A man walks down to the river, ready to collect his water for the day.
Upon reaching the river, he realises he has left his container at his house and has no vessel with which to collect the water.
He looks to the rushing stream and places two fingers within.
He licks his fingers and holds them gently in his mouth, pausing to savour.
Zenpuss has been thinking. Not Zazenpuss then, just Zenpuss.
Zenpuss is trying to consider what being a Zen Puss is really all about. It is uncomplicated and unconscious at the same time as being complex and convoluted. It is all things and it is nothing. It is the self and it is about others. There is no answer and yet the answer is there for all to see.
Being at one with ourselves and considering the oneness of others has to be a path to Enlightenment. I am almost fearful of using quotes from the great masters to justify my purpose because I feel far too inept to do them justice. I am humbled by the expression and thoughtfulness of others and I do not want to demean their words in any way. However, there is so much to learn about sexual enlightenment through what is written about enlightenment itself, and therefore is probably worth commentary.
And yet, I am still concerned by the fact that one of the Five Worldly Desires is a desire for sex, and this is not necessarily seen as a positive thing.
Perhaps sex in itself is fine and that an enlightened sexuality transcends desire. For now, that is how I am approaching this.
I was going to apologise to regular readers, if there are any, for this writing not being full of sexual innuendos and sauciness but I shall not. Part of being Zenpuss is to excite, arouse, fascinate as a means of bringing out the readers’ essence of sexuality. I aim to stimulate in order that you, the reader, gets a greater understanding of your own sexuality. However, Zenpuss also aims to bring sexual enlightenment and reasoning to others, though the reasoning is not a necessary element unless it helps one to simply be.
I cannot have a name like Zenpuss without thinking about the first syllable in greater detail. So today’s writing is about Zen, about what it could mean as far as sexuality and how that sexuality may bring an aspect of enlightenment that is not yet realised.
Zen is a lifetime of training. It has no end. Even the enlightened continue to practice. They do not sit in defiant harmony once Enlightenment has been achieved.
Just so with sexuality. Even those who feel that they have had a life fulfilled by wonderful sexual experiences still have plenty to learn about the completeness of sex and the oneness with another, and indeed themselves. Nothing is unattainable. Nothing is reached, and yet in the simplicity and complexity of sex, one can glimpse the Satori; the absolute expression of the enlightened.
Sex, of course, is a very personal thing and subconsciously or consciously we build a picture in our mind of right and wrong. Sex is penetrative sex only. Sex is liberating. Homosexuality is wrong. Making love brings harmony. Exploring your own body is frowned upon. Sex is monogamous. Sex is functionary. Masturbation is the best way to achieve orgasm.
The list is ceaseless. Where we have attained these preconceived ideas about sex and sexuality is sometimes a mystery. Whichever way they entered our consciousness though, they are present.
I recently read a commentary about Zen where it stated, “It is not easy to brush away the delusions that cloud emancipating truth”. Our society is full to the brim of delusions about sex and sexuality. There are rules and responsibilities. There are conditional rights and wrongs. There is a distinct lack of liberty. In order to truly understand our own sexuality we must free ourselves from the imposed and the self-developed misconceptions about what is sexuality, recognising that sexuality has to be something that is very personal and individualistic. What is understood as sexual peaks by some is only half way up the mountain for others. What is patently immoral to one is the only way to enlightenment for another.
Being sexually enlightened has to involve brushing away these delusions and preconceptions. Being sexually liberated means freeing oneself from all that knowledge and thought, and simply be at one with your sexual being.
Let’s consider the Three Treasures of Buddhism as a starting point. Again, I do make a slight apology to the greatness of the Buddha’s if they feel offended at my usage but there is no intention of abuse. I am merely using these ideas and words to convey the meaning of enlightenment in a sexual way.
The Buddha is the one who realises.
The Dharma is what is realised.
The Sangha is the harmony of realisation and practice.
I’m not professing to be a Buddha. That is way beyond me for now. The Buddha in this case is you; the person who realises that there is a need and a want for sexual enlightenment. In that case, it could be me, it could be you.
The Dharma, as far as sexual enlightenment is concerned is what is realised; the release from the delusions, the stimulation and serenity of sexual fulfilment, the actualisation of sexual harmony.
The Sangha is the coming together of mind and body in understanding what sex is and can be and doing something about it.
I have been awakened from my dormant state. I have realised what I want and what I need. I have enjoyed the essence of my sexual being and I am in total harmony and in complete peace when I have the opportunity to practice and further continue my realisation.
Here’s another quote. “We can learn to live together in a way that leads to the realisation of everyone’s true nature not only on an individual level but also as a community, as a Sangha”.
