When interacting with a female in particular, when I see her, my mind scatters away while I'm trying to stay mindful.
Would it be okay to disregard what I see and only meditate on what I hear when talking to her?
Or would that be cheating and not facing the problem?
I wonder what it is that you're seeing.
Yeah, females can do that.
It's terrible, really.
Yeah, I mean, sometimes you want to just focus on hearing instead.
It made me think of another part of this comprehensive practice.
I can't wait till I get this one out.
It's taken me so long, because it is a long one, and I've made it even longer.
And I had to totally redo it.
But hopefully this week I'll get it out there.
But it's comprehensive, this talk.
And so it has everything in it.
I can keep referring back to it.
And one of the parts of the comprehensive practice, which is actually commentary on the Sabah Su'usuta, Majjhima Nikaya No.
2,
is the guarding of one's faculties, which is a very important part of one's practice.
So the Buddha says first that you have to see things clearly.
He says the taints are to be done away with by seeing.
It's not very useful in your case, is it?
Because it sounds like seeing is going to just create more defilements for you.
so the next thing he says is that in you know in order to support your practice of seeing things as they are you have to guard your senses because of course seeing doesn't mean looking with the eyes it means seeing all experiences as they are when you're unable to see certain experiences as they are when they immediately blow you away
This is actually a hindrance in the practice.
And so, you should guard your senses, letting in only those things that you're now able to deal with, one by one by one, in order to be able to observe them clearly as they are.
It's no use trying to overcome, for example, not that I'm saying about beauty, you've cleared it up for me, okay.
In the example of beauty, it's not possible or it's not reasonable to expect that someone should overcome once they're attached to beauty.
being surrounded immediately by lots and lots of beautiful things.
They're going to just give up the practice.
It's overwhelming for them.
You have to be able to guard your senses or you have to have to guard your senses until you get to the point that you're able to deal mindfully in every situation.
The Buddha even said, the monk Ananda asked him, what should we do in regards to women?
And he said, well, best thing is don't see women.
And Ananda said, well, what should we do if we have to see women?
And he said, well, then don't talk to them.
And Ananda said, well, what if we have to talk to them?
Buddha said, well, then be very, very mindful.
So, I mean, it's...
People often take this the wrong way and think, well, this is a pretty silly teaching that teaches you to ignore experiences and not really investigate experiences, but it doesn't actually.
It takes into account the practical reality, the practical impossibility of coming to see things as they are, letting things be as they are.
you need to come back, as I said, come back to a life that is free from all of the things that you cling to.
In order to begin to understand the things you cling to, first you have to throw them away.
You have to begin from an empty state, have an empty slate, and then slowly take things back on to the extent that you're able to observe them.
You have to think like you're a scientist.
How difficult it is to interpret the data.
How much more time it takes to interpret data than to just experience it.
So in order to be interpretative... Interpretative?
We have to take things slower, one by one by one.
We can't let everything in and expect to be able to interpret it clearly and properly.
So, sounds like that's the sort of thing that you're trying to grasp here.
Best thing to do is run away from this woman.
That would be ideal, right?
To just not have any contact with her.
But that's difficult, because you probably really, really, really like her.
So in that case, it's not really a problem, it in fact can be a useful laboratory for you.
You can start when you think of her, when the image of her comes up in your mind.
Begin with that reality.
Because it's also important to, as I said, not take this the wrong way that we're trying to suppress or avoid or run away from the issue.
We're retreating, making a strategic retreat so that we can slowly come up in a mind, in a more, you know, once we've got our weapons ready, once we've got our gun loaded, so to speak.
So you should take it slowly and not go out of your way to see this woman, not go out of your way to be in her presence.
And not necessarily go out of your way to avoid her, but try to see her in moderation.
And slowly, slowly develop meditation based on this woman.
I mean, it's a great opportunity.
Once you've set it in your mind that this object here, this woman, is a meditation object for me,
Then every time you see her, you're going to immediately fall into meditation mode.
Not immediately, but slowly it will become... It's like eating.
I always tell people, think of eating as a meditation session.
When you sit down on the meditation mat, immediately your mind says, now I'm meditating.
Because you've got a meditation mat, and your legs are in a funny posture, your hands are in a funny posture.
You're not sitting in an ordinary way, so you think, this is meditation.
When we eat, we think this is eating, and so we eat and we lose our mindfulness.
But if we thought of eating as a meditation session, which in Zen they're really good about this, in Zen they have you eat in a really awkward way, or not awkward, but novel way that you're not used to.
And as a result, you're forced to be very, very mindful.
So you can take this woman as being a meditation session for you.
Okay, now it's a meditation session for me.
The other thing I would recommend is not to be too hard on yourself.
So yeah, you'll fail sometimes and you'll fall into liking her and you'll wind up being totally blown away and unmindful and whatever.
But that's an important part of your observation.
