The teachings of Ajahn Suchart
10 October 2023
“Antidote for sexual desire and anger.”
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Question: What is the antidote for sexual desire and anger?
Than Ajahn: The antidote for sexual desire is the perception of the body as not being good looking. Look at the negative side of the body. Look at the part that is not attractive. We call this ‘asubha contemplation.’
The body can be perceived in many forms. When one is alive, the body is good looking. But when one dies, the body doesn’t look good anymore. So, every time when you have sexual desire, if you can think about the body turning into a corpse, then you’ll say, ‘The body is not attractive.’ Or if you can, you imagine the parts under the skin. Under the skin, there are so many parts of the body that you haven’t seen or you don’t see, such as the skeleton.
When you look at someone’s face, think of what’s under the face, under the skin. You’ll see the skull, right? You have to look at the unattractive part of the body. Beside the skull, there are organs inside the body: the heart, lungs, intestines, liver, kidneys, and all the stuff that are not desirable, like the feces which you excrete, etc. These are the things that you have to contemplate. This contemplation is hard to do with the mind that is not calm.
When your mind is not calm, your mind is being influenced by your sexual desire. And your sexual desire will only want to look at the attractive parts of the body. So, before you can contemplate on asubha, usually you have to have a certain level of calm. That’s why you need samatha bhāvanā before you can go into vipassanā bhāvanā. The contemplation on asubha is the vipassanā level. It is used to get rid of the sexual sexual desire.
So, to be really effective with vipassanā, you first need to have samatha. If you don’t have samatha, your mind will not want to contemplate on the asubha. And when you have sexual desire, you have no antidote for it because the asubha images are not in your mind. When you keep contemplating on asubha, on the unattractive part of the body, it’s like you are memorizing it. You will commit this asubha image in your mind. So, any time when you have sexual desire, you can bring these images upfront. When the image of the unattractive parts of the body appear, your sexual desire will dissolve right away. This is the antidote for sexual desire.
For anger, there are different methods. The temporary method is to forgive. If someone says something or do something wrong, just forgive him or her. Don’t get angry at him or her. Things have already happened.
You cannot stop him or her from doing or saying the things that he or she had done or said. When you forgive him or her, your anger will disappear. However, this will not solve the problem. Next time, if someone says the same thing or do the same thing again, you get angry again.
If you want to get rid of the anger permanently, you have to get rid the root cause of anger. The root cause of your anger comes from your desire or your craving. When you have desire for someone to do something for you, if he or she doesn’t do it, you’ll get angry. But if you don’t have any desire for someone to do something for you, you won’t get angry.
Similarly, if you have desire for someone to behave in a certain way, when he or she doesn’t behave as what you want him or her to behave, you’ll get angry. So, you have to cut your desire towards other people and things. Then, you will not get angry because you don’t expect anything from anyone. Does it make sense to you?
Layperson: It makes sense but it’s hard work.
Youtube: “Dhamma in English, Nov 9, 2018.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
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