5.4 SENSUAL PLEASURES, POVERTY & DEBT (YOUTH DHAMMA SESSION)

Welcome back to the Sutta Meditation Series Podcast.

Another session to accompany the fourth module in the Youth Dhamma Gradual Teachings series looking into Buddha's Gradual Instructions to Lay People on DANGER IN SENSUAL PLEASURES (kāmānaṁ ādīnavaṁ)

In this additional session, we study the Buddha's teaching on SENSUAL PLEASURES, POVERTY & DEBT from the Iṇa Sutta (AN 6.45). This is a very powerful teaching from the Buddha, very practical in helping us to understand the bondage we can create with sensual pleasures, both in a worldly sense as well as spiritual one.

The world we inhabit is built largely on debt and we are conditioned to take on more debt as we grow up and make a life for ourselves. The more we long for things, the more potential to take on debt and accrue interest, fees and more. We can acknowledge the pain and stress of having debt and not being able to repay. The same thing applies in a spiritual sense, when we don't develop good qualities and encourage misconduct by body, speech and mind, and accrue unwholesome kamma. So it's really good to heed the Buddha's advice on the different ways we become poor and indebted, so we don't find ourselves sinking into disaster, not just in this life, but well beyond.

The focus of this session is on:

• — how we suffer enjoying sensual pleasures using the Buddha's teaching on worldly poverty & debt and spiritual poverty & debt
• — understanding the debt to our parents and how we can repay it
• — using the Buddha's example of worldly and spiritual debt to see the danger in any kind of strong attachment to sensual pleasures
• — learning about the importance of wholesome qualities of conviction, moral shame, fear of wrongdoing, energy and wisdom
• — recognising the links to other parts of the Buddha's gradual instructions, such as giving, virtue and heavenly realms

Some of the suttas that are mentioned directly or indirectly in this session:

• — Samacittavagga (AN 2.32)
• — Hāliddikāni Sutta (SN22.3)
• — Vitthata Sutta (AN 5.2)
• — Kimatthiya Sutta (AN 11.1)
• — Mahāassapura Sutta (MN 39)
• — Ānaṇya Sutta (AN 4.62)
• — Anumana Sutta (MN 15)
• — Potaliya Sutta (MN 54)
• — Vatthupama Sutta (MN 7)

An electronic copy of the "Table summarising the Buddha's teaching on how we suffer enjoying sensual pleasures using the Buddha's teaching on worldly poverty & debt and spiritual poverty & debt" from the Iṇa Sutta (AN 6.45), discussed in this Dhamma Session have been posted (and pinned) to the Sutta Meditation Series Telegram channel (https://t.me/suttameditationseries)

If you have any questions or comments regarding this talk, please email them to suttameditationseries[at]gmail.com or leave a voicemail message via anchor.fm

A VIDEO of this FULL SESSION with presentation slides has been published to the Sutta Meditation Series YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrKe6lnQPe0

Blessings of the Triple Gem. Theruwan saranai