The two comments you made are quite consistent.
– You seem to be making good progress, Lvalio!
This is an important point.
– One CANNOT forcefully give up sensory pleasures (or anything else.)
– The “giving-up” just HAPPENS when one realizes the unfruitfulness/dangers in continuing with those activities.
For example, it is very difficult for a drug addict to give up drugs, or an alcoholic to give up drinking.
– They will voluntarily give up those habits if they can see the bad consequences of those activities.
It is a bit harder to see the hidden dangers of sensory pleasures.
– That is why a fish will never see the dangers in biting to a tasty worm on a hook. A fish does not the ability to comprehend the hidden dangers.
– A human, in the absence of a Buddha, would not even hear about the hidden dangers of sensory pleasures. Even when explained, it is not easy to grasp it. So, I am glad that you seem to have grasped it.
Here is another way to see it.
– The akusala-mula Paticca Samuppada process starts with “avijja paccaya sankhara” and INVARIABLY ends with “jati paccaya jara, marana, ..” or “the whole mass of suffering.”
– Now, these sankhara are nothing but our thoughts, speech, and actions to get hold of things that we crave for. Those cravings are mostly for sensory pleasures.
– They INVARIABLY end up in suffering (via bad births)
– But since those ‘bad births” occur in future lives, it is hard to register that in mind.
P.S.
I saw the comment by y not after posting the above.
– y not wrote, “I still turn on the tv for the news, for instance.”
Yes. I do too.
– That is a very low form of sensory pleasure. Such habits continue until the Arahant stage.
– One first gives up (voluntarily) those activities related to hatred and excess greed.