The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

13th October, 2022

Question:  How to handle a strong urge for pleasant feelings, for example, pleasant feeling from sexual activities?

I’ve tried to apply asubha but since there was no particular image of a human and it’s just the desire to pleasure myself, it has been quite difficult to do. 

How should I handle this kind of problem?

Than Ajahn:  Well, you should stop that urge by reciting a mantra or keep chanting.

When you start to have this urge, then you should start reciting a mantra, ‘Buddho, Buddho, Buddho’ or you can chant. If you can maintain this, your urge will be suppressed, but it will be suppressed temporarily, not permanently.

You can only suppress it permanently by contemplating on the impermanence nature of this pleasure that the pleasure is just temporary.

This is like an addiction to drugs, alcohol or cigarettes. If you keep doing it, you will never be able to stop it. The only way to stop it is to resist this urge every time when it comes up by reciting a mantra, by making your mind calm. Once your mind becomes calm, then this urge will disappear. And if you resist this urge continuously, eventually, this urge will disappear. It’s like quitting smoking or drinking. 

Every time you have an urge to drink or to smoke, you must not do it. If you feel terrible, then you should use a mantra, use the practice of meditation to calm your mind. Once your mind becomes calm, then your urge will disappear and the bad feeling that arises from it will also disappear.

But you have to know why you have to do this. The reason is because you want to stop this problem permanently, so you must never, never, do what your urge or what your desire asks you to do. If you keep doing what your urge asks you to do, then it will keep coming back for more. The only way for it not to come back is not to oblige to it, but to resist it by doing meditation to calm your mind.

If it’s a problem with an image, i.e. you keep thinking about beautiful images, then you have to use the unpleasant images to counter it. If it has nothing to do with images but with your desire or your craving for that pleasure, then you have to contemplate on the impermanence of that pleasure, and also the dukkha that you will experience every time you have this urge to have it because you will be like a drug addict. 

The only way to overcome your addiction is to resist it and to not do what your desire or your craving wants you to do by meditating, by reciting a mantra until your mind becomes calm. If you keep doing this a few times, then your craving will eventually disappear. Ok?

Layperson:  Thank you.

“Dhamma in English, Mar 15, 2019.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

Latest Dhamma talks on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g