Showing posts sorted by relevance for query nothing higher to live for. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query nothing higher to live for. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, February 14, 2025

All I Want for V-Day is Sexy, Sadie

Dr. Sadie, what's my passion? - "What's passion"? - No, what's MY passion, my life's purpose?

Dr. Sadie Allison on The Heidi and Frank Morning Zoo Show, KLOS, Feb. 7th, 2025
.
A Happy Married Life: A Buddhist Perspective
For adults only. Are you 18? Pretend to press here <> if you are. Otherwise, go away. Not suitable for monastic eyes.

"Sex with Sadie" (or it could've been "Sex With Emily") was a show by graphic feminist sexologist Dr. Sadie Allison (that was Rated somewhere between R, NC-17, and XXX), CEO of TickleKitty.com, a "toy" company concerning itself with base sensual pleasures of every description, the practice of villagers.

Sex or passion for Valentine's?
Happy Valentine's Day, elementary school class!
Dr. Sadie, is there Nothing Higher to Live For than [boinking, schtooping, and the Choctaw Heimlich]?

Sure there is, Wisdom Quarterly. My TEDx Talk (below) is all about fearless giving not mutual wham-bam-thank-you-mam'ing.

All I want for Valentine's Day is sexy, Sadie.

Um, that's Doctor Sadie.

Oh, sorry, Dr. Sadie.

What do you mean by "sexy," Wisdom Quarterly?

Um, that's Venerable Wisdom Quarterly.

Really?

Focused and Fearless
No, we'd just like an honorific title, too. What we mean by "sexy" is passionate. We're interested in Turning Passions Into Profits like that shady guru Howard Christopher, Lisa Garr's motivational speaker pal.

Wisdom Quarterly, what about turning your passion into fearless giving?

Dr. Sadie, do you mean dana (letting go, unselfishness, generosity, sharing, liberality) like the fearless and noble Shaila Catherine to make skillful-karma so that we can enjoy the results/fruits lifetime after lifetime in this interminable samsara until we reach full release?

Well, I was more thinking like this.*

Topics too hot for American TV?
(Dr. Sadie Allison & Tickle Kitty) Dr. Sadie Allison - Reel (Rated NC-17)
Nothing Higher to Live For?
Science of FLIRTING like sexy H.O.T.  A.P.E.S.

*Turning sexual PASSION into skillful action of Fearless Giving with Dr. Sadie

Turning sexual passion into skillful karma
Wretch, right, Dr. Sadie? - No, stretch, Dear, and get limber. - I thought you said get Limburger.
.
How can we empower real intimacy?
(TEDx Talks) How did a renowned American sex educator develop the passion for "fearless giving" (dana) that allows her to teach intimacy techniques to millions? What obstacles and prejudices did she overcome to blossom as America's Pleasure Coach? And how can we adapt her "fearless giving" model to create happiness in our own lives -- in and out of the bedroom?

In her short TEDx talk, Dr. Sadie shows how to face life's challenge with true determination, especially when one's drive to give fearlessly runs smack up against daily reality.

She offers examples from her own childhood, where intense family dysfunction, coupled with being fiercely ostracized at school for guiding girlfriends through their budding sexuality, could easily have kept her from ever being successful.

Yet, her drive to give fearlessly and passionately has led her to become one of today's leading authorities on sexuality and an award-winning sex self-help author with over two million books sold (as of 2013).

Watching Dr. Sadie enables us to discover our own inner "fearless giver." By the end of the talk, we'll know the best moment to fully embrace it.

I go to nightclubs for the restroom camaraderie

ABOUT: Dr. Sadie Allison is one of America's leading experts on human sexuality. Founder and CEO of Tickle Kitty, Inc., Dr. Sadie is the IPPY Best Sexuality Award-winning author and publisher of today's bestselling line of fun, informative, sex-help guides — the kind we wish we'd read earlier in life. Her ever-popular classics include Ride 'Em Cowgirl! and Tickle His Pickle. Dr. Sadie's mission is to empower women and men to embrace an even deeper enjoyment of their sexuality through encouragement, information, and inspiration [rather than the standard American discouragement, ignorance, and guilt/shame of our parents and teachers] — topped-off with a dash of humor.

