Kamadinava-Katha

Kamadinava-katha, talk on the disadvantages of sensual pleasure

When I was a young teacher of English, one of the lessons that I used to give in order to arouse some kind of interested response in my trapped audience of twenty or thirty adolescent boys, was to get them to consider the difference in meaning between the English words: sensual and sensuous. Sensual means: of the senses, as distinct from the mind ; not intellectual or spiritual; carnal ; worldly; connected with gratification, especially undue gratification of bodily sense; voluptuous; lewd. The word sensuous – means pertaining to the senses (without implication of lasciviousness or grossness): connected with sensible objects: easily affected by the medium of the senses (Chambers 20^th Century Dictionary 1983) . Needless to say, the muddle continued in the minds of some of my young students and when I set the homework task of describing ‘a sensuous experience’ I ended with some rather odd essays which I would not have wanted to show Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools. These two areas of psychological experience are, of course, inextricably linked. It is through all of our senses that we experience carnal feelings and through which we express our love, liking, attachment (and lust).
As we grow older and have more experience, it is possible for us to ‘know’ from our experience of life the subtle distinctions between concepts like sensual and sensuous. So, too, do the truths of Dhamma gradually unfold to us as our meditative experience deepens. The Awakening that the Buddha described does not occur to us like a bolt out of the blue to untrained and unprepared minds but is a gradual unfolding:

‘Just as the ocean has a gradual shelf, a gradual slope, a gradual inclination, with a sudden drop-off only after a long stretch, in the same way this Doctrine and Discipline (dhamma-vinaya) has a gradual training, a gradual performance, a gradual progression, with a penetration to wisdom only after a long stretch.’ (Udana 5.5)

Buddhism, in common with many other religions, has reason to eschew the sensual. Most religions seem to recognise that carnal indulgence, voluptuousness and indulgence of the senses belongs to the worldly and not to the spiritual and that somehow indulgence of one negates the other. In Buddhism, which, for the more advanced meditator, is concerned with entering higher states of consciousness this also extends to include the sensuous. The reasons for this are clear.

In the introduction to his book ‘Thus Have I heard: The Long Discourse of the Buddha’ Wisdom 1987, Maurice Walshe states that in his first sermon (Samyutta Nikaya 56.11) the Buddha taught that there were fundamentally two extremes to be avoided: over-indulgence in sensuality on the one hand, and self torture on the other. Prince Siddhattha Gotama had had experience of both. When living in the royal palace, he had been surrounded by music and beautiful perfumes and courtisans and had every pleasure imaginable. His parents had ensured that he saw nothing ugly or old or dying, to the extent of ensuring that even every dead leaf was swept away from his sight. He married a beautiful Princess (Yasodhara) and they had a son together. Having become discontent with endless worldly-pleasure, he ventured out into the world with his trusty servant Channa, and saw that in the real world people age and become sick and die. He also saw an aesthetic and concluded that the lot of the aesthetic is ultimately happier. He thus abandoned his palaces and riches, his beautiful wife and new-born son and embraced aesthetic practice for six years. Aestheticism, however, did not lead him to Nibbana – this was only achieved with his revelation of the Middle Path.

The basic attitude of the Buddha as a result of his personal experience of sensuous and sensual indulgence followed by the wisdom of Enlightenment is summed up well in verse 186 of the Dhammapada and contains a truth that should be evident to us all:-

Not even if it rained gold coins
Would we have our fill
Of sensual pleasures.
‘Stressful, they give little enjoyment. –
Knowing this, the wise one
Finds no delight
Even in heavenly sensual pleasures.
He is one who delights
In the ending of craving,
A disciple of the Rightly
Self-Awakened One.