Not exactly justification for swingers but there is an essence of sharing that should not be lost. Sexuality is about the individual but it is also about the collective. It is about two people coming together in a way that is utterly unique amongst living things. Other animals have sex. From what we know, they act instinctively. As humans, we have been blessed with the capacity to have sex beyond the animalistic instinct. We can think sex, we can realise it in a completely different way by engaging the mind and transforming ourselves through the collective spirit and the one spirit. The realisation of one’s own sexuality is vital. In order to set aside the delusions of a communal thought on sexuality, it needs each of those who are either sexually enlightened or on a pathway to speak the truth thus realising the true nature of sexuality.
Zen considers some extremely important aspects of life that could also be seen in a sexual way.
Zen practice is about how “we wish to properly appreciate what we already have, what is inherent within us”.
Society and the expectations or delusions of it, sometimes ignore the inherent nature of our sexuality. Our sexuality is there. It is ever present but we frequently disregard its significance and its vitality. The capacity for good sex, fulfilling sex, enduring sex is within us all but other factors get in the way. The essence of our being is present and within that essence is our sexuality. So why do we go to such great lengths to hide it, cover it, pretend that the sexual mind is not as significant as other intellectual thoughts or the mundane necessities of life? To some, sex is a necessity of life and yet we still deny it.
Being naughty, Zenpuss is thinking on a practical level here. Not everyone can get the type of sex that they want at the time that they want it. I know I can’t but there is a physical nature to be explored here.
“What is inherent within us”. We all have our own bodies; we all have the capacity to be sexual. If there is not an opportunity to share this sexuality, then maybe we should consider exploring ourselves. Masturbation is largely ignored because it is deemed to be unacceptable behaviour. If you are this quoted phrase at a pedantic, face-value, is there not a possibility that self-exploration of what is within oneself is a step in the right direction?
“True nature” is the Buddhist way. True nature is in itself the “original self”.
In an essay by Taizen Maezumi, a question is posed. Can everyone realise true nature?
The answer to that is obviously a resounding yes. Every person, irrespective of intellectual capacity can realise and recognise the “original self”. Zenpuss is suggesting that in order to do this, one should also consider one’s sexual self, for it is there, inherent, from the beginning. “We will not be satisfied until we realise what we have” says Maezumi, and that is exactly so with sexuality. How can we express ourselves sexually if we do not know ourselves as sexual beings? How can we expect others to understand our sexuality if we do not recognise it ourselves?
The original self requires a certain amount of insular behaviour. One has to look inwardly in order to understand one’s true nature. In doing that, one is ready to take one’s self into the reaches of others. There is no end to this search for the original self. It should be perpetual. It should fluctuate but it is vital to recognise that it is already there.
Dogen Zenji stated that we should “practice the Way with wholeheartedness” or “to become one with whatever you do”. Maezumi interprets this with the following statement.
“When you really become one with whatever you do, that is the realisation of the Way; yet whether you realise your true nature or not depends on you.”
Exactly so.
Just as it is with the complete Way, then so too is it with the sexual Way. It is dependent on all of us to find our sexual Way and to realise the inherent true nature that is already in existence. Pretending we are something that we are not is definitely not the Way. The purpose of Zen practice is not to become something different to what we actually are. “If we dig in the wrong place, regardless of how diligently we try, it is in vain”, says one commentator.
You cannot be what you are inherently not. You cannot have a sexual awakening if there isn’t something there in the first place. It should happen like osmosis; naturally and yet the realisation can be like a flash of lightening. Each and every one of us has the capacity to realise this essential essence from within but to try and be something else is not the way forward.
Many years ago, I did not touch myself. I did not explore my own body and I did not consider having the sexual experiences that I currently have. My delusions about sexuality were developed from somewhere but they were not those that were inherently within me. What I have experienced in recent years has been this awakening of my natural state – my original self. Had I pretended to be something different, had I tried to please a lover with practice beyond what I considered to be right for me, I would have been filled with disappointment, anxiety and even shame. On the contrary, I have been enlightened not by a sexual act but by my propensity to feel at ease and natural with whatever sexual act I can indulge myself and others in.
My ability to ejaculate, for instance, was always there. It didn’t just emerge one night in the front of my car with a capable finger or two being inserted into my pussy. It was always there. I just hadn’t freed my mind to its potential. My lover asking me to fist myself was not a problem. I was not trying to please him with some outlandish practice that went against the core of what was me. I just hadn’t enabled such thoughts and such practices to materialise. Now, I was given an opportunity to realise what I actually was – my original sexual self. That is why I am indebted to the person. That cannot be forgotten but I am indebted to myself also for allowing this enablement to happen.