TEDx: In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = "independently organized TED event." The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized* (*subject to certain rules and regulations).
  • Dr. Sadie Allison, TEDxGoldenGatePark, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Nov. 14, 2013; Vanessa (Klein Ally Show, KROQ, 2025); Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Dhr. Seven, Shauna Schwartz, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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Monday, May 25, 2026

OMC, I'm in LOVE! 'Off Campus' (rom-com)

"OMC" not OMG? That's right, as in oh holy COW and "Don't have a Cow, man!" because love is a many-splendored thing. What better topic for a TV show than the same-old same-old? Sex sells, specially when it's wrapped in romantic love, which justifies it in our consensus reality. One is the sizzle, the titillation, and the other is the drug.
 
Alex Meyers
(Alex Meyers) May 2026: Off Campus is my kind of trash! Yeah, Off Campus, that's right. So I made an animated commentary analysis of it. Here's a full breakdown of this Prime Video TV show, a romcom that is so basic, it's kind of not the worst thing out there.

Nothing Higher to Live For: A Buddhist View of Romantic Love
I've nothing higher to live for!
(Leo Price) ...If life means nothing, then only pleasure is worthwhile. Or if life has meaning and we cannot get at it, then still only enjoyment matters.

This is the view of not only brutes but some sophisticated philosophers.

It slips into our unconscious by default when we hold no other. However, we are reluctant to entertain it.

Oh, Ro-Ro! - Oh, Jewels!!
We would rather, if we question ourselves about it at all, take as our "purpose" the
  • support of family,
  • search for truth or beauty,
  • improvement of society,
  • fame,
  • self-expression,
  • development of talent...
It might be fair to say that apart from these or beneath these, for many of us our fundamental purpose is the search for love, particularly romantic love.

The love of one person for another is often the floor onto which we fall after the collapse of other dreams.

I will kill you. - Find me first, Eros!
It is thought of as solid when nothing else is, and although it frequently gives way and dumps us into a basement of despair, it still enjoys a reputation of dependability. No matter that such a reputation is illogical—it still flourishes and will continue to flourish regardless of what anyone says.

Love, or the MYTH of love, is the first, last, and sometimes the only refuge of uncomprehending human beings. What else makes our hearts pound? What else makes us swoon with tingly feelings? What else renders us so intensely alive, aching, pining, yearning, wishing, hoping, craving?
I 💖you, Agnes. - I, too, Hieronymus.
The SEARCH for love—the sublime, the nebulous, the all consuming—remains sacred in a world that increasingly despises the sacred.

When the heroic and transcendental are only memories, when religious institutions fill up with bureaucrats and social scientists, when nobody believes there is a sky beyond the ceiling, then there seems no other escape from the prison of self than throwing ourselves abandon into love.

With a grey age of spiritual deadness upon us, we love. We beg for love or grieve for love. We have nothing higher to live for.

Indeed, many take it on faith that romantic love is the highest thing to live for. Movies, popular literature, art, and music all relentlessly celebrate it as the one "truth" accessible to all.

This kind of love obliterates reason, as poets have long sweetly lamented, and this is part of its charm and power. Why? We want to be swept up and spirited out of our calculating selves. "Want" is the key word because in the spiritual void of modern life, the wanting of love becomes increasingly indistinguishable from love itself.