In his Enlightenment the Buddha saw the chain of Dependent Origination or Paticca Samuppada. Most importantly for our current discussion topic, he saw that the six senses (Salayatana) are the inevitable consequences of mind and body. Because of the six senses, contact (Phassa) becomes part of the process. Contact leads to feeling (Vedana). Consciousness, mind and matter, the six senses, contact and feeling are the effects of past actions and are the passive side of our life. Dependent on feeling, craving (Tanha) arises. Craving results in grasping (Upadana). Grasping is the cause of khamma (Bhava) which in its turn, conditions future birth (Jati). Birth is the inevitable cause of old age and death (Jara-marana) and so the cycle goes round and round. It is Feeling (Vedana), the second of the 5 aggregates, that is important for our discussion of sensual pleasure. For the link between Vedena and pleasure leads us to easily want to believe that what we are experiencing is ‘real’. If we act without mindfulness, gratification of pleasurable feelings can lead us to formulate a view of the world which we may not want to give up very easily. There are 3 views of the world that we might fall into which will trap us into the world of samsara:-
1. Kama-tanha – craving for sensual pleasure
2. Bhava-tanha – craving for existence
3. Vibhava-tanha – craving for non-existence (nihilism).
If we fall into one of these traps, we will continue in our behaviour and ignore the reality that the Lord Buddha was able to see by standing outside of conditionality and looking dispassionately at existence.

The highest goal then in the Buddha’s doctrine, is that of unshakeable deliverance of the mind: the freeing of the mind from all limitations, fetters and bonds that tie us to the Wheel of Suffering, to the Circle of Rebirth. It involves cleansing the mind of all defilements that mar its purity; the removal of all obstacles that bar the mind’s progress from the mundane (lokiya) to the the supramundane consciousness (lokuttara-citta), which we also call Arahatship.

There are, of course, many obstacles which block the road to spiritual progress, but the Buddhist scriptures often talk about five in particular and these are known as the nivarana or hindrances. They are:-
1. Sensual desire (kamacchanda)
2. Ill-will (byapada)
3. Sloth and torpor (thina-middha)
4. Restlessness and remorse (uddhacca-kukkucca)
5. Sceptical doubt (vicikiccha).

Sensual desire is the number one hindrance. It hinders the mind because if envelops the mind and obstructs its development. According to Buddhist teachings, spiritual development is twofold: through:-
1. Tranquility (samatha-bhavana)
2. Insight (vipassana-bhavana).
Tranquility is gained by complete concentration of the mind during meditative absorptions (jhana). To achieve these absorptions, the overcoming of the 5 hindrances (at least temporarily) is a preliminary condition.
In the Anuguttara Nikaya 5:51 it is stated that ‘Sensual desire is an impediment and hindrance, an overgrowth of the mind that stultifies insight.’

In his first sermon after his enlightenment, the ‘Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta’ the Buddha declared that:

This enjoyment of sensual pleasure is inferior,
The practice of villagers, the practice of worldlings
It is the practice of unenlightened ones
It is unbeneficial

By this, Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw in his book Knowing and Seeing WAVE 1999 ) p. 176) tells us, the Buddha is stating that the enjoyment of sensual pleasures is not the practice of enlightened ones. Sensual pleasures are unbeneficial because although they provide mundane benefit such as human happiness, deva happiness and brahma happiness, they do not provide the supramundane benefit that is Nibbana happiness – which can only be enjoyed by Path and Fruition Knowledge. For this reason the Buddha declares in his first sermon that anyone who enjoys sensual pleasures is a worldling. This does not, of course, deny the fact that when Buddha was living in the palace with Princess Yasodhara he too at that time was also a worldling.

We are urged by the Buddha not to gnaw on the bone of sensuality like a starving dog trying to find sustenance, because ultimately sensuality is like a chain of dried bones which just causes us much stress, much despair and has great drawbacks. Majjihima Nikaya 54.

In the Majjihima Nikaya he describes where the allure of sensuality springs from and speaks of the five strings of sensuality:
1. Forms cognizable via the eye
2. sounds via the ear
3. aromas via the nose
4. flavours via the tongue
5. tactile sensations via the body.

