Curing Lust (satire)

Imagine the flesh of someone you lust rotting away, turning into a rotting corpse, and decaying until all that's left is a skeleton of a human being.

Bring this to mind every time you lust for that person until you do not even think of the object of your desire, lest you conjure of that horrible vision of a person dying and rotting, and becoming bone.

I'm pretty sure that such an extreme meditation practice would ruin your libido for good. Indeed, it is a meditation practice for Buddhist monks and nuns. They who faithfully practice this meditation never experience sexual misconduct within a Buddhist monastery.

In a worst case scenario, this practice might be the Buddhist cure for sex addiction, except Westerners mistake meditation practice for religion & mdash; as opposed to Christianity, where a sinner may be shamed and made to feel guilty for natural sexual behavior, which purportedly causes psychological hang-ups and manufactures from one of out of every twenty-five church members a sociopath who might work his way up in the religious hierarchy.

A priest becomes a sociopath when he breaks his celibacy vows, and lies to his bishop. A bishop becomes a sociopath when he turns church bingo into a multimillion-dollar business. A Pope becomes a sociopath when he hides being a soldier in a war in his youth.

However, being gay does not stop a man from becoming a priest. It might cause him to fight for the rights of all living beings on this earth. It all depends on the man.

Perhaps this meditation could be modified for drug addiction: just imagine the worst-case scenario where you take your drugs in a homeless shelter and are prey to black boys speaking Haitian Creole.

Sure, like that's going to work.

If you believe in the fallacy that "all sociopaths are evil" when the truth is, only unsuccessful sociopaths are deemed evil by Western society when they get caught. Once caught, these people might be thrown under the bus by a few mainstream media journalists who promote a moral panic about sociopaths under the guise of responsible journalism.

Sometimes, karma is a bitch when you let lust control your life, be it for sex, drugs, and even money. Most of the time, we think the libido is normal and natural, and that repressive means of controlling it is tantamount to the abuse of a person's individual human rights.

It is not psychological abuse for Buddhist monks and nuns to practice this kind of meditation, because they do so willingly. Yet it would be abuse if such meditation practices were mandatory for unprepared people, even in a clinical setting.

This is why no Buddhist organization endorses such a practice, and rely only on the Five Precepts of the Buddhist code of ethics (abstain from killing, abstain from theft, avoid sexual misconduct, abstain from false speech, and abstain from consuming alcohol and drugs).

For this meditation practice is not for laypeople, and could potentially harm any Buddhist who practices it outside of a monastery. I do not endorse its practice, but mentioned it here to show how preposterous it would be to serve as the cure for lust.

It is safer for the Buddhist practitioner to practice the Five Precepts than to become a monk or nun in a Buddhist monastery. Indeed, it is harmless, provided the practitioner keep all the precepts and practice them diligently while repenting from minor infractions (lying, gossipping, and consuming alcohol and drugs).

Perhaps this explains the practice of Pure Land Buddhist practitioners who chant the Buddha's name (Nianfo or Nembutsu) to burn off the evil karma of past wrongful actions. In this way do they purify their mind. For this is a path of easy practice that helps them achieve peace of mind.

In my opinion, these diverse Buddhist practices of chanting and meditation are examples of sexual sublimation, and positive expressions of libido.

YMMV

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References:

Five Precepts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Precepts

Buddha Remembrance As Easy As Meditation

Buddha remembrance consists of Buddha recitation which is when the Buddhist laypeople gather together to chant the name of the Buddha.

If they are devoted to the Lotus Sutra as in the lay Buddhist sect of Soka Gakai then they chant "Namu myoho rengé kyo."

If they are of the Jodo Shinshu sect then they chant the Nembutsu ("Namu Amida Butsu").

By chanting the Buddha's name the devotees become mindful of the Buddha.

Thus is Buddha recitation Buddha remembrance.

It is said that Buddhist chanting is the easy path to enlightenment for all sentient beings.

For all sentient beings are destined to become bodhisattvas since such sincere devotion shown by chanting the Buddha's name is a fee definite sign that the Buddha is calling through his devotees.

Small wonder that the Nembutsu is known to the devout Shin Buddhist as the Name-that-calls.

As well,  Buddha recitation is called the easy path in contrast to the hard path of Zen mediation.

Thus are there two paths to Enlightenment in Mahayana Buddhism.

Yuzu / 融通

When this one chants the Nembutsu
it benefits the world
When all chant,
it benefits this one.

これは念仏を詠唱するとき
それは、世界に利益をもたらす
ときに、すべての聖歌、
それはこの1つをメリット。

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Yuzu Buddhism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuzu_Nembutsu

Yuzu Nembutsu (融通念仏宗 Yūzū-nenbutsu-shū?) is a school of Pure Land Buddhism that focuses on the ritual recitation of the Nembutsu (or Nianfo), the name of the Amitabha Buddha.

Followers believe this recitation benefits not just the speaker, but the entire world as well. The sect began in the twelfth century when a monk named Ryōnin wrote commentary on rituals and hymns in practice at the time and founded the school.

The distinction of this Pure Land sect lies in its emphasis on the nature of interconnectedness amongst phenomena. The recitation of the nembutsu was not merely an individual quest for salvation in the Pure Land. A practitioner's chants of nembutsu benefitted everybody else and everybody else's chants of nembutsu benefitted the solo practitioner.