So powerful, so insistent is it that we seldom notice that the gratification it tempts us with is rare, yet the craving is relentless. Love addiction? Love is mostly in anticipation; it is an agony of anticipation; it is an ache for a completion not found in the dreary round of mundane routine. That we never seem to possess it in its imagined fullness does not deter us. It hurts so bad that it must be good. Nothing Higher to Live For: A Buddhist View of Romantic Love


The Gen Alpha Melody
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Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Nothing Higher to Live For: Romantic Love

Yung Gravy; Jimmy Kimmel; Leonard Price (Ven. Nyanasobhano), Nothing Higher to Live For: A Buddhist View of Romantic Love (ATI); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
If we accept that it's a truism that "white men can't jump," what can be said of their rapping?
.
I should be dressed like a Central Asian royal.
...They have nothing but love to live for.

This is not to say that such a surrender must be bad, only that it happens out of instinct and uninformed passion.

Love is sweet, and it is our nature to give in. But why do we worship relationships so ardently, and why do we break off our search for real fulfillment here? Perhaps it's because we see no other gods.

Yet if love is the highest thing to live for then this is a hopeless universe, because we should see in a calm hour that Cupid's arrows not only thrill us but make us bleed and endanger our loves, leaving pathetic and clingy.

Can I love the Buddha, my teacher?
"Man Kills Estranged Lover Then Self," "Wife Stabs Husband in Domestic Quarrel," "Love Triangle Leads To Shooting" -- so read the headlines with depressing regularity.

The stories behind them are only the most shocking of countless tales of passion, but they forcefully suggest that romantic love is not always a blessing.

One might object that hate, not love, spawns such tragedies. But where has such hate come from if not from a prior attachment now broken?

We should know from experience how easily what we call love can turn to bitterness, jealousy, and malice. And though we protest that this is not the fault of love, we ought to notice that where one passion arises another is likely to follow.

Passions are unreliable, volatile, dangerous, and a poor foundation for our happiness.

Divorces, suicides, dissipation, violence, depravity, fanaticism, and other miseries great and small follow from passion. Yet passion is still, in the public mind, considered commendable, a mark of vigor and liveliness.


Though everyone will admit that passion gone awry is dangerous, few realize that passion is by its nature likely to go awry.

Romantic love is a chancy passion that may result in the opposite of what is desired. It may have happy consequences, too — else it would not have so many devotees — but it raises the stakes in the gamble of life and makes us more vulnerable both to our own weaknesses and to unpredictable fortune.

As most of us count the joys of successful love (however one defines it) worth the pain involved in its pursuit, we must learn to step lightly and with intelligence.

We believe, with some reason, that love can ennoble and redeem us and call forth our purest energies, but we are slower to see that when the lamp of love flickers out, as it tragically tends to do, we might lose our way in a fearful labyrinth of suffering.

Granted that few will shun the pursuit of romance out of fear of unhappy consequences, what can be done to soften those consequences?

If we really have nothing higher to live for, nothing to fall back on, the sad truth is that nothing much can be done to ameliorate them, given the volatile nature of human affections.

So it would be wise to make sure there really is no superior, sustaining ideal before committing ourselves exclusively to the chase.

Nirvana
Man in front of Maitreya in Himalayas
Buddhism, of course, teaches such an ideal, which is nothing less than freedom from all sorrow, called nirvana.

While worldly joys are mutable and fleeting, nirvana is established, sorrowless, stainless, and secure.

While worldly pains are piercing, unpredictable, and unavoidable, nirvana is altogether free from pain. It is the end of suffering, the supreme refuge, the ultimate liberation.

The Buddha himself applied many terms of praise to nirvana while recognizing the essential inadequacy of words and concepts.

Nirvana cannot be grasped by language or concept, but it can be known and realized by direct experience for one who makes the right effort. This is a critical point.

Nirvana is not something that happens to us through an external agency. Rather it is something that we ourselves may experience by our efforts in calm and insight.

The Buddha certainly never would have troubled himself to teach had he not understood that his own realization was not a chance event but rightly won and that those who followed the instructions to realize it could also experience direct realization for themselves.

Yolandi Visser and motorcyclist house guest (Die Antwoord, "Baby's on Fire")
.
This understanding, passed down, has sustained the Buddhist Dharma or religion to the present day. The diligent are powerful. Suffering can be overcome.

