Hello all,

I have been interested in Taoism/Buddhism for a while now. Central to both beliefs is the idea of removing your desire for things - leading to less frustration, and more contentment. ie, your desire is more or less insatiable, and the only route to true happiness is to remove the desire itself.

I wonder what you people think of this – the contrast between no desire (and potential contentment) and desire (and success in the Game). To be honest, with no desire I wouldn’t progress in the Game.

On a more basic level, before going out in the evening, would you recommend masturbating during the day?

Bit of a strange message this!

I recommend meditation – you can do it for free (and have a free cup of tea) at the Manchester Buddhist Centre – a really cool place.

Anthony

Yeh,

Definately don't masterbate before a sarge or date - your intent may decrease.
However - I would say, try to have sex daily - or at least three times a week.

I gave up on any sexual activity for 2 weeks once as an experiment. My sexual performance dropped sharply after that with reduced libido.

Everyones body is different though, just saying what works for me.


Stay Puft

Taoism and Buddhism have a lot to teach.

The Theravada tradition (the early Buddhists) spoke about getting rid of desire. The Mahayana Buddhists who came after kinda check mated the Theravada with, “But now you desire to not desire.” This meta approach was developed further and called the, “third turning of the dharma (teaching) wheel” and became the Vajrayana Tantra texts. Pepper in a little Taoism and you get Zen.

A mate of mine is an ordained monk at the Manchester Buddhist Centre. He used to be a proper brawler before he started getting serious about it. It’s been really good for him.

I highly recommended the work of Alan Watts, a British philosopher specialising in comparative religion and focussed on interpreting Asian philosophies for a Western audience.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone of Southpark have put together some animation to clips of his talks … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE5M8743a1s

There are loads of his lectures for free on Google Video.

As far as masturbation goes I suppose it depends on your charge. I’ll crack nuts before I go out on the pull and have no problems. Whatever works for you.

Excellent – like all good dialogue, a nice mixture of the interesting and the absurd!

I’ll have to mull over the philosophical points a little more – both faiths are interesting, and have produced some great literature.

Unfortunately, the debate about knocking one off is already academic – I subdued to my keyboard/testosterone urges earlier! I will only class the night as a failure if I knock one off again tonight, or knock someone else off (eg, after being gamed by a PUA)!

I’m not sure about the testosterone level thing. I have heard that after sex the male produces/releases some kind of chemical which makes them tired - sounds about right from experience.

Kowalski: I agree about the apparent absurdity of those faiths. A Buddhist monk I once spoke to told me about how we should cultivate unpleasant and awkward people in our lives – as they challenge us more, and therefore help us to develop. Another man in the group tried this, and talked about how he ended up surrounding himself with unpleasant people, and having an unpleasant time!

Sapmi: If as a single man I could have sex daily I would be impressed!

Sync: Cheers, I’ll check out the link.

Anthony