Ep161: Natural Meditation - Beth Upton 2 

Thank you! I didn't know what she meant. Just purchased the book.

The great thing is that every interview is subtitled. Otherwise I'd be lost, although Beth has the best British pronunciation, which I used to get used to by secretly listening to the BBC when we still had communism here.

she needs a better mic. or she should speak louder (closer to the mic). it‘s really hard to follow and understand.

Sound seems perfect to me. Maybe just my ears .

​@@Gongopingo same. Not any issue here.

One can be right under the law and wrong in Dhamma too. My wife and I changed our law practice significantly, largely in response to stress, and we do no litigation any more. We only help clients plan for their own aging and death, and we feel like we're doing those clients and their families a real service. It feels like a more skillful path toward "right livelihood." Litigation felt to me like I was involved in causing suffering for the litigants and even for my clients, because the cost of litigation has become excessive, and so have the stakes. It felt like we were dealing with hate-filled people every day.

​@@tedpreston4155good choice, good karma. happy for you!

Yeah, skillful restraint can feel much better and have wonderful long term happiness by comparison. Am in a relationship though haha so not for me, yet.

Great simile! Are you thinking of Majjhima Nikaya 75?

@@JordanLewinVideos sorry, i really don't know from where it is . i've heard this many times in dhamma sermons (in Sri lanka dhamma sermons are commonly heard on tv/radio)

The cocktail of sensation and feeling arising from sex do not have to blur the mind. Healthy relationships, sexual and otherwise, do not necessarily create attachments (of the suffering-inducing kind). If they do, you can bring awareness to them and untangle just like any attachment. Sex in our modern age is more complex a relational dance than other types and can easily trigger trauma, attachment wounds (in the western psychology sense, not upadana) and deleterious coping mechanisms. It is not a predestined edict of faith, however.

It's called old age. Welcome to the club.

@@mispanludensprinck5652, I'm very far from old age. I've been practicing meditation since I was 9 years old. The early 40's, well, it's the age that women are at their sexual prime ;-) I think a lot of younger men in their twenties these days had clued into this. I'm no where close to menopause LOL

@@DorKonforty If I had known that sex would drop off at some point, I wouldn't have the motivation to practice. I liked sex, loved it, matter a fact and had a wonderful and healthy sexual relationship with my long-term partner. We explored everything from tantric to swinging and kink. We are both meditators, open-minded and curious and had a big appetite. I'm glad my teacher just told me for years to keep going and don't mind the issue of sex, just keep having it. Now it has dropped off, I don't miss it at all. Popular Western Buddhism is one of consumerism and self-serving; everyone wants to pick and choose whatever fits their desires, not what the Buddha taught. Sex sells, well, just ignore the Buddha's teachings about it for mass consumption. I'm going to use my teacher's phrase: "Don't worry, just keep practicing; you'll find out." If you have access to a university library and neuropsychology research on sex, you can do your own research. Researchers would disagree with you. Sex blurs perception (often for a long time) to create a powerful attachment. I'm in psychology graduate school. See if your partner dies or leaves you. If you're not suffering, let me know. I'll come to be your student and study your secret.

​@@moonmissy I, too, have credentials. :) I started on this path thinking my sex drive would die off. I was surprised when it became a tool for further deepening in realization. If the sex drive drops off "naturally", there's no reason to care what the buddha said. If, however, people tend to self-hypnotize to suppress their emotions, drives, and basic humanity based on religion - buddhist or otherwise - then these cannot be said to drop off "naturally". Yes, sex creates attachment. Of the good, mammalian, relationship-forging kind. Not the buddhist, suffering-inducing, craving fueled kind. If my partner dies, I will grieve. I am a human. Emotions are inevitable. Suffering is optional. Be a Buddha! Not a buddhist.

Hey Dor - I’m curious how you’ve arrived at your view that removing sexual drive is “self-suppression and moral flagellation”? I can only see how one would come to that view, while holding the perspective of a puthujjana, or practicing/ practiced toward a different goal. You’re using concepts from early Buddhism, yet talking about renunciative paths in general… you also say “this path” toward freedom… but it seems to me that you are saying something that directly contradicts the path and goal of early buddhism. Help me understand, friend?

