Interesting piece from Darren Littlejohn:

Many people still see Buddhists only as robe-wearing monastics who have given up worldly things like sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. But there are different kinds of Buddhists. Some are celibate renunciates like the Dalai Lama. When asked on a recent TV interview if he ever thought about women, he said he doesn’t because he’s a monk, though occasionally he does notice a beautiful woman. As a monk, the Dalai Lama has taken vows that prohibit sex, partly because it can lead to attachment which is a distraction from the spiritual path. But other kinds of Buddhists are young, single and sexually active. Some are married. And some are “wild yogis” who don’t even look like Buddhists.

Commuter Zen #89

Allison Yarrow offered up this piece about Lodro Rinzler’s class at the Shambhala Center in NYC. I thought it quite interesting and struck me as so congruent with a great deal of our quasi-Buddhist approaches that we celebrate at Infinite Smile.

Rinzler authors a weekly column on Huffington Post and he has a new book, The Buddha Walks Into a Bar: A Guide to Life for a New Generation. The column, What Would Sid Do, offers an “honest look at what meditators face in the modern world,” reminding readers that “before Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) attained enlightenment he was a confused 20-and 30-something looking to learn how to live a spiritual life.”

via The Daily Beast.

As I so frequently say from the cushion, there is nowhere that the Dharma is not being offered. There is no place that exists without the fullness of the teaching. Ego itself is infused with the magesty of Spirit’s continual grace. This includes alcohol, as Rinzler points out, as well as sex. I couldn’t agree more and I’m glad to see that the Dharma’s application in the “real” world is facing these and other issues fully.

Chogyam Trungpa

On the other hand, I’ve also found that if this approach isn’t treated, ahem, soberly we can find deep divisions can present themselves in our practice. The founder of Lodro Rinzler’s tradition, Chögyam Trungpa, as well as many of his followers, fell into these traps and caused an assortment of problems. So we need to continually remind ourselves that despite the fact that our vices can be met mindfully doesn’t mean that they will not be potentially very harmful to both self and other.

For the record, I’m not trying to moralize. I am, however, pointing out that a certain spiritual finesse is needed in our work both as teachers and as students. Any of us really on the path to awaken continually needs to lean into the notion of “Do No Harm” as we live in the world. Yes, people will get hurt in break-ups. I know this first hand. And yes, occasional overindulgence may tax our bodies unnecessarily. I used to be much more familiar with this kind of pain. Not so much these days. Regardless, it is in the clarity of an individual’s intention that an awareness can unfold which allows her to awaken to a spaciousness that is “grounded” in a field beyond all vanity and all desire. Skipping the steps that get us to this fundamental peace, means that we bypass the very climb that is most needed if we are to truly awaken. Anything short of this often allows for the structures of the ego to stay intact in the most subtle of ways thereby giving rise to a very small self that mistakenly sees itself as Big.

In the past few weeks, there have been several of our sangha members, both virtual and local, young and (dare I say) more mature, who’ve asked me about their deep longing for partnership. Questions surrounding how they might find true intimacy, and then how to ground relationships spiritually, have dominated our discussions. This is not only appropriate but it is an utterly necessary demand to put on spiritual work if the blessings of ancient traditions are going to survive in the face of contemporary societies most pressing needs. So can dating be more conscious, more enlightened? The answer depends on one’s willingness to truly meet his or her life from a place of radical honesty and depth, where people work to courageously face and then see through their loneliness.

Truth be told, my expertise on this issue should be considered suspect. I haven’t dated since the last century. It should also be noted that I spent much of my youth searching for connection in pretty destructive ways. In high school and college, I learned that if I couldn’t have a meaningful relationship of depth with the one that I wanted, I might as well, as the song goes, love the one I was with. Lot’s of playing around in between long-lasting relationships of varying degrees of dysfunction. But as the years passed, I became pretty picky. I began to hone my checklist of what I wanted and what I didn’t want in a partner and became clear about where I was willing to compromise, and, more importantly, where I wasn’t.

