our next generations.
Buddha said: “Everything is like a dream, an illusion, a bubble and a shadow. At the end of our life, we can bring nothing with us but the remaining karma.” What is karma? All behaviors from our body, speech and mind are karma. There is good karma, karma of ignorance and karma of wrong doings. When cause and connection mature, all karma will manifest its consequences. Good karma manifests good fruit. The karma of ignorance will manifest the consequences of ignorance. We need to be very cautious with this. Buddha explained to us that humans can cultivate and attain the state of no-self, and then be liberated from karma and reincarnation. If now we have very good conditions to cultivate, we should cultivate with all our heart and mind. Don’t raise up all kinds of unwholesome thoughts and ideas to satisfy your desires. Instead, set a noble goal and faith – this is also a good method to break through our emotional and sexual desire.
I recall a movie from my childhood, during the war, a patriotic person was to be executed. So he wrote a poem on a wall: “Life is dear, love is dearer. For the sake of freedom, both can be given up.” I believe many people here know about this. At that time, I was wondering, if he was about to die, why did he still want freedom? Freedom is for people that are alive. He was about to die, why did he care? Of course, now I understand: his freedom was his faith. For example, a person needs to change every unfair and dark thing in this world – he won’t be free if they still exist. Here, we are not to investigate what his faith is; I mean that if a person’s faith is strong enough to let go of his life and loved ones, then, the grasp and influence of emotional and sexual desire on him is very weak. From this, I realized that if every practitioner, every single moment, only cares about his own feelings and perceptions, cares about loved ones and being loved, every single moment only focuses on his own feelings and perceptions, if his heart only focuses on “me” and “mine”, I believe it’s very difficult to overcome the grasp and influence of emotional and sexual desire. So, it’s very difficult to return to the area of vacuum space. Because all your heart is on “you” and “yours”. Every single moment, you only care about your own feelings and perceptions – your happiness, anger, sadness, and joy, if you feel comfortable or not, how someone treated you – every single moment, you only care about your own feelings and perceptions. So, you will be trapped in the area of matter every single moment. Then you will experience reincarnation life after life, you can never return.
Thus, all practitioners, when you cultivate, you must keep expanding your views, heart, tolerance, and compassion. Don’t let your attention only stay on discriminating feelings and perceptions of “self”. Every practitioner should regard the following verses as the highest goal to pursue in our life: “Cultivate and realize the enlightenment with our body and mind; be liberated from reincarnation; save and help sentient beings.” Do not only use spiritual cultivation to obtain happiness in this world. Since as long as you haven’t reached the area of vacuum space, all conditioned dharmas are within the category of time and space. As long as you are still within time and space, regardless of how happy and joyful you are presently, your “peace and happiness” can be crushed any time. We can never understand the suffering mentioned by Buddha when we are in a happy and peaceful time. Everything is impermanent and is within the cycle of birth and extinction, because we are still within time and space. Sometimes, we are cured from suffering and then we forget about it. If we can’t resolve to the real heart of cultivation, while we are still trapped and lured by our emotional and sexual desire, we can think about our relatives, and our friends who are trapped and suffer – think about how they experience feelings of “to live is not better than death”. Also think about sick patients in hospitals – think about their suffering of “extremely worried and troubled even when eating and sleeping” and “to live is not better than death”. Maybe one day when our karmic effects mature, we will become just like them. An enlightened person will even think of the suffering of sentient beings of the three lower planes. Although we can’t visualize it, in Buddhist Sutras, there are descriptions of hell. There, there is not a single moment to relax and stop suffering, and we can’t imagine for how long it lasts. This hell is called the Avici hell – there is no time there.
two methods to help tame physical desires
Now let’s introduce two methods to help tame physical desires. You can bring what you have learnt here to monasteries. It’s not convenient for some monks to learn the cultivation methods from lay Buddhists. Thus, sometimes, you can bring what you have learnt to the monks in monasteries.
1. To use our sexual energy
Our sexual energy is the most important energy in our body. The power of this energy is very strong. Our cultivation will be much faster if we use this energy appropriately. When sexual energy arises, keep your consciousness pure and unconditioned. This means when you are longing for sexual intimacy, your conscious mind must be pure and unconditioned. Don’t have any illusion of woman or man; don’t connect sexual impulse to sexual desire, or any sexual intimacy. Don’t focus on feelings and perceptions of intimacy with your partner. At first, it may be difficult to not be affected by your partner, but after some practices, this sexual energy will return to your chakras and energy channels, return to your chakras and open them. Thus, this energy is very precious. If we don’t have sexual impulse, we can’t raise this strong energy.
Actually, when sexual energy is full, every cell in our body will be full of energy. When cells are full, and if suddenly our heart also raises thoughts of sexual desires, at once, these cells will produce “sexual poison” and create the illusion of “sexual need”. This “sexual poison” comes from the association of our body’s feeling and perception with the stored information of “sexual desire” in our consciousness. If we can bring our heart to not distinguish our body’s feelings and perceptions, even if our cells have the imprint information of sexual desire, then sexual impulse will not become “sexual poison”. Instead, it can become the strongest energy in our cultivation. However, to completely clean the information of ‘sexual desire’ requires the complete transformation of body and mind.
As a Buddhist cultivation teacher, I must often pay attention to students’ cultivation states, to every energy change in their body and mind, including the changes in their cells. Thus, I can see that when practitioners have no desires and needs, their fulfilled cell’s energy rises from sexual energy – it will be very pure and tranquil. However, when practitioner’s heart starts to have feelings and perceptions of sexual desire or needs, then right away their body’s energy in their cells will become cloudy, and have all sorts of shining colors. The frequency of their biofield vibration will also change. It will send the sexual vibration to the person they like. This is our physical body, so for us, not being trapped and lured by emotional and sexual desire is the most difficult thing. But if we keep training ourselves, we can also detach from emotional and sexual desire faster, depending on whether you want to train yourself or not – at the beginning, it will be a bit difficult.
I don’t mean that every practitioner must leave and be detached from emotional and sexual desire. But during the process of Buddhist cultivation, we must overcome our attachment to the forms in the area of matter, and the area of light and sound. When we cross these areas, we can’t allow our emotional and sexual desires to lure and trap us. Otherwise, we can never leave this place. This is a necessary step during cultivation. It could take a few days or a few months. But this is a necessary step for cultivation. If practitioners are already liberated from the area of matter and the area of light and sound, they can raise their emotional and sexual desire to love. That is a liberation after being freed from emotional and sexual desire. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love anymore, but love is much freer after this liberation.
2. Dan Yun method – Visualization
There is one more method, “Dan Yun method”. This means when you have sexual impulse, keep your focus on the Root chakra (Muladhara). We already introduced Muladhara earlier. The Root chakra is here, below the belly. Using the Hui Yin acupoint as the central cross-section, focus your mind on that place, being limitlessly large or small. Visualize your sexual energy as a burning fire. You can even visualize your Root chakra as a gas stove, and use your mind to open it. Then the flame will rise up. Let the fire burn stronger and stronger, let the flame of desire burn completely. Don’t connect it with any discipline, morality or ethics. Be pacified, stay aware and immovable in your burning desire. At the end of meditation, return the flame of desire to the Navel Chakra. The Navel Chakra is at the cross-section of the belly button. Let the flame return to the Chi Hai acupoint.
These are two minor methods.