What is the Path?
Knowing ourselves to be sunk in confusion and beset by myriad defilements, we might regard nirvana as too remote to do us much good here and now.

We persist in seeing an unbridgeable chasm between enlightened beings (saints) and ordinary people like ourselves. We think practically everybody is like us (or worse), while maybe there are one or two genuine saints in the world.

Presumably they have just been born in that awakened condition or with the exceptional good luck to get themselves elevated — who knows how?

Yet the human condition is not, according to Buddhism, a fixed sentence to this or that level of wisdom and virtue. Beings are living at all stages of attainment. They do not stay in the same place.

They rise through their own good efforts and decline through their own negligence in the endless action and reaction of intentional deeds (karma) and the results of those deeds (karma-vipaka). More

White rapper Yung Gravy goes on a date with horrendous hag Aunt Chippy
Valentine's Day on Jimmy Kimmel Live! just got depraved and deplorable because Aunt Chippy is the opposite of a sport, while Yung Gravy is just about the coolest hipster around.

Who is this guy "Yung Gravy"?
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Tuesday, November 1, 2011

"Nothing Higher To Live For" (video)

A Buddhist View of Romantic Love
"Like Crazy" (trailer)

IF IT IS possible to live with a purpose, what should that purpose be? A purpose might be a guiding principle, a philosophy, or a value of sovereign importance that informs and directs our activities and thoughts.

To have one is to live seriously -- though not necessarily wisely -- following some track, believing in a hub to the wheeling universe or a sea toward which we flow or an end before which all the hubbub of civilization subsides.

What is your purpose, friend, or what should it be? Perhaps most of us do not come to a clear conclusion in the matter. But this does not mean we have no purpose, only that we do not recognize it or admit it or even choose it for ourselves.

In the unhappiest case nature simply takes its course, which is a turbid meandering through the swamps of desire. If life means nothing then only pleasure is worthwhile; or if life has meaning and we cannot get at it then still only enjoyment matters -- such is the view of brutes and some sophisticated philosophers.

It slips into the unconscious by default when we hold no other. But we are reluctant to entertain it and will rather, if we think about it, take as our purpose support of family, search for beauty, improvement of society, fame, self-expression, development of talent, and so on.

But it might be fair to say that apart from these or beneath these the fundamental purpose of many of us is the search for love, particularly romantic love. The love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man is often the floor to which people fall after the collapse of other dreams. It is held to be solid when nothing else is, and though it frequently gives way and dumps them into a basement of despair, it still enjoys a reputation of dependability.

No matter that this reputation is illogical -- it still flourishes and will continue to flourish regardless of what is said in any book. Love, or possibly the myth of love [with its knights in shining armor and falling angels], is the first, last, and sometimes the only refuge of uncomprehending humanity.

What else makes our hearts beat so fast? What else makes us swoon with feeling? What else renders us so intensely alive and aching?

The search for love -- the sublime, the nebulous, the consuming -- remains sacred in a world that increasingly despises the sacred.



When the heroic and the transcendental are but memories, when religious institutions fill up with bureaucrats and social scientists, when nobody believes there is a sky beyond the ceiling, then there seems no other escape from the prison of self than the abandon of love.

With a gray age of spiritual deadness upon us, we love, or beg for love, or grieve for love. We have nothing higher to live for.

Indeed, many take it on faith that romantic love is the highest thing to live for. Popular literature, movies, art, and music tirelessly celebrate it as the one truth accessible to all.

Such love obliterates reason, as poets have long sweetly lamented, and this is part of its charm and power, because we want to be swept up and spirited out of our calculating selves.

“Want” is the key word, for in the spiritual void of modern life the wanting of love becomes increasingly indistinguishable from love itself.

So powerful, so insistent is it that we seldom notice that the gratification is rare and the craving relentless. Love is mostly in anticipation; it is an agony of anticipation; it is an ache for a completion not found in the dreary round of mundane routine.