What I really wanted was to live near truth, all of the time. I wanted to love and to be loved, and I wanted this shared experience to show up as something deep, something of merit, integrity and power. I wanted something that could lead me closer to awakening with another. This impulse began to grow in me as I was introduced to Buddhist training which began to show me that my patterns of sexual greed merely fed the parts of me that continually prevented clarity. The more I sat in meditation, however, the more I began to see that my time alone was a gift that allowed me to see through to the core of my own loneliness. When I got to the base of my sense of alienation and disconnectedness, I saw a bunch of false stories of inadequacy that I’d written over many years. I had the help of a great therapist and a great Zen teacher in uncovering all of this, with each of them relentlessly pointing me in the direction of my own interior. In time I no longer felt the compulsion to act on my desire to escape from my pain. I learned that pain was simply intensity that I was continually running from. When I accepted and sat still in the face of the intensity, however, I saw that it had no power over what was real in me. As a result of this discovery, a relatively unshakeable and comfortable presence began to grow regardless of whether or not I was with or without a partner. Not surprisingly, it was in this felt-sense of wholeness that partnerships of true potential started to show up.

(more…)

Sex educator, Violet Blue, interviews author, punk rock bassist, film-maker and Zen rebel, Brad Warner about… you guessed it, the interconnection of sex and Buddhism.

Violet Blue: What’s the basic philosophy about sex from a Zen perspective?

Brad Warner: There’s no specific philosophy as such. When you enter the Buddhist order either as a layperson or clergy you take ten vows, one of which is not to abuse sexuality. But there is no specific definition of what that means. In the earliest Buddhist sanghas they decided that meant you had to be celibate. And some orders still interpret it that way. Lucky for me, Japanese-style Zen Buddhism does not interpret it in that way.

So many individuals seem to think that for any person to be spiritual they need to negate any impulse that originates below the neck. And yet cutting ourselves off from our bodily urges is just another attachment. At the same time, indulging our bodily urges is also just another attachment. Finding the middle space where our sexuality is neither abusive to self nor other helps us in this navigation.

Wow.

I know what you’re thinking: this is all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.

Shooting on the Chinese-language film 3D Sex And Zen, budgeted at 4 million US dollars, is scheduled for April with producers promising some of the most realistic close-up sex scenes ever.

Yeah, so be careful.

“Just imagine that you’ll be watching it as if you were sitting beside the bed,” Stephen Shiu Jnr told the Sunday Morning Post.

“There will be many close-ups. It will look as if the actresses are only a few centimetres from the audience.”

via LIVENEWS.com.au.

Bows, Tricycle.

Over at Wildmind, Sunada talks of her interpretation of attachment in relation to love:

let’s clarify what the Buddha said about sexual relationships. He said that a man and a woman in a loving, supportive relationship are like a pairing of a god and a goddess. Hardly sounds like disapproval, does it? It turns out the Buddha was all for people committing to relationships and enjoying them to their full extent. In fact, he saw all human relationships as wonderful opportunities to practice loving-kindness, generosity, and mutual support. A long-term committed one was all the more an opportunity to go deeper in one’s understanding and cultivation of these qualities.

First off, if we take the Buddha at his word, which we should be careful about since we don’t know what he said, homosexuality is left out of the mix. This is interesting to me. What  would Buddha do if he were asked to preside over a commitment ceremony shared by same sex adults?

My guess, and that’s all it is, would be that the Buddha wouldn’t attach to anything, neither would he avoid anything. Thus a contextually appropriate response would be offered. This is what Yunmen thinks enlightenment is: an appropriate response.

With this said, love seems to come in two forms. One us open, broad, and boundless. The other is an egoic negotiation. The former is the result of allowing our relationships to inform our practice, with the latter being a source of suffering.

via Love, sex, and non-attachment | Wildmind Buddhist Meditation.

Stuart Davis courageously (and hilariously) takes on the implications of our sexuality, ahem, co-arising with desire and identity:

A little awareness goes a long way… toward ruining everything. I used to bang groupies. It was fun. I became a little more aware, and BAM, now I can’t even enjoy an internet Bukakke sight without my heart going ‘That’s Suffering. In disguise.’ If I could find the earholes to my soul, I would plug them.

via Stuart’s Blog