Lust the last stop in Zen

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You must have heard the sexual escapades at many monasteries, churches, yogashram, temples, gurus, and more. You would think that spiritual process which in most cases refrains from all desires including lust of sex. In fact many call all desires lust and are the first post to control no matter which path you follow. Yet it defies us.

I believe the reason is the same as for any habit. And that is repeated action programs our brain to want it more even if it is unsuitable or even incapable for the body. It is no longer a body need like nutrition, hydration and calories but an entirely mental program running the show. 

To make the experience even more pleasurable, the mind is able to enhance the qualities of the object desired by adding quite unrealistic filters. A good example may be a well done steak on your dinner plate. You know you are about to eat a slightly branded piece of and animal which on the sidewalk or in a crematorium will disgust you. The mind filters such thoughts completely out of your awareness and replaces it with the succulent juices that you will taste and chase it down with a glass of Merlot. A skinless piece of chicken on the counter is gross but quite similar to sexual fantasies. You can call them perverts and forget they exist until they show up at your zendo, for instance. It has happened.

Can meditation help? Obviously not in 100% of the cases but then there are thousands if not millions who have used meditation to complete freedom from desires and lust. How do they do it? They look at all lust as a play of the mind whose master is ego, still hungry for pleasures of the mind long after the body needs them no more.


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