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how to avoid indulging in pleasure of hot showers

interesting question from
https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/35973/pleasure-in-shower/35995#35995


Q:
I follow Yuttadhammo's tradition and I wanted to know how to prevent the pleasure I get in taking showers. Everytime I take them, I have a clinging to the warmth of the water and the feeling of it.
How do I prevent this or come to disattach from the experiences I have in showering and getting pleasure from it?
the-buddha traditions tipitaka personal-experienceshareeditflagasked yesterday
Dhamma4All


you may be under dressed, insufficiently warm all the times you're not in a comfortable hot shower. Wear more layers, keep your body warm, do enough cardiovascular and other physical exercises everyday (at least 30min) to improve your base body temperature and overall physical health. Then when you step in a hot shower, it won't feel like anything especially comfortable. When your reserve energy is strong, you feel like you could eat or not eat, sleep or not sleep, get a massage or a hot shower and it will just feel neutral, nothing special. But if you lack nutrients, you will be ravenously hungry, you lack body heat, hot showers will feel great, if you lack good circulation, a massage and hot shower will feel great, etc.

On the mental cultivation side of things, develop kusala habits to replace akusala habits. Before I take a shower, I resolve to not waste water, get in and out quickly just to get the job done. Probably that's less than 1 minute of water running, 3-4 minutes of rubbing, drying, etc. Also, there's no need to lather a thick layer of soap everywhere on the body, or even a thin layer. You just need to make sure to use enough soap on the areas that actually need it, and this way you don't dry out your skin and nutrients in the skin. Once you form good habits, it just becomes automatic and you don't even have to think or fight temptation. And if you take care of the physical health aspect as described above, your health will be robust enough where you don't even feel temptation of the pleasure of hot showers.

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