That we never seem to possess it in its imagined fullness does not deter us. It hurts so bad that it must be good.

Practically nobody questions the supremacy of romantic love, which is good enough reason to do a little poking around the foundations of its pedestal. More
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Tuesday, February 14, 2023

The Irish Lass (poem)

Dhr. Seven edited by Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

Wisdom of the Zen master (Angel City Zen)
Excuse me, miss, sorry to bother, but I'm seeking a redheaded suburban Sedona'ite last seen traveling through this neck of the woods or living the cloistered life aloft in a hermitage on the cleft of one of the surrounding hills, by the given name of Rowan Siobhan Fiona Elfinkilt, Gwendolyn Mackenzie Paisley Wigglesbottom, or some such, though for reasons undreamt of by Man she's taken to answering to "Hey you," a dashing figure whose dulcet voice sounds like the mew of a brinded feline, except when she weeps, as it then becomes the whoosh of water cascading in the staccato gulps of a stony brook plunging into a limpid pool lined with verdant moss and fern fringes, and you might know her because you bear a striking resemblance, twins perhaps.

I wish I lived in my own hermitage high in the mountains with no one bothering my peace.
.
You're Irish? - Yeah, what was your first clue?
We were rapt just this evening in meditation in a hollow under a tree large enough to take up residence enveloped in its roots, and I'm keen not to again lose touch though we've scarcely ever had the chance to be in direct touch, yet more than sufficient to stimulate the appetite for more, and losing it should not cause such a sting as it does when for long stretches we are forced to be apart with no hope of again uniting, be it on account of rare inclement weather, general holiday daze, or the sad fact of our benefactor's sudden declining health, and I intend to see to it that we establish a means of communication that shall not soon be rent asunder by the vagaries of a life beset by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, if only she would assent to such a bold proposal.

Did it work? It worked or seems to have. And now I have nothing higher to live for:
Bewitching sidhe or Celtic devi (amcplus.com)
Which, when you come to think of it, might not be a good thing. Let go. Drop it. Attach not for there is a hidden danger in attachment, in grasping and clinging to the pleasant things we grasp. We can instead enjoy things mindfully while we have them in hand and not become obsessed with "possessing" them as if they could ever really satisfy and fulfill. That is not where fulfillment is. Where is fulfillment? Ultimately, it is to be experienced as nirvana, in the nirodha (cessation) here-and-now, by wisdom, a release of the heart.
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Sunday, February 14, 2016

A Buddhist Valentine's Day (sutra)

Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Nyanasobhano (Leonard Price)
I think I'm cute, but my partner doesn't love my love of sports (newravel.com).

Happy Valentine's Day! Sex, love, hooking up instead of intimacy (mademan.com)

.
Modern dating (for shy people)
(Negeen Dargahi) Review with pictures of the four best cell phone dating apps for introverts
.
Nothing Higher to Live For: A Buddhist View of Romantic Love
Ven. Nyanasobhano (Leonard Price, accesstoinsight.org)
Alcohol is the great lubricator, intoxication leads to intoxication and stupidity (NR).

.
Roses are red love poem
If it is possible to live with a purpose, what should that purpose be? A purpose is a guiding principle, a philosophy, or a value of sovereign importance that informs and directs our activities and thoughts.

To have one is to live seriously -- though not necessarily wisely -- following some track, believing in a hub to the wheeling universe or a sea toward which we flow or an end before which all the hubbub of civilization subsides. What is your purpose, friend, or what should it be?

Perhaps most of us do not come to a clear conclusion in the matter, but this does not mean we have no purpose, only that we do not recognize it or admit it or even choose it for ourselves. In the unhappiest case nature simply takes its course, which is a turbid meandering through the swamps of desire. If life means nothing then only pleasure is worthwhile; or if life has meaning and we cannot get at it then still only enjoyment matters -- such is the view of brutes and some sophisticated philosophers. 

