tiltbillings wrote:Geez, what a bunch of grim Presbyterians here. So, you would grimly eat the food, trying your best not to enjoy it. Another option there might be?
No, I didn't say that. Try not to enjoy it? That's like the "gritting your teeth" thing.
tiltbillings wrote:Don't we self gratify all the time? Drinking a favorite tea while reading our favorite author? Listening to a beautiful piece of music? Company of good friends? The high that come from exercise? Wearing one's favorite shirt? Playing with one's grandkids? Petting one's dog?
What if we do? Does that mean
masturbation is just another innocuous way to pass the time?
tiltbillings wrote:I am simply exploring possibilities, but what is interesting is the particular opprobrium laid upon masturbation as if it were in a particularly bad class -- worse than others - of things we might choose to do to do that is pleasurable. Sounds like Victorian Christian guilt to me.
Guilt is a self-indulgence not unlike
masturbation.
tiltbillings wrote:If the one is not out of the realm of possibilities, then neither is the other.
That's the thing I'm not so sure about. Because it seems as if a person who engages in
masturbation sets out solely in pursuit of sense pleasure without any other motivating factor. If you play with your grandkids, there's some opportunity there for metta, or karuna. If you're reading a book and drinking some tea, there's the opportunity to educate oneself. If you exercise, there's the opportunity to stay healthy and create a better physical foundation for one's own practice and to help others. If you're having sex with your wife, then you're creating a better marriage relationship. And so on.
But if you're masturbating for self-gratification, I just don't see where there's anything skillful there at all. It just seems like a pursuit in entirely the opposite direction as Dhamma. I don't see how it compares with those other activities you mention. In that respect, I highly doubt that it's possible to masturbate and yet maintain sampajanna. I think either you'd stop masturbating, or you would no longer have sampajanna. I don't think the same necessarily must be said about having sex with one's wife.