You have to take that as an important part of your investigation.
Your investigation has to take everything into account.
If you deny yourself this, or if you react to your failures in a negative way, you'll learn nothing from them.
If when you fail, this is why there's those sayings out there that
If you never fail, you never learn or something like that.
We learn from our mistakes.
We don't always learn from our mistakes.
I gave a talk about this some time ago.
We learn from our mistakes when we actually look at them, when we actually accept that we've made a mistake objectively and try to learn from them.
We don't learn anything from mistakes if we get angry and upset about them.
So at the time when you like this woman and are attracted to her beauty and so on, you shouldn't be saying to yourself, oh, I'm such an evil, nasty person because I
you know this is sinful and this is so on you know the Western society is so full of this the sin of sexuality and the sin of masturbation which I got this video on masturbation has got me quite famous and in internet circles
You know, because, you know, this is an issue that masturbation, for example, is an issue that people feel utterly wretched about.
They feel horribly guilty, like they've committed some cardinal sin by doing something that they actually like doing, right?
By doing something that actually they think, you know, or that deep down their heart says, this is good, this is pleasant.
So how can you lie to yourself in that way?
If you still enjoy it, how can you say it's bad?
And so this is what's led many Hindu gurus to take people the other way.
And even there was this big Zen book that I showed you yesterday.
This guy, he talks about how his teacher was someone who along this line taught people to find liberation through sexuality.
You know, tantric Buddhism and so on even exists.
But all these Hindu gurus who say, you know, these Westerners are so sexually repressed, so he puts them together and tells them to have group orgies.
We don't do this.
Because that's also not... Because it's reacting.
It's reacting to things as being positive.
Reacting to things as being negative is no good.
Reacting to things as being positive is also a cause for the cultivation of habitual tendencies, which are only going to create further and further expectations and clinging and craving and disappointment and depression and sadness and dissatisfaction when you're not able to obtain the objects of your desire.
So it's important to accept when you make mistakes and to see the experience of making a mistake as it is.
When I see her, I have to prepare to meditate every time I see her when I exit the gym she works.
So we can all get kind of a picture of what the problem is here.
So yeah, preparing yourself is one thing, but also letting yourself feel these feelings.
Not letting, but acknowledging when you do feel these experiences.
You can't stop yourself from
Sorry.
You can't stop yourself from experiencing them.
Once you've experienced lust and desire, you've experienced it.
You can't change that in retrospect.
And yet that's what we try to do.
We pretend that it's not there, and so we say we're repressing it.
We're actually not repressing it.
We're reacting to it negatively.
Which totally nullifies any benefit, any learning that might have come from the experience.
So at the time when you're attracted to someone, you know, it can be the case where she's married and so you feel guilty because she's untouchable or something.
It can be that you're married or you're in a relationship.
But you have to accept that you have these feelings.
I mean, lust is like fire.
The Buddha said, I think he said, There is no fire like lust.
I believe that's the quote.
And what it means is that you can't, like a fire, like a great raging fire, you can't say to it, let it stay only here.
Let me only have lust for my wife and my girlfriend and not have lust for this person or that person.
If it's there, it's there and it's uncontrollable.
This is why lust is such a dangerous thing.
Greed and desire in general are so dangerous.
We say, what's wrong with liking this?
What's wrong with liking that?
They're habitual.
No, they're habit forming.
And they lead only to greater and greater of the same type of emotion.
which emotion is uncontrollable and can't be limited in any way, shape, or form to one specific set of experiences.
It, like fire, burns from the grass to the trees, from the trees to the leaves, and so on.
Whatever is combustible, it is liable to fall into burning, which can totally destroy.
This is why men cheat on their wives, wives cheat on their husbands,
And so on.
Why we steal, why we cheat?
Because the cultivation of lust is not something that can be controlled.
Once you cultivate it, it's there and it's like a fire, something that you can't contain.
So, you have to accept that fact and you have to work to undo the habits.
That's really the only way to deal with this.
Yeah, so start by limiting your interaction with this person to what is natural.
When you know that she's there, you might not want to look in the beginning.
You might just want to avert your eyes when you're not talking to her and suffice to hear and to feel the heart-throbbing agony, which actually is a lot of suffering.
The tension that comes from desire is actually a lot of suffering.
It helps you to see what a bother this is, how it's actually ruining your physical health and your mental health, and so on.
So, perfectly well within your rights to avoid and to limit.
Avoiding is another one.
If something is totally dangerous where you know you just can't control yourself, then you should avoid certain things.
We know dana pahattaba and the other one is sangvara pahattaba.
Anybody want to jump in?
Larry, you're here.
Welcome.
You're back.
Anybody want to say anything to that one?
Yeah, I'm sorry on this part.
I had a neighbor to walk over, so I had to visit with him for a few minutes.
It's okay.
I understand.
Okay.