Valentine's Day box of chocolates...with no chocolate in them (Henry Payne cartoon)
 
Hello! Dating is awkward (newravel.com).
It slips into the unconscious by default when we hold no other, but we are reluctant to entertain it and will rather, if we think about it, take as our purpose support of family, search for beauty, improvement of society, fame, self-expression, development of talent, and so on. But it might be fair to say that apart from these or beneath these the fundamental purpose of many of us is the search for love, particularly romantic love.
 
The love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man is often the floor to which people fall after the collapse of other dreams. It is held to be solid when nothing else is, and though it frequently gives way and dumps them into a basement of despair, it still enjoys a reputation of dependability.

This much? - That much!
No matter that this reputation is illogical -- it still flourishes and will continue to flourish regardless of what is said in any book. Love, or possibly the myth of love, is the first, last, and sometimes the only refuge of uncomprehending humanity. What else makes our hearts beat so fast? What else makes us swoon with feeling? What else renders us so intensely alive and aching?

The search for love -- the sublime, the nebulous, the consuming -- remains sacred in a world that increasingly despises the sacred. When the heroic and the transcendental are but memories, when religious institutions fill up with bureaucrats and social scientists, when nobody believes there is a sky beyond the ceiling, then there seems no other escape from the prison of self than the abandon of love. With a gray age of spiritual deadness upon us, we love, or beg for love, or grieve for love. We have nothing higher to live for.
 
I love ya, Brenda! Brenda? (buzzcontrol)
Indeed, many take it on faith that romantic love is the highest thing to live for. Popular literature, movies, art, and music tirelessly celebrate it as the one truth accessible to all. Such love obliterates reason, as poets have long sweetly lamented, and this is part of its charm and power, because we want to be swept up and spirited out of our calculating selves.

"Want" is the key word, for in the spiritual void of modern life the wanting of love becomes increasingly indistinguishable from love itself. So powerful, so insistent is it that we seldom notice that the gratification is rare and the craving relentless. Love is mostly in anticipation; it is an agony of anticipation; it is an ache for a completion not found in the dreary round of mundane routine. That we never seem to possess it in its imagined fullness does not deter us. It hurts so bad that it must be good. More
 
Love is my religion. It's a stupid religion as I pretend it's altruism when it's selfish craving, self-involved pining, and egotistic wasting away waiting for fulfillment from someone/something. It's disappointing (unfulfilling), but I have nothing higher to live for!

  • SUTRA SUMMARY: This discourse relates the story of the Buddhist monk, the Buddha's cousin, Tissa, being brought to the Buddha because he has been complaining of his distaste for the monastic life. By means of an allegory, the Buddha teaches him how he can attain nirvana, and promises to help him to do so. (S.iii.106f.)
SUTRA: Love's Languor is a Drug
Maurice O'Connell Walshe and Ven. Thanissaro/Geoffrey DeGraff (trans.), edited by Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, and Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (Tissa Sutra, SN 22.84)
This monastic life is sooo dull, cousin. But look how fine my ascetic robes are.


"Depravity of Seigen" monk haunted by illicit affair
SAVATTHI, ancient India - [Thus have I heard.] On one occasion Ven. Tissa, the Blessed One's cousin, told a large number of fellow ascetics, "Friends, it is as if my body is drugged. I have lost my bearings. Things are not clear to me. My mind keeps being overwhelmed with sloth and torpor. I lead the pure life dissatisfied. I have uncertainty about the Dharma (the Buddha's teachings)."
 
Then a great many ascetics went to the Blessed One and on arrival bowed and sat respectfully to one side. Sitting there, they reported: "Venerable sir, Ven. Tissa, the Blessed One's own cousin, has told a large number of ascetics, 'Friends, it is as if my body is drugged. I have lost my bearings...I have uncertainty about the Dharma.'"
 
The Blessed One told a certain monastic, "Come, in my name, call Tissa, saying, 'The teacher calls you, my friend.'"
 
