260521 A Fool for Sensuality \ \ Thanissaro Bhikkhu \ \ Dhamma Talk

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:04]People sometimes complain about the chant that we have on the 32 parts of the body.

[00:00:09]Why do we have to focus on that? They say.

[00:00:12]Don't we have enough negative images of our own body to begin with?

[00:00:19]The short answer is even though we have negative images of our body, we're still fools for sensuality.

[00:00:27]A brief glance, a subliminal shape, and an advertisement can get us to do all kinds of stupid things.

[00:00:36]That's why we're alive and healthy.

[00:00:39]Can you imagine what it's going to be like when you're sick for a long time and you're dying?

[00:00:44]You've been deprived of pleasures for a long time because your body hurts so much.

[00:00:48]It's so weak.

[00:00:51]And as you're dying, the opportunity for a sensual pleasure comes up.

[00:00:56]A beautiful body, beautiful scene.

[00:01:01]You go for it.

[00:01:03]If you haven't been trained.

[00:01:05]Cuz your mind at that point is especially weak.

[00:01:08]And especially hungry.

[00:01:12]So you got to train it while you're strong.

[00:01:17]Not to fall for these things.

[00:01:25]Have to ask yourself, what is it about the body that attracts you? Where is the lure?

[00:01:32]Which part?

[00:01:35]And is that part connected to what?

[00:01:38]It's connected to all the other organs of the body.

[00:01:47]And the only reason you can see it as attractive is because you cut off all the connections.

[00:01:52]You develop tunnel vision around it.

[00:01:58]So we're asking you to broaden your scope.

[00:02:02]To see that that allure is connected to a lot of things that are very un-alluring.

[00:02:06]And they're all connected together. You can't separate them out.

[00:02:13]It's not like we're badmouthing the body or trying to say untrue things about it. As a John Suttwutt always says, "What about those 32 body parts body? What about that list is untrue?" We have all those things.

[00:02:28]And they are all unclean.

[00:02:32]They're all covered with blood, lymph, whatever else you've got in the body.

[00:02:39]And then there's the smell.

[00:02:42]If you don't bathe the body, you after a while you don't want to be near yourself.

[00:02:51]Years back I happened to go to a health station in Thailand. And I arrived right after somebody giving birth.

[00:02:59]And the stench was all over the place.

[00:03:02]This is how we come.

[00:03:06]And then when it comes to the body, it's even worse.

[00:03:12]So you want to change your knee-jerk reactions to images like this, cuz it's the images that have a huge power over you.

[00:03:20]As I was saying this morning, when you think of the different parts of the body, go down the list.

[00:03:27]Hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, skin, flesh.

[00:03:31]Try to have a feeling in your body for where those parts are.

[00:03:36]But the image is also going to be important, cuz we live by images. When we die, we die by images. We go to new births by images.

[00:03:44]And we're a fool for those images.

[00:03:47]That's what we've got to retrain.

[00:03:54]That's not just the images you can get so that you can have a knee-jerk reaction that sees the ugly side of the body as soon as you notice something that seems attractive.

[00:04:03]You immediately connect it with other unattractive parts.

[00:04:10]That's just the beginning of the analysis, but still for a lot of people it's hard.

[00:04:14]So, work on it.

[00:04:18]On the part of the mind that objects, you ask it, "Well, why do you object?

[00:04:21]What do you want out of this body?

[00:04:23]If you were to die and an image of a body appeared to you, would you want to just go for it because of a glance, because of a certain line of the body, certain shape?

[00:04:39]Would you want to be a fool at that point?

[00:04:42]Well, no.

[00:04:44]So, there's nothing to object about this kind of analysis.

[00:04:49]It can get so that practice you get discussed with your body and then we're not asking you to go that far.

[00:04:54]Which is why the Buddha said when unskillful mind states arise in the course of this analysis, go back to the breath.

[00:05:02]Breathe in a way that's refreshing, breathe in a way that gives pleasure, breathe in a way that gladdens the mind.

[00:05:13]What you want is to be able to take objective view of your fantasies and objective view of the images that come into your mind. Step back from them.

[00:05:23]That's all that's asked.

[00:05:25]Realize that those images are lying to you.

[00:05:30]They're all those tricks that advertisers have putting subliminal shapes in their pictures.

[00:05:38]Come from observing how your mind works.

[00:05:42]So, keep going over and over and over this.

[00:05:49]As Ajahn Fuang had us do when I was practice was to contemplate the body this once a day.

[00:05:56]And so she I didn't image her body and she took it apart into its various parts and then another image of her body appeared right next to that.

