How to Look into Our Sexual Energy | Brother Phap Dung (Deer Park Monastery)

You see the meditation there is to get something

and then you feel good and then you you go on with your life.

Here our meditation is not just that.

It's exactly examining all of your life.

There's nothing wrong with sex.

It's a very sacred act.

Resist this collective energy in our society to sexualize everything.

True love.

The Third training, aware of the suffering caused by misconduct, by sexual misconduct.

I'm committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety

and integrity of individuals, couples, families and society.

Knowing that sexual desire is not love and that sexual activity motivated by craving

always harms myself as well as others.

I'm determined not to engage in sexual relations without mutual consent,

true love and a deep, long term commitment.

I resolved to find spiritual support for the integrity of my relationship

from family members, friends, and Sangha with whom there is support and trust.

I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse

and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct.

Seeing the body and mind are interrelated.

I'm committed to learning appropriate ways to take care of my sexual energy

and to cultivate the four basic elements of true love,

loving, kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness for a greater happiness of myself and others.

Recognizing the diversity of the human experience.

I'm committed not to discriminate against any form, gender identity or sexual orientation.

Practicing true love,

we know that will continue beautifully into the future.

This one is just in general about sexual energy.

There's nothing wrong with sex.

It's a very sacred act.

You know, comment on this

and this training is a commitment to actually resist

this collective energy in our society to sexualize everything.

And this is what's happening to our youths.

And happening to adults as well with the Internet.

So we're entering.

This is actually how humans are put in to their place.

When you are addicted, when you are like bubble in an energetic wave, you just follow

the establishment.

Well, that was a little borderline anarchist.

I grew up in Los Angeles, and so I had an immediate experience of this,

of being kind of like having friends and so on, and how it's so prevalent and accepted.

The last Teen Camp, we had a separate sharing with the boys and the girls,

one young man shared that

he suffered because there's this expectation for him to have sex

when he gets to certain age.

And he suffered like that and he cried.

He said the the expectation, the peer pressure for him,

It's too much.

And this is what we're talking about and not any particular transgression or misconduct.

But overall, how we

that kind of framing, that way of looking, that narrative

is so prevalent in our culture, modern culture.

And I think it's been become quite dominant because of social media as well.

So this is what we are looking at.

And it's not to be righteous or moralistic or what is it or is it prude or what do you call it?

But it actually is to recognize this energy and how it is moving through

and causing suffering in the world.

So of course, the obvious ones,

affairs and hiding and perversion and and addiction.

Those are very obvious.

That's why that is so drastically, you know, causing harm.

But the even subtle ones even, when we look at people and you expect certain things,

when we look at someone and you have categories and so on,

this is the new, a morphing, changing forms,

and this is where the Buddhist practice can help so much.

To practice, to watch how we perceive things and how we have ideas and notions about people,

based on the way they look, based on the way they behave and so on.

And so the trainings are evolving.

And the third, as some of you know,

it's just been recently updated to include this kind of changing in our society,

to include other people who,

who orient,

who express themself,

who identify themselves differently.

This is a great challenge,

and there's always a reaction.

And this is something you can see the fear based on that.

And we had to admit that being human, there is the sexual energy is part of that.

And so this is something how to move forward to see how to cause the least harm,

especially as you look at society and how

its sexual misconduct is really related to money, power and fame.

You can see all the new stuff, it comes in, this what happens.

So it makes us commit more to examine a little bit

how this is affecting our society and especially our youth.

But it's a very touchy topic.

That's why in retreat, we also try to create a safe and calm,

trusting spaces, so that young men, young women

can actually share because there's no place to share like that.

And it's so healthy to to share all of that.

And I've been involved with so many of those circles of sharing among young men, among boys as well.

So this is something we know is happening.

And that's why the practice was to create communities and circels.

To try to see how we are affected by it.

It's very important for us and is very linked to happiness.

Sometimes someone is behaving in a certain way

and superficially it looks like they are unhappy with something,

but underneath it is also they struggle with their sexual energy.

So that's we need to allow that to flow in a person.

Those expectation and so on.

Those kind of tensions will cause us to do other things.

And you think that's it.

But it's actually underneath.

It's something else.

That's why we need to create more spaces like that.

Centers in San Francisco,

where you can go in there and you have a cushion and a mat and it's really, really classy.

And you can buy a credit card thing for your friend.

$200 for a cushioned spot.

That's a startup, startup, Is it startup?

I won't give you the name because you might go there, you know,

but if you see the meditation there is to get something

and then you feel good and then you go on with your life.

Here our meditation is not just that.

It's exactly examining all of your life.