"As you say, venerable sir," he answered and went to Ven. Tissa and said, "The Teacher calls you, my friend."
 
"As you say, my friend," Ven. Tissa replied. He went to the Blessed One, bowed, and sat respectfully to one side. The Blessed One said to him, "Is it true, Tissa, that you said, 'Friends, it is as if my body is drugged. I have lost my bearings. Things are not clear to me. My mind keeps being overwhelmed with sloth and torpor. I lead the pure [celibate] life dissatisfied. I have uncertainty about the Dharma'?"
 
"Yes, venerable sir."
 
"What do you think, Tissa: In one who is full of passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, and craving for physcial form, does there arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair as a result of change and alteration to one's form?"
 
"Yes, venerable sir."
 
"Good, Tissa, good. That is how it is for one who is full of passion for form.
 
"What do you think, Tissa: In one who is full of passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, and craving for feelings...perceptions...mental formations [constructions, fabrications], does there arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair as a result of change and alteration to one's mental formations?"
 
"Yes, venerable sir."
 
"Good, Tissa, good. That is how it is for one who is full of passion for formations.
 
"What do you think, Tissa: In one who is full of passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, and craving for consciousness, does there arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair as a result of change and alteration to one's consciousness?"
  • [These five -- form, feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness -- are the Five Aggregates or Groups of Clinging, the very things we most identify with and think of as "self" and other. But as they are ever-changing, they are unable to bring lasting fulfillment. They will change and disappoint. They are not "self." Yet, these are the "things" (components, processes) we most cling to in ignorance.]
"Yes, venerable sir."
 
"Good, Tissa, good. That is how it is for one who is full of passion for consciousness [i.e., awareness through the six senses, with mind as the sixth].
 
"Now what do you think, Tissa: In one who is free of passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, and craving for form, does there arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair as a result of change and alteration in one's form?"
 
"No, venerable sir."
 
"Good, Tissa, good. That is how it is for one who is free of passion for form.
 
"What do you think, Tissa: In one who is free of passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, and craving for feelings... perceptions... formations, does there arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair from change and alteration to one's formations?"
 
"No, venerable sir."

"Good, Tissa, good. That i how it is for one who is free of passion for formations.
 
"What do you think, Tissa: In one who is free of passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, and craving for consciousness, does there arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair as a result of change and alteration to one's consciousness?"
 
"No, venerable sir."
 
"Good, Tissa, good. That is how it is for one who is free of passion for consciousness.
 
"What do you think, Tissa -- is form constant or inconstant?"
 
"Inconstant, venerable sir."
 
"And is that which is inconstant fulfilling or disappointing?"
 
"Disappointing, venerable sir."
 
"And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, disappointing, subject to change as, 'This is mine. This is my 'self.' This is what I am'?"
 
"No, venerable sir."
 
"...Is feeling constant or inconstant?" "Inconstant, venerable sir."...
 
"...Is perception constant or inconstant?" "Inconstant, venerable sir."...
 
"...Are formations constant or inconstant?" "Inconstant, venerable sir."...
 
"What do you think, Tissa -- is consciousness constant or inconstant?"
  • [Consciousness (vinanna) is not a solid or single thing but a composite process, the awareness that comes about through the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, or mind.]
"Inconstant, venerable sir."
 
"And is that which is inconstant fulfilling or disappointing?"
 
"Disappointing, venerable sir."
 
"And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, disappointing, subject to change as, 'This is mine. This is my 'self.' This is what I am'?"
 
"No, venerable sir."
 
"So, Tissa, any form whatsoever -- whether past, present, or future, internal or external (here or in others), obvious or subtle, mundane or sublime, far or near -- every form is to be seen as it actually is with wisdom (right understanding) as, 'This is not mine. This is not my 'self.' This is not what I am.'
 
"Any feeling whatsoever...
 
"Any perception whatsoever...
 
"Any formations whatsoever...
 
