[Buddha-l] Re: What are the "joys of living"?

[Mike Austin]

In message <119576618.20060626003646 at gmail.com>, Vicente Gonzalez 
<vicen.bcn at gmail.com> writes

>Yes. I think lust and sex are useful because they lead to
>disenchantment. I think that everybody should taste the pleasures
>of this world before assuming any strict moral schema.

It would be pleasurable to jump off a cliff,  but quite unpleasurable to 
hit the ground.  If one can know the results of the actions, there is no 
benefit from performing those actions.  If one has found an act of folly 
to be useful, then it has already served its purpose.  One no longer has 
a use for it. One abandons it.  Rather than considering this as a 'moral 
schema',  one should think of it as following cause and effect in a such 
a way that it causes no regret.


>Vinaya rules are only suitable for monks.

I do not think anyone was suggesting that lay people force themselves to 
adopt vinaya rules - or any code of practice that one cannot maintain. I 
think it would be wise for lay people to appreciate the purpose of them. 
Eventually, they may wish to adopt them.


>No lay person can expect to be disenchanted of sex by following Vinaya
>monks rules. It is a bizarre idea. This only increase the impulse to
>get more of these forbidden things.

The results of some actions can be appreciated without having to perform 
them and the results of some actions we have to find out. Then there are 
some actions where the experience of a lesser, similar, action can cause 
one to refrain from them - thus a mixture of reason and experience.


>To get disenchantment, we should observe the Siddharta life. In this
>way, everybody should taste the pleasure of the world to understand
>impermanence of worldly happiness. It is what Gautama life show to us.

What Gautama showed us and what Buddha showed us are quite different. If 
a doctor shows us an illness and the cure for that illness, it is not an 
invite for us to prolong that illness worse but to take the cure for it.


>Philosophy against hormones it's a lost battle from the beginning.
>On the contrary, if one copulate as a rabbit many days, after short
>time he will see sex as something empty, even nasty. He will be
>disenchanted of sex.

The hormones never become disenchanted. I have never seen a disenchanted 
rabbit. Some people are like rabbits.


>We can read in Majjhima Nikaya that any person developing awareness
>meditation with a solid intention, he can realize the truth in the
>next 15 days.
>
>If instead this solid intention, a person is engaged in meditation
>flooded with false ideas about the effects of his own good moral
>actions, it will be a lost of time.

What is this 'false idea'? Is it in conflict with cause and effect?


>However, a person can dance salsa until the morning and having a lot
>of sex until she become disenchanted. If next day this person is
>sincerely engaged in meditation with a solid and clear mind, she can
>reach samadhi and realizing emptiness before two weeks.

Then are you saying that such a person does it once, or many times? And 
how does this disenchantment arise? If what you say is true, then every 
being who practices thus will achieve disenchantment. Is this something 
you have observed, because I certainly have not.


>In short, Nirvana is not an effect of previous causes.

Nirvana is realised after the removal of wrong causes.

-- 
Metta
Mike Austin