Thursday, June 16, 2011

"Playboy" and Men's Dreams

Crystal left Playboy's founder to make beautiful music with someone else, planning to cash in on a post "runaway bride" spectacle interview (FOX). Men's dream comes undone: Girls not included? Hefner a gay pandaka? Has "Playboy" been nothing but false advertising?

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, dumped by his fiancee days before their wedding, said Wednesday he is affixing "Runaway Bride" stickers over her picture on the cover of the magazine's upcoming issue.

Hefner, 85, announced a day earlier that 25-year-old Crystal Harris had "a change of heart," and that Saturday's wedding ceremony for 300 people at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles had been canceled.

In an unfortunate coincidence, Harris appears on the cover of the July Playboy issue, hitting newsstands Friday, described as "America's Princess ... Introducing Mrs. Crystal Hefner."

In the interests of journalistic accuracy, Hefner has moved quickly to remedy the situation. More
  • The story, of course, is much funnier and stranger. Crystal Harris planned on abandoning Hugh Hefner at the altar -- in view of cameras for a big pay off selling her interview afterward. And she may have been having an affair with Dr. Phil's son all along.
Mend's Dreams: Runaway Bride uses Porn King
Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)
The sad thing is that Hugh Hefner has essentially been living the life most men want. He has:
  • a castle in Los Angeles
  • millions coming in annually from destructive but exciting work
  • potency-inducing pharmaceuticals
  • gala parties
  • and, best of all, an endless bevy of newly nubile "playmates" and "bunnies," Scandinavian twins in open marriages and group activities...
If Hef can't get it to work, what hope is there for the rest of us?

When lust (kamachanda, or tanha and lobha, "craving" and "greed") fails us, it suggests that maybe, just maybe, the Buddha was right:

Investing our energies and dreams in developing sensual desires -- and trying to satisfy them -- is not actually the way to happiness.

Craving, in fact, may be the problem causing our "suffering" -- our dissatisfaction, disappointment, and distress.

If that were true, freedom-from-craving would be the solution -- freedom-from-suffering (nirvana).

But what could be the path leading to such freedom? These four assertions are the centerpieces of Buddhism as a path to perfect liberation. But who will strive to be free without first realizing the disappointment of being enslaved to craving?

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