He then goes on to describe the drawbacks of sensuality:
‘There is the case where, on account of the occupation by which a clansman makes a living – whether checking or accounting or calculating or plowing or trading or cattle tending or archery or as a king’s man, or whatever the occupation may be – he faces cold; he faces heat; being harassed by mosquitoes, flies, wind, sun, and creeping things; dying from hunger and thirst.’

All these factors he says result in stress and ‘this mass of stress visible here and now, has sensuality for its reason, sensuality for its source, sensuality for its cause, the reason being simply sensuality.’

If the clansman earns no money while working and striving and making effort, ‘he sorrows, grieves and laments, beats his breats, becomes distraught’. He despairs: ‘My work is in vain, my efforts are fruitless!’ The visible stress visible in the here and now has sensuality for its reason.

On the other hand, if the clansman succeeds in making money, he still experiences the pain and distress of having to protect his position: ‘ How shall neither kings nor thieves make off with my property, nor fire burn it, nor water sweep it away nor hateful heirs make off with it? And even if he guards his property, kings and thieves make off with it, or water sweeps it away or hateful heirs make off with it. Then he sorrows, grieves and laments, beats his breast, becomes distraught: ‘What was mine is no more!’ This too the Buddha describe as a drawback of sensuality. The very attachment that he has to the property causes him distress.

The Buddha continues this logical sequence or chain of events and points out that sensuality is the reason that ‘kings quarrel with kings, nobles with nobles, priests with priests, householders with householders, mother with child, child with mother, father with child child with father, brother with brother, sister with sister, brother with sister, sister with brother, friend with friend. And then in their quarrels, brawls, and disputes, they attack one another with fists or with clods or with sticks or with knives, so that they incur death or deadly pain.’

He takes this argument from the personal and domestic situation and points out that ultimately this chain of events is also the reason why there are wars and national conflicts:
‘Furthermore, it is with sensuality for the reason, sensuality for the source. . . that (men), taking swords and shields and buckling on bows and quivers, charge slippery bastions while arrows and spears are flying and swords are flashing; and there they are splashed with boiling cow dung and crushed under heavy weights, and their heads are cut off by swords, so that they incur death or deadly pain. Now this drawback too in the case of sensuality, this mass of stress visible here and now, has sensuality for its reason, sensuality for its source, sensuality for its cause, the reason being simply sensuality’

The Buddha concludes that emancipation from sensuality comes only from what is subduing of passion and desire, the abandoning of passion and desire for sensuality.

In conclusion then, we can see that what we take to be a benign and harmless aspect of the human psyche with roots in human biology actually works against the acquisition of Wisdom in the spiritual life. ‘Sensual desire’ gives rise to feelings of craving and attachment which ultimately leads to rivalries that are the cause of disputes and divisions between family members, politicians, state leaders, nations and so on. At root it is sensual desire that is the root cause of war – which must surely be its polar opposite.



READING LIST:


WALSHE M. (1987) Thus Have I heard: The Long Discourse of the Buddha Wisdom Publications

SAYADAW TAWYA (1999) Knowing and Seeing WAVE 1999 p.176

KIRKPATRICK E M Eds. (1983) Chambers 20^th Century Dictionary Chambers

Article: Drawbacks adinava http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/adinava/index.ht

Article: NYANAPONIKA THERA The Five Mental Hindrances and Their Conquest: Selected Texts from the Pali Canon and the Commentaries (Source: The wheel Publication No 26 (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1993)
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyaponika/wheel026.ht

Article: Narada Mahathera Buddhism in a Nutshell Transcribed from the print edition in 1995 by Bradford GRIFFITI under the auspices of the DhammaNet Dharma Book Transcription Project, Copyright 1982 Buddhist Publications
http://www.accesstoinsight.org

Cited Pali Scriptures
Dhammapada
Majjihima Nikaya 54.
Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta