Advice to younger meditators on jhāna, sex, porn, masturbation

Someone asked:

Is porn considered harmful sexual.activity?

I don't have a sex life because I don't have a partner and I don't wish to engage in casual sex so I use porn to quench the biological urge to orgasm. I can't see that's it's harmful because nobody is being forced into it. The actors are all paid well and claim to enjoy it etc. The only harm I can see is that it's so accessible these days on smart devices and so children may access it but I believe that this is the parents responsibility to not allow unsupervised use of devices etc. Views?

Frankk response:

In another thread, you asked about pleasant sensations and jhāna.

 I'm guessing you're young, so here's some important advice you won't get from suttas 

 if you're serious about jhāna.

 (since monastics are already celibate by rule) 

 If you want to attain stable and higher jhānas, 

 celibacy and noble silence to the best of your ability are the feedstock and prerequiste to that.

 

 The jhānas and other samādhi attainments are not just a mental transformation but a physical transformation as well.

 Reproduction is one of the most energetically intensive operations a body can do.

 You don't have enough energy to indulge in sexual activity, sensual pleasures, 

 and also attain higher jhānas.

 It's as if you only have 1 million dollars to last your whole life, 

 and stable jhāna costs 600k$,

 and going to the whore house, or having ethical sex with your girlfriend,

or watching porn costs 20k$ each pop.

 Those 20k$ pops don't seem like much when you're young and still have close to a million dollars, 

 but if you don't heed this valuable advice and you're older it will be too late to change your mind.

If you follow 5 precepts and stay with moderate level of ethical sexual activity and sensual pleasures, 

most likely that will put your jhāna ceiling at a mediocre first jhāna and low quality second jhāna.

If you watch a lot of porn and indulge in a lot of sexual activity and sensual pleasures like most lay people,

you're going to experience the typical problems they do.

Anxiety, depression, loss of memory, poor cognitive function, 

poor immune system, head aches, body aches, irritability, etc.

Sexual urges are difficult when you're young.

 Even highly attained spiritual beings find it difficult looking back, see Ajahn Chah's biography for example.

 If I had things to do over and be young again, the way I would deal with urges is have intensive physical exercise as an outlet when urges are especially difficult.

If you jog for several miles for example, the energy in your body is going to circulate and when your mind is off of sex for a while, and the body tired from the exercise, then you'll have some temporary relief.

The main key though is to focus the mind on the downsides of sexual activity and sensual pleasure rather than on the subha nimitta (attractive and alluring elements of the opposite sex and sensual pleasures).

The key to long term success is once you truly see and understand the insatiability, unreliability, and lack of satisfaction in sex and sensual pleasures, you'll gradually lose interest in that.

Just as most people understand how being addicted to heroin and alcohol is a losing proposition.

Once you can file away porn and sexual activity in that same category, you'll not be attracted to it the way most people can be trained not to be attracted to heroin.