We can now go more deeply into our subject, but you’ll need to listen more carefully. Otherwise, it will end up crude or dirty. We are considering the sexual feelings that are so highly worshipped among women and men, raised to the level of divinity — Kāmadevas. People will exert themselves in all kinds of ways just to get what they can from sexuality. They work hard at a good job, earn a lot of money, make the most wonderful marriages they can — all in adoration of sexual pleasure.

Whoever realizes atammayatā won’t feel that way. Instead, they experience that the most exquisite sexual feelings, the highest sexual flavors, are merely thoughts and mental concoctions. They aren’t anything real or fundamentally true. They are just thoughts that must be labeled “most crazy, absolutely foolish, genuinely deluded.” They are stirred up by defiled reactions. Thus, they can be acted out upon animals, dolls, sex toys, even corpses. Some use pillows. [See website for more explanation of atammayatā.]

If one has atammayatā, one isn’t so stupid. One sees all that as just mental images created by ignorance (avijjā) — mere imaginings of the ignorant mind. Because a mind is foolish and crazy, it stirs up such feelings.

If people understood this, they wouldn’t be tricked and fooled by these imaginings. Further, they’ll understand a more ultimate fact of life that even in person-to-person contact, man and woman in intimate embrace, won’t be sexually aroused without these sexual imaginings. This is how it is even with real live people, let alone the dolls, sex toys, animals, corpses, and the what-have-you of fools. Wise people know that the most delicious sexual feelings are mere imaginings. One must create the images to excite oneself and be fully aroused. That’s the only way it can happen.

When we realize this, atammayatā has peaked. Nothing can fool or trick us. Masculinity and femininity disappear and there are no sexual feelings, sensations, or meanings.

Oh well, I may have gone too far here and said more than your boundaries can take. Still, get the essential point here. Atammayatā at its fullest and most complete can’t be tricked by anything.

Once you understand this, you’ll understand how Arahants are above the experience and sensation of gender and sexuality. This is because they have the highest level of atammayatā. I could go on about this all day without finishing, but this is enough for you to get the essential point. Mind is still and unperturbed. Nothing can concoct feelings of positive and negative. Nothing can stir up love or hate, gladness or sadness. This is atammayatā, the highest Dhamma. The end. To reach the fullness of atammayatā is to be Arahant.

Atammayatā Paridassanā (12.C), p. 136-137.

translated by Santikaro Bhikkhu