doors for opening

Some of living the monk life is about clearing away things you don't want so you can fully enjoy the things you do want - if this is called asceticism or mistaken for deprivation, so be it. Like everything, there's a lot in the degrees to which you take away, reduce, that end up rendering sensual experience more abundant.

Seems to me ascetics and pleasure-mongers are actually going for the same experience: intensification of the senses - through distillation or submersion, you choose your method. An ascetic is a glut in some regards, a pleasure-seeker is, by the nature of the crush, squeezing out a lot of potential though subtler sensation.

In my Introduction to World Dance class we are looking at the Indian classical dance form Bharata Natya - I think some of this is coming out of me (along with my underwear) in this rite. I long to be a dancing devadasi, propitiating the god, centuries ago, in a temple.