Defilements

[Caraka]

Greetings,

I'm in need for advices or resources around mental concentration to increase virtue. I believe increased virtue is needed to avoid defilements e.g. of sex and hunger?

My body is really not in need to eat to much (a classical example is to much snacks and beer while watching tv), nor do my body need sex. However sometimes Mara rides me like a horse and it always seems to be triggered by defilements in my mind.

A modern description of this, I guess, is: 'weak will'

And there is the aftermatch of feeling bad cause of giving in for a weak will. What to do with bad conscious?


Best regards,

[cooran]

Hello Caraka,

This might be a beginning:

The Five Mental Hindrances and Their Conquest - Selected Texts from the Pali Canon and the Commentaries
compiled and translated by Nyanaponika Thera

 1. Sensual Desire
 2. Ill-will
 3. Sloth and Torpor
 4. Restlessness and Remorse
 5. Doubt
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... el026.html

with metta
Chris

[Caraka]

Actual mental hunger is a better expression, at least for cause of actions that results into pursuit of sensual pleasures or overeating...

Where does this mental hunger come from?

[bodom]

Where does this mental hunger come from?

Here is what the texts have to say:

The Origin of Craving

But where does this craving arise and take root? Wherever in the world there are delightful and pleasurable things, there this craving arises and takes root. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, are delightful and pleasurable: there this craving arises and takes root.

Visual objects, sounds, smells, tastes, bodily impressions, and mind objects, are delightful and pleasurable: there this craving arises and takes root.

Consciousness, sense impression, feeling born of sense impression, perception, will, craving, thinking, and reflecting, are delightful and pleasurable: there this craving arises and takes root.

This is called the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering. - DN 22

http://www.enabling.org/ia/vipassana/Ar ... htm#999723