Deflating Lust

This one’s for the “fellas”.

So, let’s face it: we like girls. We spend a lot of time thinking about them, and desiring them. Sometimes that makes us less than gentlemen though in our weaker moments, or it interferes with other things we want to focus on (Buddhist practice among them), but it’s not exactly easy to just shelve those feelings aside. If we tell ourselves to ignore our lust, it just gets worse right. Women are just really attractive and hard to ignore even when it exhausts us mentally or leads us to think of thoughts we’re less than proud of.¹

But back in December, I found some good advice from the Buddha. This comes from a sutra in the Theravadin Pali Canon called the Bharadvaja Sutta (SN 35.127) where the King of Kosambi asks one of the Buddha’s disciples, the Ven. Pindola Bharadvaja about this subject. The king asks how can the Buddha’s disciples, including younger healthy men, can possibly stay celibate amidst all the temptations of life.

Normally, when you look at many religious teachings and traditions, you might expect a sermon about the evils of lust, shame and so on, but the answer is somewhat different:

“Great king, this was said by the Blessed One who knows and sees, worthy and rightly self-awakened: ‘Come now, monks: with regard to women who are old enough to be your mother, establish the attitude you would have toward your mother. With regard to women who are old enough to be your sister, establish the attitude you’d have toward a sister. With regard to women who are young enough to be your daughter, establish the attitude you’d have toward a daughter.’ This is one reason, this is one cause, great king, why young monks — black-haired, endowed with the blessings of youth in the first stage of life — without having played with sensual pleasures nevertheless follow the lifelong chaste life, perfect and pure, and make it last their entire lives.”

Let’s reiterate. Instead of the typical answers regarding shame and evils of lust, the Buddha’s answer is to change how you view women. This is not to view them with revulsion, but rather with a more familial love than erotic one. There’s a lot of truth to these words, since every woman you see is someone’s daughter, or mother or sister. It’s just that in our selfish state of mind, we have a knee-jerk reflex to think only of what we can gain (sex), and this point gets forgotten. The Buddha’s not telling us to feel bad about ourselves, but to apply the “eye of wisdom” to the situation, as I like to call it. It’s also important to avoid feelings of revulsion too, which may happen when one’s trying to abstain from something, but as the Channa Sutta (AN 3.71) of the Pali Canon shows, revulsion is just as problematic as lust. Instead, the goal is to obtain a peaceful, steady, quiet mind, not one agitated by lust or revulsion.

I thought about this for a bit and started applying it myself to hot looking women I’d see out in daily life (even more so in Japan where girls are really cute and fashionable), and I noticed a change in my perception. When I saw a hot girl and thought of her as someone’s daughter or sister, my mind was less agitated and more clear, but without the strain and self-loathing that comes with trying to exert self-control over yourself (even when you don’t really want to). Instead of trying to beat back one’s lust, with a healthy change in perspective, you are simply deflating it. For me, as I tried this little experiment in real life, I simply found my mind just settled back to a more normal state, not the agitated state I get when I am excited to see someone. You can even apply this to your own spouse or girlfriend too. If you see her as someone’s daughter, think of her as an adorable child, you’re less inclined to think unwholesome thoughts and instead more likely to be kind and loving to her. Or if they’re the mother of your children, you can see her that way as well, with all the positive images one has of a mother. It may not work perfectly, even the sutra aludes to this point, but it’s something you gradually cultivate, one day at a time.

Here the key is not so much self-control, which is fickle depending on one’s mood, but rather Right View, which happens to be the first of the Noble Eightfold Path. In his book The Way to Buddhahood Ven. Yin-Shun wrote of the critical importance of Right View:

For those who practice the Buddha Dharma, right views are indispensable, like the rudder of a ship….Those who study Buddhism should not talk eagerly about ending birth and death or attaining enlightenment; they should cultivate right views first. (pg. 51-52)

Good advice for any Buddhist, or any person seeking to break out of one’s own mental habits.

Namu Amida Butsu

¹ And as has been posted before, every thought has an impact however small, even if you are the only one to know it.