Luang Por Liem: The Ways of the Peaceful - Wat Pah Nanachat

just the way they are. All living beings have to face death and fear
death. There is no way around these experiences. We accept them
as something natural for beings living in this world.
What I tried more than anything else, was to handle those
feelings that arise as obstacles in our practice. Feelings like these
arise from all kinds of desires and defilements, which are
stimulated by sense contact when we need to relate to society and
the world around us. Of course it is normal that, with all our weak
spots, we are still prone to experiencing these impingements as
obstacles. Normal or not, there is still nothing as difficult to
handle than our interest in and desire for the opposite sex. Don’t
think that I didn’t have this problem. Of course I did, with all its
implications. But I tried to look at it, asking, “Hmm…, what’s the
reason for my desire?” We can see sexuality as a biological fact
for all living beings. Even though it is a natural instinct, this
doesn’t excuse us from having to look for skilful ways of dealing
with it. Could we make our feelings in this area change? We
might think, “No, that’s completely beyond our capabilities.” But
that still doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be careful and train to
deal with these feelings of desire.
Sometimes when we suddenly get into contact with desire, we
are completely taken by surprise that strong feelings such as these
are possible. In a situation like this we are taken aback by worldly
feelings dominating us. We need to take hold of these feelings and
relate to them in a new way. We can change our perception by
turning it towards reflections about the unbeautiful, non-selfsufficient,
non-durable nature of things, or the very fact that there
is not a personality or a self in them at all. You can bring the
images of dead bodies to mind in order to counter the perception
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