​@@_sitting_duck_ Hey Sitting Duck! If you think you're "removing a drive", you are by definition "self-suppressing". No drive is ever "removed"; a drive can be used rarely if the situation never calls for it (but still be there), it can be sublimated into other behaviors (which is a form of suppression), or it can be outright suppressed. It can never be "removed", unless perhaps a lobotomy is involved. I don't care about "early buddhism". I care about freedom and the path for attaining it. I hope that makes sense. 🙏

Most of the problem with sexual desire is all the fantasizing we do around it. It affects people's self-esteem, it the most powerful stimuli that most of us experience, it shapes so much how we see the world around us. I have the wear the right clothing, I have to go out to venues, I have to learn to socialize, I have to do the seduction and dating part, then there is all the lying, the manipulation, the games people play on us. Most people don't have a healthy relationship with sex, it's the epitome of that constant cycle of seeking. The biggest inequality isn't even economical, it is sexual. Then, people confuse sexual attraction with intimacy and so on. Then you have politics involved, then you have gender politics, then you got children involved, teen pregnancy, unwanted pregnancies. We definitely don't have this figured out as a society. The dhamma offers some refugee from the world, a place I can rest my mind from feeling depressed from all kinds of ideology around getting relationships, the sex, the porn, the appealing to the female and male gaze throughout media and on the internet. The constant distraction, the energy draining it causes, it keeps us away from clear thinking. Oh but yes, I do have hope I'll find a good relationship and get the deep connection with someone. However, if I'm incapable of shutting off that desire and letting it overtake me, I might never get such a relationship because my mind could become some enwrapped and trained for decades on imagery online, perhaps terrible hookups if I'm ""lucky"", and prostitution if I fall into a really deep sad and deplorable well. But it is what it is, there are different effects coming from that desire, it's an extremely powerful force that needs to be handled skillfully. Some say it's better in young age for a guy to get to experience some of that, so that in his latter years we would have burned through that and felt and seen what getting that sex and relationship is like, but also the gaining of material wealth and so on, and that it might help with practice and renunciation and so on. But that's not the dominant buddhist narrative at all, and it definitely has its drawbacks. Then paradoxically, maybe everyone thinks like that, "if I just get a relationship" and there arises so much mental suffering. I don't know, but I think there might be a good middle-way for me in that regard, but I'd rather be biased right now towards not chasing it than the other way around, because I'm poor, I'm not super attractive in a general sense, I'm a nerd that still needs to learn how to socialize and do approaches. So, I need to keep it together and focus on building an income source. And even then, once I'm in a relationship, there are all of the dynamics of problems surrounding money. And then, there is also the idea of staying faithful or one ending up deciding on having some type of open relationship of some kind. There would be the extremely attachments arising from the sexual act, increasing attachments to the person, increasing the emotional "heat" we feel, to the good and to the bad. Then there are marriage laws, and let's not mention when children are born. It can either destroy or make someone's life more joyful. And everyone that marries or gets in a relationship or a hookup believes they are getting a good deal in the moment. So, it's neither all bad, if it were so, we wouldn't do it. There is always good elements, that's what makes it dangerous of course. That's the core of buddhism, essentially. Like how Jordan Peterson said once, "The question about cocaine [or drugs of abuse] is not why people use, because it's so god damn powerful it goes right into the right areas of your brain. What we should be asking is, why isn't EVERYONE using it ALL THE TIME?" Every person is different, and we obviously shouldn't just turn a blind eye to it and "repress", but understand what it is. Bring awareness to it, bring awareness to what it makes us do. What things we can drop, how can we simplify it? Do I need to drink alcohol so socialize? Of course I don't. Do I have to lie to get sex? Of course not. Do I have to have multiple partners and what does it make me feel like, can people be open about it and not lie on each other's back and lead someone to suicide? Things can get really complicated and feelings can become so hard to process, in Osho's cult, they used orgies and discouraged as much as possible couples forming and bonding, that kind of depersonalized sex. In Brave New World it is the same thing. So it definitely has its uses in bonding people, destroying them, or leading them to some sort of limbo life filled up by online imagery, or whatever else.

1981-83, I forget precisely.

@@neilstegall2090 1982

Yes! You'll probably enjoy talks by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo too! www.youtube.com/@jtenzinpalmo/videos

where did she mention any thought of separation? What i got from that discussion was choosing to focus on what, in one's experience, actually feels best in the long run

​@@looklikemyles I got that from the discussion, too, and I’m making a comment on the ideology implicit in it. The very ideology you summed up so well: “…choosing to focus on what, in one’s experience, actually feels best in the long run”.

Yeah idk I guess there's something I'm just not understanding about your comment or the implicit logic you're drawing from it, or what's so important to you about eating McDonald's. I feel like e.g. the way she describes the 32 parts of the body meditation is relevant here, I recall she says something to the effect that we're not trying to create more aversion or disgust for the body, just seeing it the way it is

Are you trying to say that she presents a dualistic viewpoint? Are you saying that because we are all one, there is no utility in having preferences or discernment about what we choose to focus on?

huh?

huh? x2

to restore balance in the universe, I'm going to log in to pornhub and comment on actors' skillful delivery of teachings

@@looklikemyles What would it say about you that you started thinking about pornography so quickly? Are you gonna sue me for violating the no-toxic masculinity clause? Will there be litigation? You're definitely American, aren't you?

@@looklikemyles bro 😂😂😂