[00:06:04]So she took that apart and then even before she'd finished the second one, a third one appeared.

[00:06:08]Then a fourth, a fifth.

[00:06:10]She said it was like fish lined up on a counter ready to ready to fry, ready to grill.

[00:06:16]So she mentioned how what a sense of tedium she felt.

[00:06:22]And Ajahn Fuang said, "Well, yes, we are here to see the tedium of samsara but I don't find for cuz I'm tedium of the practice. The tedium of the practice is much less tedious than I feel having to go through the suffering that comes when you fall for these things."

[00:06:37]So be willing to do it again and again.

[00:06:40]And it becomes quite automatic. You look at somebody attractive and you can see immediately they have their unattractive side as well.

[00:06:48]So when an image comes when there's nobody else around, when an image comes you can immediately as your knee-jerk reaction, look for the unattractive side.

[00:06:59]Cuz that enables you to pull back and see well, what is it that makes you want it to see it as attractive?

[00:07:09]And then there's the fantasies.

[00:07:12]The narratives.

[00:07:15]The idea of being loved by somebody else.

[00:07:21]The idea of you loving someone else.

[00:07:24]How reliable is all that?

[00:07:29]Love is so easy to destroy.

[00:07:32]Sometimes just a word or two.

[00:07:35]Sometimes just an action or two can destroy it.

[00:07:42]Or then maybe then it's just a sense of your identity within the fantasy.

[00:07:47]Your power within the fantasy, your power to create fantasies.

[00:07:52]That also has its allure.

[00:07:55]I think I told you the story about the the time I gave a talk to a group of college kids in Indiana.

[00:08:01]A friend of mine was a professor of comparative religion there and he invited me to talk to the class.

[00:08:10]And after the class, he asked them, "What was it like? What were their impressions of talking to a monk?"

[00:08:15]And one of the women in the class who was a cheerleader said, "Well, I thought monks are subhuman.

[00:08:20]They just didn't have the intelligence to enjoy sensuality."

[00:08:28]There's a certain pride that goes with the ability to generate sensual images.

[00:08:33]It's foolish pride.

[00:08:37]You want to see the foolishness of all this.

[00:08:42]I mean, some people say that the big problem is the sense of I. You go straight for that. Well, no, before you go straight for that, you ask yourself, "What What does that I serve?

[00:08:50]What does your sense of me serve? What does your sense of my power serve?"

[00:08:57]Often times it serves your sensual fantasies.

[00:09:05]And then looking at how unreliable they are.

[00:09:09]So, look at what you're just trying to serve here. Why you would have a sense of I to begin with.

[00:09:14]Comes down to this.

[00:09:18]You know the story of Bahiya, the ascetic who came to see the Buddha.

[00:09:23]The Buddha said, "In the seen is only the seen, and the and the heard is only the heard.

[00:09:28]Practice that way."

[00:09:30]Bahiya immediately saw that the problem was sensual desire, passion.

[00:09:36]Our sense of I is service of our passions.

[00:09:39]Our passions are often so blind, so foolish.

[00:09:46]So, before you tackle the sense of I, tackle this first.

[00:09:51]The problem with sense of this is a fetter that gets resolved before the sense of I am.

[00:10:02]So, work on it.

[00:10:06]See the value of not falling for your fantasies. See the value of not being a fool for sensuality.

[00:10:14]Realize that you're releasing yourself from huge bond, a huge [clears throat] massive delusions.

[00:10:26]And you started by focusing on the this analysis in the body and that enables you to track out where where are the other strands of these delusions that have you so that have you so tied down.

[00:10:38]In the narratives and the fantasies in your role in the fantasies.

[00:10:47]In the crazy desires you have around sensuality.

[00:10:51]When you think of King Pasenadi, he had he had his queens.

[00:10:57]He was deluded enough to want them to love him more than they love themselves.

[00:11:02]And if they had said even if Queen Mallika in that fantasy had said that she loved him more than she loved herself, how could you believe her?

[00:11:12]It's all tangle of lies and uncertainties.

[00:11:17]And yet that's where we want to find our pleasures.

[00:11:25]So, try to see the foolishness of all this.

[00:11:29]It's a huge waste of time.

[00:11:36]And it's a part of the practice that can't be neglected.

[00:11:41]You can't jump over it to do something more sophisticated, more subtle.

[00:11:45]Because a lot of the more subtle and sophisticated things are there in service of this.

[00:11:54]So learn how to take your attraction to sensuality take it apart.

[00:12:03]So you get to the point where you're no longer a fool for sensuality as you have been for so long.