February is the shortest month of the year. It's Black History Month. It's the month when it rains in California. And at Hill Street Center in Santa Monica it's MONTH LONG ZEN AND SEX MONTH!!! (Thanks eMily)That's right, starting this weekend I will deliver a series of lectures about Zen and sex. These lectures will be a warm up — or perhaps I should say "foreplay" — to the publication of my book SIN SEX AND ZEN in the Autumn of 2010. I've spent the past year writing and researching the matter of Buddhism and its relationship to sex, and vice versa.
There have been books about the subject of Buddhism and sex already. The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality is a good one, and so is Lust for Enlightenment: Buddhism and Sex. But these books deal only with the history of Buddhism as it relates to matters of sexuality. They go into great and very interesting detail about how Asian Buddhists in the ancient past have dealt with these matters.
It's important to be aware of this. In Buddhism we have great reverence for how wise people in ancient times solved the same problems we face today. Kodo Sawaki often spoke about how he simply followed the path of the ancients.
But, at the same time, we are not Asian Buddhists of the distant past. Even if some of you reading this might be Asian, you're still living in different times. The ancient solutions may indeed be best. But many of us today are unable or simply unwilling to accept them and live our lives accordingly. Are we, then, bad Buddhists? Should we give up the practice entirely, knowing full well we can never be as pure as it seems to require us to be?
In Buddha's time, all monks were supposed to be strictly celibate. Even masturbation was forbidden. Male and female monks lived in separate quarters. And homosexual relationships were strictly forbidden.
And yet none of these restrictions came from the point of view that sex was a sin. There is no concept of sin in Buddhism, no matter how hard many Western Buddhists try to shove it in there. No amount of lube is gonna make that sucker slide in! There simply isn't any way to make the concept of sin compatible with Buddhism.
The restrictions came from the idea that in order to devote oneself fully to the practice one had to avoid sex altogether. It was too distracting.
During the Meiji Restoration the Japanese government declared that Buddhist monks could legally marry. In many ways this just acknowledged what had already been a fact for a very long time. Buddhists monks often had long term relationships and even children. In any case, this touched off a new era in Buddhism and sexuality.
This is especially relevant in the West where so much of our Buddhism has been imported from Japan. And yet we're also seeing Buddhist denominations from other countries coming Westward. These denominations have much less liberal attitudes towards sex than the Japanese. It's all very confusing!
The thing I wanted to know when writing the book is; How can Western Buddhists today deal with sexuality? Most of us have no interest in becoming celibate monks. The general attitude towards sex has changed drastically in the past 2500 years. A truckload of juicy hardcore pornography is only a mouse click away from you right this very minute, all absolutely free of charge. We live in a world of seemingly unrestricted access to all kinds of sexuality.
As Buddhists how do we navigate this? It's all well and good to say, "Just avoid contact, and maintain purity of body and mind." But who among us can really do that?
I don't claim to have the answers. But I do think it's important to open the matter up for discussion.
If you're interested in participating, please come to Hill Street Center for the next four Saturdays and join in. All the info you need is at this link. I hope to see you there!
And if it's any further incentive, this lecture series will be the final chance you'll get to participate in Zen practice and discussion with me at Hill Street Center for a while. Those of you who live in the area but have been saying, "Aw, Brad's always there. I'll just go another time," might want to show up. More on this later. But you can look at my growing slate of gigs for 2010 for a clue.
Oh! And buy the damned Dimentia 13 download dammit!
See ya!
