NEWS: MISUSING SEX (Part a Million)

CULTURE: MISUSING SEX (Part a Million)

Here’s an e-mail I got recently:

Elizabeth,

I’ve received a lot of e-mails along these lines. But as for my writing giving people “new to Zen the idea impression that they can be totally into porn and still practice Zen consistently,” I don’t know if I’m giving that impression or not. I’m not trying to. And I also don’t know whether someone actually could be deeply into porn and yet practice Zen consistently. Maybe. Maybe not. Certainly a lot of people who consider themselves not to be new to Zen think a person can’t be into porn and practice Zen, and they are happy to point this out to me and to their own flocks of followers.

In the end, though, I can’t be too worried about people misinterpreting my writings as a call to gorge themselves on smut. The moment you say anything publicly, someone will completely misconstrue it and then blame you for having told them to do whatever it is that gets them in trouble. This goes for anything you say about any subject in any tone of voice or with any string of words in any language. Communication is tough. But for what it’s worth, I tend to doubt that you can be a total porn glutton and be able to keep a very good Zen practice going. Any kind of obsession is going to get in the way of practice, whether it’s an obsession with porn or with food or even with Buddhism itself. But with consistent and, more importantly, constant practice these kinds of obsessions tend to work themselves out anyway.

As for porn stoking desires that cannot and probably should not be fulfilled, that is certainly true. But pornographers are rank amateurs compared to the folks who make TV shows and commercials when it comes to stoking desires that can’t and probably shouldn’t be fulfilled. Pornographers just flash you some tits (or cock or whatever) and, if you’re in the mood, you take the bait and enjoy the images until such time as you’ve, um, come to desire them less. The folks who make TV shows and commercials know how to get you wanting the stuff they’re selling any time you switch the idiot box on. TV shows have millions of people convinced that if they aren’t living the kind of lives they see on screen something must be terribly wrong. At least most consumers of porn don’t generally feel unfulfilled if their real lives aren’t like an X-rated video. Again, I’m not denying porn does stoke desires (and gives you desire to stroke — haw!), but I think there are much greater dangers in the mainstream media.

Also, maybe my own approach to porn is not like other people’s. I don’t know. Because for me, when I look at, say, one of my fave Suicide Girls’ photo shoots, I don’t ever think, “Damn! If only I could fuck her I’d be fulfilled!” I know I’m not likely to ever get my mitts on — fill in your own fave SG’s name here (I don’t want to get myself in trouble) —‘s shapely ass. And that’s fine. I can still enjoy pictures of it. I’m not so sure every guy feels that way, though. Some may mistakenly believe they’d be better off if they could have real, rather than virtual sex with the girls whose photos they look at, and they may suffer for having such delusions. But you know what? People have lots of delusions. Most of them cause far more suffering than that one.

Another thing is that although the sex portrayed in porn is totally unrealistic, ironically enough people’s attitudes toward sex seem to be far more realistic and healthier in cultures that allow porn than in cultures that suppress it. In societies where porn is allowed there is greater equality for women, lower incidences of institutionalized sexual violence, a greater tolerance for those of non-standard sexual orientation and so on. It seems to me that open access to pornography plays some role in this process. So I think we should never try to suppress pornography.

Through my work with SuicideGirls I’ve become acquainted with people in the sex industry. People used to ask me, “What if it were your daughter/wife/girlfriend in those pictures???” My answer in the past was that it wasn’t any of those people, so I couldn’t say. But these days some of the women on SuicideGirls are friends of mine, as are some other people in the sex trade. And while SuicideGirls isn’t really porn by today’s standards, it’s certainly erotic nudity. I admit I sometimes get a funny feeling when I see someone I know naked on the Internet. And not just “that kind” of a funny feeling either. I find myself worrying about them and how their decision to “go pink” might affect their lives. But their decision to pose is their own, not mine. So it’s really none of my business. I agree with my 87-year-old Zen teacher who said, upon looking at this site, that the photos were beautiful and that beauty is an expression of truth.

Still, there are difficulties that come with posing naked in public. I always hope that my friends who do that kind of work can handle the inevitable pressures that come with it. It shouldn’t be taken lightly. I think that a lot of people who produce pornography encourage their models to think of it as no big deal and a lot of those models find themselves in a very bad way when they discover that some people do consider it a very big deal indeed. It’s hard for me to look at any piece of pornography these days in a detached way without considering the lives of the people I’m seeing. As such I find it difficult personally to look at most porn anymore.

But that’s my own individual take on it. I don’t know if it’s necessarily “right,” nor would I want to try and somehow universally mandate that attitude even if I could. Still, you’re correct. Buddhism is not an “anything goes” philosophy. Yet it’s not as if there is or ever could be a list of rules that would apply to everyone in every situation for all time. We, as Buddhists, take a vow not to misuse sexuality. My own teacher has re-worded this vow as, “Do not desire too much.” The great ancient teacher Bodhidharma said, “Not giving rise to attachment is the precept of not misusing sexuality.” Sex is just one of the areas where we need to take great care. Sure sex is an important area and special attention needs to be paid. But if you’re too God damned horny to think straight then perhaps the best way to avoid misusing sex is to log on to SuicideGirls, masturbate furiously, be done with it, and then go out into the world more mellow, less sex crazed and less likely to misuse sex in a far more damaging way.

