The Buddha taught Venerable Ananda in the Shurangama Sutra: "Why do I call the mind to be precepted? If the minds of sentient beings in the six paths are not lustful, they will not follow their birth and death. When you practice Samadhi, you are bound to be a slave. If you do not get rid of your lust, you will not be able to get rid of it. Even if you have a lot of wisdom and meditation, if you stop lusting, you will fall into the devil's path. The upper-class demon kings, the middle-class demons, and the lower-class demons also have disciples. Each one claims to have achieved the supreme path. After my extinction, in the Dharma End, there will be many such demonic people, who will flourish in the world and practice greed and sexual immorality. They will be good teachers and cause all sentient beings to fall into the pit of love and view and lose the path to Bodhi. , First cut off the lustful mind, this is the first clear and clear teaching of the Tathagata, the Buddha and the World-Honored One. If one does not practice lustful thoughts, it is like steaming sand and stone, and it will become rice after hundreds of thousands of kalpas. Why, it is not rice. This is because of the sand and stone. Even if you seek wonderful enlightenment through your promiscuous body, it is all caused by promiscuity. You will not be able to escape from the three paths of reincarnation. How can you achieve the realization of promiscuity? Both body and mind are cut off, and there is no cutoff in nature. This is what we can hope for in Buddha Bodhisattva." This passage is the most detailed teaching of the Buddha on lust. I wrote it down in detail in the hope that everyone will pay attention to some practitioners or practitioners in today's society. Do dojos have these problems? Do the instructors of the ashram really understand the issue of "lust"? Is there any dharma that can be overcome? Let’s explore the meaning of this passage. First, when the Buddha talks about cessation of sexual immorality, does he mean righteous sexual immorality or evil sexual immorality? There is a lot of controversy on this point. Many practitioners believe that if lay people continue to have a relationship with husband and wife, they will not achieve success in practice. These people believe that the abstinence from sexual immorality included by the Buddha includes both good and evil sexual intercourse. My personal understanding is that it refers to cutting off sexual immorality. However, because Ananda is a monk, he is supposed to put an end to both good and evil sexual intercourse. As the Buddha said to Ananda in this sutra, he certainly does not particularly emphasize the end of evil and immorality. Secondly, the Buddha said that only by abstaining from sexual intercourse can we have the hope of attaining Bodhi. Does the meaning of abstaining from sexual intercourse refer to the elimination of sexual acts between men and women or between husband and wife? Personally, I don’t think that is the case. What is the true meaning of what the Buddha said at the end of this passage, “The desire for sexual intercourse, body and mind will be eliminated, and there will be no sexual intercourse...”? What I personally understand is that the chance of sexual intercourse is just chance. If there is no chance of sexual intercourse in body and mind, then what can be done to make it possible? I think the most important thing is to eliminate the "obscene karma" from beginningless time. If the obscene karma is not eliminated, it is impossible to "cut off the sexual motivation, body and mind" (impossible). In addition, what is the meaning of "there is no nature at all"? What I understand is that you should not cling to the fact that sexual desire is something that can be broken off. Lust is essentially empty, has no body, and cannot be broken off. As long as you don’t cling to it, if you cling to the fact that lust is real and can be broken off, then there is little hope of attaining Bodhi. To sum up this passage, I personally think that Buddha taught us to view lust as follows: observe lust as a dream without clinging to its physical nature. We must practice and eliminate sexual karma, and we must also abandon evil sexual desires.
The reason why Buddhism or some religions that claim to be free from the world prohibits lust is mainly because the temptation of lust itself is too great and the power to make people "persistent" is too great. Once a person becomes obsessed, Not only are they unable to escape from reincarnation, but they even endanger lives and create bad karma. Many heroes, emperors, generals and prime ministers in ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad, have fallen because of women. As the saying goes, it is difficult for a hero to be a beauty, not to mention ordinary mortals who can escape from lust. You should also watch If you look at the popular songs on the market, nine out of ten of them describe erotic matters, which shows the great influence of erotic matters on people. Therefore, in order for people to escape from life and death, the Buddha had to control precepts and advise people to stay away from the temptation of lust, not to be greedy for lust, and should abstain from sexual desire, but he did not teach to "cut off" desire or abstain from sexual desire. Perhaps abstinence (such as monastics voluntarily do so) is more helpful for some people's practice, but not everyone is like this. Everyone has different causes and wishes, and certain methods (such as abstinence) may not be beneficial to him.
