FROM ONE DISAPPOINTMENT TO ANOTHER

 
Sex is decidedly one of the most important problems with which the human mind is confronted in the domain of duality. It is one of the givens in the makeup of human nature that one has to deal with. Like everything else in human life, sex comes to be judged through the opposites, which are the necessary creations of the limited mind. Just as the mind tries to fit life into a scheme of alternatives — such as joy or pain, good or bad, solitude or company, attraction or repulsion — in relation to sex it tends to think of indulgence and repression as alternatives from which there is no escape.

It seems as if the mind must accept the one alternative or the other. Yet it cannot wholeheartedly accept either. When it tries repression, it is dissatisfied with its lot and longingly thinks of indulgence. When it tries indulgence, it becomes conscious of its bondage to the senses and seeks freedom by going back to mechanical repression. The mind remains dissatisfied with both alternatives, and there thus arises one of the most vital and complicated problems of human life.

In order to solve the problem of sex, the mind must first understand that both alternatives are equally the creation of imagination working under the deluding influence of craving. Craving is implicitly present in the repression of sex as well as in its gratification. Both result in the vitiation of consciousness through lust or the desire for sensations. The mind is therefore inevitably restless in either alternative. Just as when there are clouds in the sky, there is gloom and lack of sunshine, whether it rains or not; so when the human mind is shrouded by craving there is a diminution of being and lack of true happiness, whether this craving is gratified or not.

The mind when restless with craving creates an illusory idea of happiness in the gratification of desire and then, knowing that the soul remains dissatisfied even after gratification of desire, seeks freedom through repression. Thus searching for happiness and freedom, the mind gets caught up in the opposites of indulgence and repression, which it finds equally disappointing. Since it does not try to go beyond these opposites, its movement is always from one opposite to the other and consequently from one disappointment to another.