Desiring less is the goal of Zen practice, but achieving some mythical state of desirelessness is not. Ain’t no such thang! No one is ever free from all desire. But through our practice our desires gradually become less compelling. We also start to see the consequences of those desires and we start to avoid fulfilling those desires that cause us problems. The desire for sex is a very basic human condition. Without that desire none of us would be alive at all. Pornography has been with us since human beings first learned to communicate their desires to each other through art and through language. It’s not going away. In fact we can expect it to become more and more open in the future. As Zen practitioners we need to learn to live in a world in which pornography is open and available. Whether we consume it or not is up to each individual. It’s certainly not up to me to decide for anyone.

(Sorry this article was way too long, the next one will be shorter, I promise)

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff and a MySpace page too. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.

Brad plays bass and sings on the new Zero Defex CD available now from CD Baby or get a copy personally autographed by Brad on eBay right here!

why you can't smoke while meditating, but can meditate while smoking

Smoke provides a sub-aether through which metaconscious thought can exist.

This made perfect sense, Nice work.

Brilliant, as always.

nice

It's been a while since I've read your column, is that the right word? due to being busy with that crazy thing called life but I have to say you make some very valid points, Especially regarding "aspirational" TV like "The OC" for example which seems to subliminally make everyone feel really bad about their "mundane" lives just because they're not one of the "beautiful people". In the UK we have the likes of "Eastenders" which has the opposite effect it's so inherrently depressing that it actually makes you feel better about your life 'cause at least hopefully you don't know someone who's been raped and has a drug problem who's dad happens to be a paedophile.

I'm obviously inclined to agree with you about a little porn being harmless, but I find your argument to be oddly un-compelling. I think a bell goes off in my brain, whenever I see someone defending something they enjoy using an idea as ludicrous as the implication that porn is somehow responsible for the advancement of women's rights, that says, "this is an emotional argument, not a rational argument." correlation does not imply causation!

so I admit the possibility I'm being unfair. but I think at most we can say that maybe what little mainstream acceptance of porn there is might have arisen in part from the feminist revelation that women shouldn't be morally censured for enjoying sex. it seems more plausible to me, though, to say that feminism is merely a part of the trend toward liberalism that every society experiences as its population becomes better educated and wealthier, and that a grudging semi-acceptance of porn is just one of many results (along with, for example, a grudging semi-acceptance of drug use, subculture, atheism, homosexuality, etc.).

maybe that's kind of a weak point on which to take issue with your whole essay, but I kept waiting for the knockout punch of an answer, and felt like it never came.

I love your column, by the way. I'm only criticizing because I usually think it's fucking fantastic! I'll probably I'll get flamed to hell for this, anyway.

I agree with this.

I spend so much of the day wading through bullshit that it is absolutely renewing to hear such words as these.

The frog jumps into the pond.

you said

And this illustrates how to practice desiring less quite nicely

Seriously, nice work on this piece - less desire doesn't mean avoidance, repression, or denial, it means considering all aspects with detachment, and trying to come to a way of incorporating the desires without letting them be a consuming force.

or sumthin like that.

And print advertising, radio advertising, newspaper editorials, music videos, you name it.

Where porn arguably fails to compare to the "consumer culture" we're railing against - and I'm playing devil's advocate here - is that it may not lead to people constructively channeling their energies. For instance, the individual who watches, for the sake of argument, The OC, and feels empty that the material things in their life are not as beautiful as those they see on the gogglebox, may focus their energies on getting those things. On working harder, on working smarter, on doing something that makes things better. For instance, developing a new type of crop to increase yields; or simply installing insulation in a house to save energy for the occupier. Do the desires released by porn compare?

Reading this back I can see I've gone off tangentially here... but I got three and a half hours sleep last night and claim that as my defence.

i'm not a practitioner of zen, but this is well worded and reasoned out. you make damn good points about societies with a more accepting view of pornography.

I love how most of the articles you write here are defensive in part to a previous article or something you've said. Makes me wonder why people have such a hard time with the concepts. Mostly, I think people are trying hard to be convinced of something that can only be truly gathered through experience.

Regardless, I'm always enthusiastic about reading your words. After all, it was you who peaked my interest in zen buddhism.

I have a little hypothesis of mine and if you just so happen to read my two cents here, Brad, I'd like your thoughts. Would you agree that Zen is the path of the ultimate rebellion?

Brad, I got interested in your work by hearing the program you did with jean foracca on NPR's Here on Earth. That was one of the most interesting programs I've heard in quite a long while. It was what actually led me back to suicidegirls in the first place, I was a member a long time ago but did not know they had added and expanded so much. I find it quite refreshing that you're a punk like me who got disenfranchised with the whole scene and felt it was time to find something real. I get that through activism and trying to be involved in local politics, but it was interesting to hear about the path you took to find the "brass tax" of this life. Thanks and keep writing. i'll keep reading.