DNS wrote: ↑Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:11 pmI have lived next door to some Hasidic Jews in the past and I can tell you the husbands are no better there either. They expect their wives to have at least 6 children; even 10 children for one Hasidic woman is not unusual.
I mean that at least some strict Hasidic Jews don't automatically expect their wives to have abortions, and don't insist on sex at all costs.
In religious contrast, a midwife here said that she has had cases where a Catholic woman asked for the midwife to stay with her for the night after she gave birth, so that at least for one night, she would be free from her husband demanding his right. Catholic priests actually instruct married people that a woman must always submit to her husband.
As I mentioned in the other thread, surely you must have seen at least some couples where the man is the doormat? And then other couples where the relationship is very egalitarian.
No. But I know many people who pretend to be that way. The husband pretending to be a doormat, or one or both of the partners pretending they are equal in the relationship.
To tie back to the OP:
SDC wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:05 pmHow do we best structure lay life to get the most out of our practice? How close is too close when it comes to emulating monastics? Do we short ourselves an opportunity to discover Dhamma if we settle for the five precepts instead of eight?
Quoting an earlier post:
SDC wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2018 3:59 pmThink about it in terms of infatuation or obsession. Even when one is tending to their daily responsibilities, if something is dominating their mind they are going to dwell on it whether they want to or not, sometimes to the detriment of those responsibilities. If the Dhamma can be built up like that, every thought and action will incline towards it. The only difference with an inclination towards the Dhamma is the inherent and resulting wholesomeness typically absent in such aggressive reflection. Even if it were to be to the detriment of ordinary things, the wisdom that is gained would be worth the trouble (though one should be mindful to strike a reasonable balance considering those daily responsibilities). Again, it has to be built up to such a level though. Life will not incline towards the Dhamma if the Dhamma is not a generator of the necessary gravity for that inclination. That generation is the key to a dynamic pursuit of the Dhamma and it all starts with a desire to acquire its benefits (the only desire the Buddha praised).
The question is whther the Dhamma can be pursued in any other way but that -- as something that completely consumes a person's attention.
Can anything less than that actually be the pursuit of the Dhamma, or is it just Buddhism?
Many people brush off the issue by saying that even sotapannas still have sensual desires and act on them, and that therefore, pursuing sensual desires is somehow not all that detrimental; and also implying that all sensual desires are the same in some important way. But that's like saying that eating a handful of potato chips and eating an apple is the same, because they have the same amount of calories.
Iam not a chimpanze, with all respect to these lovely beings... Actualy when i see someone be obsessed by sex i see him like a chempanze or an animal :s