"Any consciousness whatsoever -- whether past, present, or future, internal or external, obvious or subtle, mundane or sublime, far or near -- every consciousness is to be seen as it actually is with wisdom as, 'This is not mine. This is not my 'self.' This is not what I am.'
 
"Seeing thus, the instructed noble disciple of noble ones grows disenchanted with form, disenchanted with feeling, disenchanted with perception, disenchanted with formations, disenchanted with consciousness. Through disenchantment, one becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, one is fully liberated. With full liberation, there is the knowledge, 'Fully liberated.' One knows, 'Birth is ended, the pure life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'

The PATH
"Tissa, it is as if there were two people, one familiar with the path, the other unfamiliar with the path. In that case, the one unfamiliar with the path would ask the one familiar with the path about the path.

"The second would say, 'Come, good friend, this is the path. Go along it a little further and you will see a fork in the road. Avoiding the left fork, take the right. Go along a little further and you will see an intense forest grove. Go along a little further and you will see a large marshy swamp. Go along a little further and you will see a deep drop-off. Go along a little further and you will see a delightful stretch of level ground.
 
"I have made this analogy (allegory), Tissa, to convey this meaning: The one unfamiliar with the path stands for an ordinary, uninstructed worldling.

"The one familiar with the path stands for the Wayfarer, worthy and rightly awakened. The fork in the road represents uncertainty. The left fork represents the eightfold wrong path -- that is, wrong view, wrong intention, wrong speech, wrong action, wrong livelihood, wrong effort, wrong mindfulness, and wrong concentration. The right fork represents the Noble Eightfold Path -- that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. The intense forest grove represents ignorance. The large marshy swamp represents sensual desires. The deep drop-off represents anger and despair. The delightful stretch of level ground represents nirvana.
 
"Be happpy, Tissa! Rejoice! I am here to exhort you, I am here to guide you, I am here to instruct you!"
 
That is what the Blessed One said. Gratified, Ven. Tissa delighted in the Blessed One's words.

Who was Ven. Tissa?
G.P. Malalasekera, Dictionary of Pali Proper Names
Grown old without yet seeing nirvana
(14) Tissa Thera was the son of the Buddha's paternal aunt, Amitā (2). He entered the Buddhist Monastic Order and lived in a woodland settlement. But he was proud of his rank and irritable and capricious in his conduct. He once came to the Buddha in tears because his fellow ascetics had teased him on account of his talkativeness (S.ii.282; MA.i.289).

On another occasion, the Buddha using his psychic faculty (eye) saw Ven. Tissa sleeping with his open mouth during the siesta and, sending a ray of glory, woke him. Ven. Tissa's heart was filled with anguish, and when he confessed to his fellows his mental laziness and distaste for spiritual exertion, they brought this to the attention of the Buddha (which led to this sutra). The Buddha instructed him, as recorded in this Tissa Sutra, at the end of which he became an arhat or fully enlightened person (Thag.v.39; but see v.1162; S.iii.106f; ThagA.i.105).
 
In a past life, in the time of Tissa Buddha, [the person who became] Tissa swept the leaves from the foot of the bodhi tree. He is evidently identical with Bodhisammajjaka of the Apadāna (Ap.ii.457f).
 
The Dhammapada aphorisms
The Dhammapada Commentary (i.31ff) calls him Thullatissa. He entered the Monastic Order when old and became fat through idleness. He spent most of his time in the Waiting Hall draped in rich robes. Monks, taking him to be a great elder (Mahā Thera) with many as a monastic and therefore likely to be enlightened, begged for  the privilege of performing various services for him, such as massaging his feet. When they discovered his lack of spiritual attainments, they reviled him, and he sought out the Buddha. The Buddha, however, asked him to obtain their pardon for having failed to show them due honor. When he refused, the Buddha related to him the story of Nārada and Devala. (Narada was the Bodhisatta, the Buddha-to-be, in a former life as an ascetic; for the story see Devāla).

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