Here's an excerpt from my new book which Shambhala Sun Space has kindly put up. The book is, of course, Sex, Sin and Zen and it's out now at fine book stores everywhere.You'll note that the excerpt is followed by a discussion of my use of the term "sexual preferences." One of the readers takes issue with this stating:
"The term "sexual preference" belittles the agony that gays and lesbians often must go through in order to become honest with themselves and others about who they are. Many don't make it that far, and they lose their lives. Others lose their lives through murder, at the hands of psychopaths who cannot tolerate their honesty. If sexual orientation were a simple matter of preference, and if people could just choose to "be without preference," as Brad suggests, then we wouldn't see a suicide rate among gay teens that's up to four times higher than that among heterosexual teens. Most of those kids, I assure you, aren't at peace with their "preferences" -- and they would probably choose differently, at that stage, if they had the power. They have "preferences" about the kinds of clothes they wear and the music they listen to and the movies they see and the places they hang out, but sexual identity is on another order of magnitude in terms of complexity. Its causes and conditions, as far as we understand (which, frankly, isn't very far), encompass both biology and psychology, nature and nurture."
There's lots more to the discussion than that, including some comments by Rod Meade-Sperry who put the excerpt up clarifying that I do not take the view in the book that sexual orientation is simply a matter of preference. But you can jump over there and read the rest if you want. Here's my answer:
An interesting discussion! The word "preference" here is indeed unfortunate. In the portion of the book excepted above I was trying to look at the Buddhist idea of "avoiding preferences." And so I was riffing on this word. I don't believe that one chooses to be gay rather than straight the same way one chooses to order strawberry ice cream instead of vanilla. And Dennis is correct, far too many people in our culture today seem to think it's something like that.
One of the many interesting aspects of Zen practice for me personally has been the discovery that there is a tremendous amount of variety in the thoughts and desires that arise in my mind once I stop working so hard at defining myself to myself. Among the many things I discovered was the fact that my own personal sexual orientation was not a fixed and rigid thing. Since I'm the kind of person I am, the idea that I could occasionally find men sexually appealing was not really a big shock. Some of the other stuff I recognized about myself was truly disturbing. That I could be attracted to men was no big deal, especially by comparison.
The point I'm clumsily trying to get at here is that sexual orientation -- hetero, homo, bi, trans, queer, etc. -- seems to me to be just one of a big stew of things we use to constantly define and reinforce our provisional sense of self. Ultimately it's all delusion, even when it's a provisionally useful delusion. Some of it may even be true as far as it goes. But it still falls short of who we really are.
I was trained in the Zen school where we are taught not to draw a hard line between ultimate and relative truth. The party line in Zen is that ultimate and relative truth are one and the same. Dennis is right about the orders of magnitude between preferring the Ramones to Air Supply as compared to one's sexual orientation. Still, as a Zen convert I'm stuck with having to make the point that it's all relative no matter how real it seems. But then again even the undeniable fact that I am a human being living on planet Earth is, too, just relative truth (and, as such, is also absolute truth). So this is a very big topic, far more than you could possibly do justice to in the comments section of a Shambhala Sun Space blog.
In the end, though, I'm still as hetero as I ever was. As Dennis points out, it's part of my personal karma. In spite of what I found through my practice, I can't just flip to the other side through an act of will. In my own case I'm lucky that there is no societal pressure to do so. It must be really horrible when there is.
But I find I'm more personally at ease with myself because I've been able to drop some of the very hard clinging I did to my sexual identity -- among many other aspects of identity. I imagine a lot of people could do with discovering these things about themselves. This is especially true for hetero folks like me, I think. And here's why.
We need to treat everyone we meet with respect and dignity regardless of their orientation. That's for sure! I believe that the Buddhist practice can help establish that by allowing more people to see how fluid their own identity -- sexual or otherwise -- actually is. Then we cease to view others as eternally different from ourselves.
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Again, a plug for the two events I'm doing in New York next week. The first is a book signing at 7 pm on October 15th at the Iinterdependence Project in the East Village. Be there!
The following two days, October 16th and 17th, we're having a two-day non-residential retreat at the Interdependence Project in the East Village. This is a terrific opportunity for anyone who wants to get a real taste of what zazen is all about. The retreat is open to beginners, no experience necessary. It will be focused on shikantaza style zazen as taught by Dogen Zenji. It's non-residential, which means you get to go out and have a night on the town in Manhattan afterward instead of being cooped up with a bunch of Zen nerds all night.
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And I would like to thank everyone who has been making use of the donation button up on the top left corner of this page. Every little bit helps a lot. Thanks!
