y not said: ” it is hard to resist going back to enjoying something one likes(of course, in cases where you are thereby not harming any one else in any way). I myself cannot resist, to quote the example Upekkha gives, listening over and over again to a song I like. I see nothing wrong in it at all, per se..”
Perhaps it is easier to understand this difference between tanha and upadana by taking a more extreme example.
Suppose one trying to break the habit of taking drugs. Initially, when the urge comes (due to tanha), he may go along with more vaci snkhara and will get “worked up” to the point that it will be impossible for him to not to use it.
Suppose he gets better at resisting the drug use, but keeps thinking about it. He may be able to resist for longer times, but at some point he will not be able to resist. So, it is a bad idea to think that “just thinking about it not so bad”. If one is really motivated, one MUST at least keep reducing the time that one is “day dreaming about it”.
The Buddha explained it this way: One cannot live more than seven days without food AND water. One will die.
– But if one stops taking food, but takes in just water, one can live for several weeks.
– That is the analogy for killing a habit. If one stops BOTH kaya sankhara (actual act) and vaci sankhara (thinking about it), then one can kill the habit in a relatively short time.
Breaking a habit involves stopping food (associated bodily actions or kaya sankhara) and water (vaci sankhara).
– So, one can break the habit of taking drugs in a shorter time (say a month) if he has the discipline to stop taking it AND also stop thinking about it.
– But if he stops taking the drug but goes on enjoying thinking about it (vaci sankhara), then he may go on without suing drugs for months and months, and one day he may lose the resolve and take the drug.
– In fact this happens to a lot of people who are trying to stop taking alcohol or even stop eating too much. They may temporarily stop those activities, but months later they break it. That is because they had not stopped generating vaci sankhara!
Of course, I am not saying that listening to music is bad. But if one is working to get to the Anagami stage, that can be a hindrance. Of course, by that time one would have seen the “unfruitfullness” of listening to music. It is all relative. As I pointed out in a recent post, it is a step-by-step process to Nibbana.