What is BI (Biological Imperative)?
Chemicals released in the brain that urgently compel one to perform an action to avoid danger and ensure both short and long term survival.
In general, most of BI falls under the three F’s. Feeding, Fighting, Fornication.
One of the keys to overcoming carnal lust, passion, sensuality (desire for 5 strings of sensual pleasure), is understanding the true nature of BI.
BI is impersonal. You have roughly 75 trillion cells in your body, each cell has a life span of less than 7 years. They clone themselves, imperfectly, and billions of cells die, are cloned, and recycled and eliminated from “your” body everyday. This process is happening continuously.
On the micro (personal) level, this is happening. On the macro level, living organisms, including humans, survive by reproducing, allowing the species to survive.
Now feeding and caring for yourself, let alone a partner, offspring, family, clan, is a lot of work. Before industrialization, even the simple act of eating for survival was a monumental struggle. It’s a lot of work, a lot of suffering to survive on the micro and macro level. How did humans and other species manage to survive?
Enter BI (biological imperative). This comes in the form of pain and pleasure. Pain lets you know you’re doing something harmful to micro and macro survival. Pleasure floods your brain with addictive euphoric chemicals that pervade your whole physical body and you feel powerless to resist its addictive urges.
What is a FIB?
fib (noun): a lie, false statement
noun: fib; plural noun: fibs
a lie, typically an unimportant one.
"parents told little white fibs about out-of-wedlock births"
Some synonyms for 'fib'
untruth
falsehood
made-up story
trumped-up story
invention
fake news
fabrication
deception
fib (verb): tell an unimportant lie.
verb: fib; 3rd person present: fibs; past tense: fibbed; past participle: fibbed; gerund or present participle: fibbing
F.I.B. is a pun on ‘fib’
FIB: (F)ooled by the (I)mperative of (B)iology
The English dictionary word ‘fib’ has much broader scope and application.
The reason I came up with this acronym
FIB, is because in
EBT some of the most important Dhamma teachings deal with this problem of
kāma 💘💃 as a prime example, and the separate page for ‘FIB’ is useful to compare how EBT and non Buddhist complementary methods can assist.
So how can you surmount this seemingly irresistible force of the FIB?
Invert the FIB, and you get BIF
BIF is what you get when you invert the
FIB.
Lots of practice, patience, diligence, and forgiving yourself for missteps. Just as one can be disciplined in eating once or day, or eating only between sunrise and solar noon time, one gradually comes to deeply understand that those physical euphoric pleasurable feelings are just BI. Don’t fall for the FIB, don’t be ruled by the biological imperative. Understand it, and put it in its proper place. You need to respond to pain to prevent harming your physical health, and to an extent you need to listen to pleasurable feelings from eating to tune in to know which foods contain nutrients you need (it changes with time and conditions depending on how you use your body).
But beyond those essential survival needs, don’t fall for the FIB. If you’re aiming for nirvana, following the precepts of celibacy/chastity/brahmacariya, you can completely ignore sexual impulses. BI that is related to sleeping and eating, you have to pay attention to, but sexual urges you can train yourself to completely ignore, they only do you harm. Treat them like you would robo calls, unsolicited advertising, spam. Incinerate immediately. If you don’t you give it potential to harm you gravely.