Overcoming the Sexual Urge
a summarized transcription
by Ajahn Nyanamoli Thero
Q:
Venerable Sir, I have been following the practice of “No Fap”, which involves voluntary refraining from pornography and masturbation. However, this path has brought me to seek your guidance, because I have grown wary of mere abstinence. My goal is to find true liberation from the internal sexual pressure. Despite experiencing increased vitality through the NoFap practice, I still feel the weight of this pressure within me. I request your assistance in finding genuine freedom.
Ajahn Nyanamoli: The next step is to start discerning the mental aspects of sensuality and sensual craving. So being celibate, withdrawn from sensuality, not exposing yourself to unsuitable sights, and so on, that’s necessary, and now you can start seeing the mental counterparts of those desires. As discussed in previous videos, it’s important to note that nobody truly desires sensuality; in fact, these pressures are unpleasant and painful.
So what is your attitude towards pain now? Having contained your craving, craving for pleasures, sexuality, and so on—having practiced sense restraint, and withdrawal—do you now have aversion towards things? Do you cultivate that aversion? Are you resisting the discomfort of your body, of your unsatisfied body, unsatisfied by the old habits?
You have to start taming the sensual itch, and the only way you used to know how to “tame” it is through scratching it. So it’s going to take a while before the mind stops associating itch with a scratch. But that can happen, if you stick to it, if you abstain from scratching through physical sensual behavior, then abstain from scratching by mentally indulging those thoughts, and then the nature of the itch will become more apparent, which is that it’s unpleasant and it itches less if it’s left alone on the level of the mind. That’s where the itch is uprooted. If you engage with that itch mentally, it translates into a physical need. But it starts and remains fully rooted on the mental level. So if you have been withdrawn, not delighting in it mentally, not acting out physically, you could start seeing that itch for what it is. It’s slightly uncomfortable, but only from the point of view of wanting to scratch it. So you must learn how to become peaceful within it. You learn how to calm within the itch and the need for scratching it disappears because that is the more instantaneous way of freeing yourself from the itch. Calm within the itch removes the itch - removes the pressure. Scratching the itch relieves it on the surface, but makes you worse on the inside. It only increases the itch which keeps returning again and again. But, if you remain immovable internally, in the heart of that itch, it doesn’t itch.
To aid that, contemplate the repulsiveness of things you are attracted to, the factual repulsiveness. Don’t contemplate them through the itch and through trying to get rid of the itch, but when you’re not itching, then bring those things to mind - the repulsive nature that pertains to your sexual desires and so on. Bodies are generally repulsive, it’s just that the mind selectively only focuses and picks the signs of the agreeable shapes and forms and so on, ignoring the disagreeable which is simultaneously there in it. When the itch is present, you mustn’t be doing all of this contemplation to get rid of that sexual itch, because that’s going to become another way of trying to scratch the itch.
Q: I think some people who are into this “NoFap” can start hating the objects that they are attracted to… blaming the objects for the lust that they have.
Nm: Sure, blaming the objects.
Q: Hating women or hating the other things that they are sexually attracted to, hating sensuality, hating the world.
Nm: The mind might go that way and you might start acting out of it. So if you are building aversion towards these things, well that’s fine in a way, it will subside if you don’t act out of it. So don’t be expressing that aversion, don’t be trying to act by body, by speech, by mind, hating, revolving around hate, because that’s not where the problem was rooted to begin with. It was rooted in you, yourself, not being developed regarding the itch of your own body.
When experiencing the itch, you needed to scratch it, and you were finding and developing different ways of scratching it, all rooted in wanting to get rid of it. So you have to stop trying to get rid of it, which the questioner did not do, although he did physically restrain himself with non-masturbation, celibacy, and so on. And now mentally the weight of that itch is becoming apparent. So now they have to mentally not allow their thoughts to proliferate and fantasize about these things, but at the same time, you don’t want to be trying to get rid of the itch, because the itch is the reference point for your development. If the itch is obscured, you don’t know if you’re going to be moved by it or not.
You don’t need to seek the itch, it’s by not seeking the scratching, that it becomes apparent.
Sometimes people think, “Oh, I need to go and expose myself to sensuality to see if I’m free.” Well, if you don’t know that you’re free, it means you’re not free. If you’re not free from doubt regarding sensuality, it means you are still within sensuality. On the contrary, you want to expose yourself to the itch of sensuality, by saying no to the scratching of it.
Sense restraint and virtue reveal the sensual itch. And if you think, “I don’t feel an itch,” increase the sense restraint, and say no to all provocative things. And then if there’s truly no pressure of the itch manifested, you’re free and you wouldn’t be going back to it, because it was always unpleasant, to begin with. Would you be scratching your wound once it’s healed and stopped itching? That would be a stupid thing to do.
Q: I think this person is expecting the pressuring itch to disappear completely.
Nm: Yes. So basically the pressure, as I said, is pressured by the need to scratch. Pressure pressures you on account of your assumed value of scratching. And that needs to change. You need to recognize that you should never scratch because it’s dangerous. It’s a decline, it’s a destruction, it’s a defilement by which you are bound to suffering.
Never scratch it. That in and of itself would train your mind to get used to the pressure. And when the mind stops expecting the scratch, the itch will disappear.
You have to not scratch the itch and you have to not try to get rid of it. Because that becomes another way of trying to scratch it, remove it. So don’t go towards it, but don’t deny it. Recognize that the pressure is the measure of what you need to get used to.
Imagine that pressure pressuring you now acutely, have the view - “Let me live with it and never act out of it. And let’s see what happens.” Well, what will happen is it will stop pressuring you. As I said the acuteness of the pressure is because of you still looking past it towards the scratch of one kind or the other.
Q: Lusting after that possible pleasure.
Nm: Well exactly, that in and of itself perpetuates the underlying desire to scratch and the pressure of the itch.
If you’re averse to that pressure, i.e. you want it to go away, to never be there, that’s already on the same level as desiring to scratch it. This is good to begin with, because if you didn’t have that you would not have abstained from masturbation and sexuality and so on. But now the next step is to realize, “OK, now I can’t get rid of all of this, I need to train my mind regarding it so that my mind is not moved by it. Because itch comes from the body being there, being vital, being alive, being hormonal, being whatever. But how that internal itch of this body affects my mind, that’s on me.”
Whether your mind is moved by it and projected towards sensual desires and ideas, or completely indifferent, seeing the danger of sensual desires and ideas and not going there, then that itch is not an itch, it’s just an aspect of this body and how it’s experienced.
That’s what the Buddha said, (Saṁyogasutta AN 7.51) as long as a man is not developed internally regarding his own body, he’s not going to overcome the desire towards the external counterparts of his sexuality. So your mind needs to be developed regarding your own body I. E. your sexual itch. And being developed means being unmoved, ceasing to expect the scratch, and ceasing to expect the itch to go away.
The only experience of absent itch that you know, is the experience of the aftermath of scratching. And that’s not the absence of an itch, that’s just numbing the itch that’s still there, numbing the wound that still hurts. If you abstain from both, scratching it and wishing to get rid of it, you will learn what freedom from that itch is.
Q: The Right endurance, which is the Middle Way, provides immediate relief from that itch.
Nm: Immediate relief from the itch occurs when you see through it rightly. Eventually, you won’t even need to see through it, as the itch will no longer be associated with the need to scratch. This means you will no longer be bothered by the itch.