K: Sex plays an extraordinarily important part in our lives because it is perhaps the only deep, firsthand experience we have. Intellectually and emotionally we conform, imitate, follow, obey. There is pain and strife in all our relationships, except in the act of sex.
K: Thought, as we have said, sustains pleasure by thinking about something that has been pleasurable, cultivating the image, the picture. Thought engenders pleasure. Thinking about the sexual act becomes lust, which is entirely different from the act of sex. What most people are concerned with is the passion of lust. Craving before and after sex is lust. This craving is thought.
So - is act of sex/masturbation - an actual freedom from āpainā?
Whenever we are down (i.e. suffer) in our life - we think about āsexā - and this thinking is called ālustā. In this feeling - we tend to watch porn or search for a partner - and also try to watch or indulge in a new type/category/fetish - and we feel it as ācreativityā.
Is it a real creativity?
Is this craving - which happens for thousands of years (i.e. evolution from animals and from stone age) - brings the real miseries in our world? - (miseries like sexual harassment and seeing other person as a sexual object)
Does,
controlling this lustful feelings, or
diverting this by making an aim/going out for movie,etcā¦/spending time with friends,
is helpful?
So is the essence of the thing here craving as a movement? There can be craving on the part of the animal when hungry for food, or when thirsty for drink, but unless there is an issue with food, or something like alcoholism then the craving ceases on the demand being met. Or is that not actually craving, and craving refers specifically to a thing carried on perpetually via thought. There is the biological imperative of sex obviously for the continuation of the species which is how we all come to be in the first place, or least that is the perception. So the same principle applies here as with observing anything else does it not, so craving as a tree or as a sunset. This is an āeye of the stormā type of thing, the storm is never going to stop, trying to stop it is the storm still, so that only leaves the observing of it?
Of course ācravingā as an essence is a movement. When we were a teenager, we had first time experience of this āsexā and we found an immense pleasure it provides and stored that experience within us and whenever we face a situation that craving arises as thought - which is a movement,time.
Craving means a strong desire. This ācraving for sex/alcohol on basis of individual conditionsā is there always - wakes up in a situation and goes to sleep when it is satisfied - and goes on and on and on like this. Even animals have this strong desire - from which we evolved - as we can see a male lion - to attract a female lion - show itās dominance - becomes the head of the pride (the head is also responsible to protect the pride) and win femaleās attention.
The food,water are needs without which one cannot live. We cannot stop these needs as our body is conditioned to act so.
Yes craving is carried out via thought. So, what makes us to get attached/addicted to sex/porn/alcohol/etcā¦ and crave for it?
Yes - tried many ways to stop it and it didnāt. But why we try to stop it? because we ābelieveā itās something wrong as the society,religion says? and so we fail to actually observe the whole thing.
So, we see this scientific fact that we born because of this - but we donāt watch porn/ have sex for reproduction - and we condition ourselves that - the biological need for reproduction is more equally applicable for psychological craving for sex - Right?
Well there is a range of behaviour in the rest of the animal kingdom. There are rutting seasons and mating seasons, and all year round, there are the swans who are said to mate for life and if one if the partners dies, they never take up with another. Our closest genetic relatives are said to be the Chimpanzees and the smaller Bonobo, and the first are very aggressive and hierarchical and if an infantās mother is killed that can be curtains for the infant, while the Bonobos are held to be highly sociable and use sex as a greeting, and pet and groom one another continually. An infant Bonobo which loses its mother will immediately be taken in by another of the young, single females. So the question of what the natural intelligence of the human animal is with regards to its own proclivities is obscured by the interference of thought.
Craving is in essence a form of amplification, and a thing cut loose from any natural limitation. You might call it unnatural, except nature has it as one of its many possibilities.
Yes craving has appropriated a natural thing, but is a thing in itās own right. And like a crack dealer handing out crack to create a steady stream of new customers it has been endlessly stoked. The priest and the imam seeking power through the control of it, are as the advertiser and the pornographer endlessly exploiting it.
Is not the essence of all here, both on and of this forum, the fact of pleasure, the fact of pleasure seeking and of comfort, suffering, and the pleasure that can be, as much as anything else. And then problem, and then struggle, struggle, struggle, which is, preoccupation, and preoccupation is likeā¦thank you very much, that will do nicely! So the proverbial elephant in the room is, what is the equal and opposite force generating this amount of seeking, evasion, avoidance, preoccupation?
One word answer is āOrderā.
We find in life - something is missing - as we suffer,etcā¦ - and we search for an orderly life - and it becomes a mechanical process of seeking security - having pleasure - then comes pain - then seeking another order - then pleasure - it goes on as such.
Even if we āseeā us - we are sufferings and isolated - we run for an order.
I mean that if craving is seen primarily as thought extending a thing the animal is naturally, then it is similar to the principal of amplification, as in amplifying sound, giving it a greater presence and making it a permanent fixture. But at the same time, this could not be, if it were not a possibility of the brain, which is a thing in nature, and which in our case is that possibility realised. So not inevitable, but not impossible.
So - Letās see this craving deeply. It is present always and grows in a situation - when a new male/female is seen by the opposite gender - and thinks that āi must own him/herā.
So why this craving in form of thought arises? - iām not asking about it is nature or not - but in which situation this craving arises/let loose?
Why we feel that āsex/alcohol/porn/drugsā give immense pleasure?
Yeah - but i mainly concerned about lust - which at many times arises and blocks us to have actual relationship with people.
āThis energy wanting to express itselfā - can you describe about that more?
Funny you should say that. I canāt remember where I read it, but when someone asked K what to do about lustful thoughts and desires, K told him that you have to ābankā that energy. What exactly that meant, he didnāt go on to say. My guess is that he was referring to sublimation, which literally means turning something crude into something sublime.
Another story: A priest in a village was having a problem with a wolf that was eating his sheep. He thought Iāll bring in the wolf and show him that what he was doing was wrong. He brought the wolf into his church and started to preach about the evil that the wolf was doing. The wolf listened to the preaching and came back day after day. One day the priest was going on with his preaching and the wolf was looking out the window of the church at the flock of sheep grazing in the field and as the priest went on and on, the wolf thought āOh get on with it priest, or I shall miss my dinner!ā
Say I see a really beautiful woman or a man and it isnāt enough to just be the observation of that but I am struck by a longing to have someone like that, and I am left with an empty feeling at the fact I do not. That there is no one there for me like that to shower me with their attentions. So there is the feeling of being no one and being nothing without such a one. So might craving relate to feeling empty and an attempt at covering that up, as an equal and opposite reaction?
The greater or more successful the perceived cover, the greater the desire to attain it. But covering up emptiness has nothing to do with the survival of species, so is it a phenomena related solely to an artificial thing such as a centre? If emptiness that requires covering only exists when a centre exists, then might craving serve effectively as that centreās power plant?