MISUSING SEX (Part a Million)

Here’s an e-mail I got recently:


Hi Brad,

Some pieces of yours I've been reading lately make it seem like you advocate porn. In your book Sit Down and Shut Up! you indicate that, as humans, we all have desires, which is true of course and can't be denied. I found that refreshing to read in a Zen context. You go on to say that we shouldn't try to kill desire, but rather desire less.

So, my question: if one of the premises of Zen practice is that we should desire less, how is porn — which, by definition, stokes desires that usually can't and in some cases shouldn't be fulfilled — consistent with Zen practice?

I can see how someone steeped in Zen might approach porn and sex in a different way than the average person, but I don't see that porn would have any good effect on either Zen or non-Zen people. It's like beer or Cheetos™. Sure it might not hurt you in small quantities, but it certainly doesn't help anyone. I agree with Nina Hartley that Americans are screwed-up with regard to sex. I just don't think that exposure to more sex, in an impersonal way - even in a frank and honest non-personal way - is really going to help people. And I feel like the manifest content of your current writings might give people new to Zen the impression that they can be totally into porn and still practice Zen consistently. You yourself have said that Zen isn't "anything goes," but your writings lately seem to speak otherwise. I realize that you are reaching out to a community that might otherwise hear nothing of Zen, and that is definitely valuable, but in speaking their language, does the Zen still come across? Please help me understand.

best,
Elizabeth

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!

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/news/culture/23158/MISUSING-SEX-Part-a-Million/