It is certainly good to practice escaping from life and death to get rid of the temptation of lust, but this is not an easy task, especially today when there are so many traps of lust. The reason why people are human is mainly caused by lust and karma. The reason why sentient beings in the three realms appear is ultimately due to the existence of the desire to "survive". Humans and animals in the desire realm are even more persistent and believe that they must reproduce individuals through reproduction in order to "survive". In order to reproduce individuals, "divine consciousness" creates The sexual organs that can make people happy are used to induce sexual intercourse and reproduce individuals. The purpose of many animals' sexual desire is purely for reproduction, but humans engage in sexual desire at any time for "pleasure". Lustful behaviors and desires "infect" each other, and over a long period of time, lustful appearance (the name and form of the sixth consciousness) and pornographic habits ( The seed of karma of the eighth consciousness), thus forming sexual karma, so all living beings will reincarnate in the three realms. Those with severe sexual karma will be reborn in the three evil realms (i.e., animals, hungry ghosts, and hells), while those with lighter karma will be reborn in the human world or heaven (the realm of desire). sky).
The occurrence of physical love is caused by the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland being stimulated to secrete "hormones". These hormones stimulate the sexual organs to produce sexual impulses, and lust will occur. The stimulation that causes the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland to produce hormones is mainly caused by our five senses receiving "obscene scenes" from the outside, such as watching pornographic videos, hearing obscene sounds, etc. The subconscious "sexual karma" (from sexual habits and sexual images) can also stimulate the pituitary gland to produce sexual desire when the mind (brain) acts on it. There are also some causes of lust that seem to have nothing to do with stimulation of the pituitary gland. For example, the sexual impulse caused by sexual erection during meditation seems to be caused by the inability of "qi" to pass smoothly through the sexual organs. Also, it seems that even healthy people who have not had sexual intercourse for a long time will "overflow". People who are weak, hungry, or suffer from certain special diseases will not engage in lustful behavior. These may be purely physical problems.
Lust is produced when the human five senses are stimulated by "sexual situations". The reason is that after these stimulations reach the sixth consciousness, the memory of pornographic pleasures is triggered by the lustful habits and appearances of the past life. The obscene appearance triggers the memory of obscene pleasures, so lustful thoughts arise. So on the surface, physical love is caused by the synergistic effect of the pituitary gland and sexual organs, but in essence, "prostitution" is the most important reason. Another point we must understand is the relationship between sexual desire and the sexual system (including gonads, sexual organs, anterior pituitary gland, etc.) and spiritual consciousness. Human sexual desire is related to the development of the sexual system and has not yet matured. To a certain extent, children seem to have very little sexual desire. As they grow older, their sexual characteristics systems gradually develop and mature, and the phenomenon of sexual desire gradually appears. Very young children do not seem to be infected with "prostitution" (theoretically, maybe a little). The main reason is that they have not yet developed mature organs to use. You must know that the spiritual consciousness of all living beings must have "roots" (organs). ) will have an expressive effect. As far as I know personally, the development and maturation process of the human sexual characteristics system is controlled by spiritual consciousness, not a problem of genes. When a person is born, the spiritual consciousness takes the records in the "gene" (in the chromosomes of the cell) when a person is born. Sexual organs are produced, but only for future use. The user is the consciousness. In order for humans to achieve the dual behaviors of racial reproduction and individual development, sexual organs must exist, but they cannot mature too early to avoid affecting individual development. When the individual matures to a certain level, the sexual organs are almost developed, and only then the spiritual consciousness has the "root" to express lust. The reason why spiritual consciousness expresses sexual desire is due to the greed for sexual pleasure in reincarnation in the three realms since time immemorial, which is also a problem of sexual karma.
The main reason why human body organs have pornographic roots (sexual organs) and why people have sexual desires is "pornographic karma", which is related to the person's autonomous consciousness and the external pornographic environment. ***Together, they cause obscene behavior (three obscene karma of body, speech, and mind).