It’s true from a certain perspective and context, but that perspective and context has its own issues to consider, and it’s very easy to misinterpret the meaning.
I think you might be making the mistake of striving towards your idea of what some of these concepts mean despite being resistant to your own misinterpretations rather than simply getting in touch with your true nature with the help of exercises and a supportive community.
What’s your real goal here? Buddhism is at least partly about non attachment and state of mind. You’re not going to understand it through obsessing thinking and research. That’s like killing for harmony.
It’s not really about conquering desire in the prohibitive way a lay person thinks of. It’s more like, achieving a integrated state of mind in which desire and non desire are in a super, undifferentiated state. Think of it like an element at the temperature and pressure of its triple point, at which it is liquid, solid, and gas simultaneously.
Except that’s not what this is, it’s not about integration but obliteration which in this case means that what you think to be real is not. In this case it’s that sexuality is based on the attraction to a false creation of our minds that doesn’t exist “out there”. There is no integration it’s elimination through revealing what never was.
It’s not about what’s the right fit but what is true, and in this sense I can’t really argue with what they say because on some level I know it to be true even though I don’t like it or want it to be. Comics don’t work because I can see right through them, not much does really because it’s based on an illusion or rooted in a lie. Buddhism in a sense ruined a lot of things for me and I can’t see them the same again.
Philosophy is inherently subjective. Any one philosophy is a way to look at the world. It’s like a game theory strategy “tit-for-tat” versus “optimistic” versus X, some work better for more people in more situations but other strategies will continue to thrive in other spaces and will generally survive and propagate through from generation to generation. There isn’t a one true answer.
So putting the philosophy aside, it is demonstrably true that some people have figured out how to do things like consciously control the speed of their heart or raise their body temperature to resist cold. It is probably true that there is some person in the world who could successfully develop his mind to be able to resist sleep for an insane amount of time and resist sexual desires forever. Given that the cases I know of, of people achieving impressive feats of self-control, did practice meditation I would say that it’s probably the right path to take if that’s where you want to get.
But, it should be clearly pointed out that nearly all people fail to accomplish tasks like controlling their body temperature and heart rate. It is likely that the ones who succeed are bringing something to the table genetically or otherwise that allows them to succeed while everyone else fails. That could be something as simple as innate supreme patience or that the instinctual part of their brain is less easily triggered to take over operations from the front part of the brain due to a sightly different brain structure. I could not say.
Ultimately, we know that a whole lot of people who have sought to maintain chastity failed and that it drove a number of them into a sufficient craziness to do horrible and inexcusable things. Plausibly, that didn’t happen on the Buddhist side of things in chastity land, but I would not bank on it.
If you have a concern about your sexual desires, I would suggest that there are probably better strategies for dealing with it than hoping that you’ll prove to be the Win Hof of sexual appetite control.
On the topic of Buddhism itself, I would call it a philosophy of learning to tough it out and suck it up. If you can train yourself to believe that everything is illusory, then you’re extra resistant to starvation and ill-abuse by the ruling classes and so on. You might make a good soldier because you can more easily be trained to accept the possibility of death, and so charge in to battle without hesitation.
Buddhism is a great philosophy for a repressive nation to popularize among the lay people.
Whether it is useful to teach yourself as a world view, outside of that context, possibly. But I would personally want to throw some anarchism and selfishness into the mix.
I think it’s the Lacota who believe that the ideal way to live life is that if you can see like an Eagle then you need to learn to see like a Mole, but make sure that you don’t lose your ability to also see like an Eagle. Different things are needed for different times and situations and it’s having access to all of the tools and approaches that there are in the world that you get to where you want to go.
But, my strategy is to be a generalist. As with everything, that has its pros and cons.
Women are a false construct.
Men are a false construct.
Sleep and hunger are false constructs.
Reality is a false construct.
Self is a false construct.
Buddhism is a false construct.
It’s false constructs all the way down.
There are men in the world who will say that they couldn’t possibly refrain from spitting, because of the build-up of saliva in their mouth. Universally, these men are in lower-wage jobs. It’s unlikely that mass saliva production would somehow lead a person to be unable to find a higher paying job. More likely, it’s simply a cultural thing.
Similarly, we see in history people saying that it would be impossible for their soldiers to not rape the women of the locations they conquer; it’s an innate aspect of manhood that cannot be turned off. Modern soldiers, somehow, do refrain from raping women. The people in history were, objectively, wrong.
There is a lot to be said for culture and self-control.
There are almost certainly limits. But if you start drooling and humping the table when a woman with big boobs walks by and the other men don’t, that’s probably a problem with you and your view of the world, it’s not something completely uncontrollable.
I’m wondering–do you have a sense of humor? This is a serious question, and not meant as an insult–there are people, especially ones “on the spectrum” who honestly do not get jokes. I ask because I have noticed multiple times in your threads where someone has made a jokey statment and you answer it very seriously, as if you didn’t even notice that it was supposed to be humorous.
It would explain a lot about your attitude about life, the universe, and everything. Do you derive pleasure from any form of fiction or from anything at all? Have you ever?