Dogen Zenji talks about Zen practice as being like a spiral comprising of four strands; raising the Bodhi mind, practicing, attaining realisation and attaining liberation. In liberation lies the Bodhi mind, the mind that aspires to enlightenment, which leads us to practice, then attainment, then liberation, spiralling ever upward. I paraphrase Zenji via a commentator but it is important to realise that there is a possibility that Enlightenment in this way is infinite. Having achieved enlightenment the path may not end. The spiral reaches further, the practice can increase and grow. It can branch forth in different directions whilst maintaining a pathway as it does.
So too with sexuality.
There have been times when I have thought I had reached the peak of my sexuality and sexual practice and experience. I have mentioned this before in these blogs. I have lain in bed thinking that it is impossible to improve upon this. It cannot get any better than being completely at one with your lover; where words are insignificant and cannot possibly encapsulate all that has been experienced. There have been times when I have been literally fucked to pieces and that my mind as well as my body can take no more of this perfection. Then returning to bed or to sex a mere day or two later, something happens that escalates the experience once more. The pinnacle was reached and yet the spiral continues. There is more even if the practice has constancy.
I suppose a lot of this is the experience of the now. What was deemed to be perfect yesterday was perfect for yesterday. There may be almost 100% adherence to the practice of yesterday and today, yet today it feels nearer perfect than yesterday without the need for that crude comparison. Because actually, yesterday was perfect too, only a different perfect than today.
That’s what I love about Zen; an abandonment of logic yet perfect logic at the same time. It does work if you think about it.
Liberation is another word that is frequently batted around almost flippantly disregarding its extent. Zetsu gaku means being liberated. “Honour the man who is through with learning and free from action” – the one who has “right liberation” and “right wisdom”.
I’m not ready to be liberated from learning yet. There is a vast world of the undiscovered for me but I understand the thought behind this.
Knowledge and understanding, thoughts and feelings can be liberating yet at the same time they can thwart the path to finding one’s true self. To have no need for more learning yet to want to continue is something completely different. To desire no action yet still indulge in the odd activity or two is also commendable. There is a liberation in Zazen.
What does this mean in a sexual way?
When looking at the sixties, people often use the phrase “sexual liberation” but did that really capture it in its totality? The delusions were still there as they are now. I wasn’t there so I cannot speak from experience but I wonder whether people confuse liberty and inhibitions. The loss of the latter can lead to the former but not necessarily. They are different.
In the sixties, people certainly lost some of their inhibitions about sexuality and felt the freedom to physically engage in wonderful, experiential sex, and for some that would lead to liberation but not for everyone. Some were still tied by conformity and expectation. The fact that this uninhibited and liberated sex did not become the ‘norm’ suggests that there is still work to be done to liberate us all from the shackles of preconceived notions of sexuality.
Consider this.
“The Law of Causation applies to everybody.......Within limitation, there is always freedom. Regardless of where you go or what you do, in one way or another life is restricted. Don’t look to circumstances or environment for your freedom. You won’t find it. You can always find freedom within limitation”.
And consider this too.
“Emancipating the mind, even the fire becomes cool”.
And finally, this.
“We try to understand enlightenment by our discriminative mind; yet our discriminative, our discursive thought, is the very thing that binds us.”
There is a dichotomy at work here. In order to liberate ourselves we have to think. The ability to think can make the impossible possible, like the fire being cool but as we think, we somehow tangle ourselves up once more and the liberation that we are seeking is lost in the discriminative mind.
People desire liberty. It is an age old aspiration and yet there is a possibility that we are looking in the wrong places. Indeed, even looking in itself could prevent us from being free.
Sexuality is one way of looking for freedom. Sexual freedom is one way of being liberated.
“We can be bound by enlightenment, freedom, even peace, in which case there is actually no enlightenment, freedom or peace”.
For me, there is freedom within limitation and one way that I seek this freedom is through my sexual liberation. I do not have a secret life. I have
my life. I do not hold to conventions yet I live in one.
The way to liberty is to feel it, in the right places. Sexual liberty is all about finding yourself and your desires, being true to yourself above and beyond the expectations and constraints of others.
Should I allow my partner to have sex with another person? What is this ‘allow’? There is no ‘allow’ in sexual liberation. The ‘allowance’ is not present. Having sex with another person should not detract from the sex and the intensity of a relationship with your loved one. In order to liberate yourselves you should liberate others. Nobody should be tied down, expected to behave in a certain way. If the liberation is attachment for some, then so be it but where it isn’t the Way, then that should also be recognised.
True sexual liberation is hard. To be completely at one with your sexuality may even seem contradictory when so much of our sexual lives is bound to other human beings; their feelings, thoughts and emotions. If you are living a life as the Zen way suggests, you should be more than mindful of the needs and wants of others even if that sometimes feels as though it is going against your natural beliefs, even if it feels as though it is shackling your freedom.
Dogen Zenji says that only the foolish think concern for others is at one’s own expense.
This brings me to my final point of the day; the respect of others.
My own sexuality is bound up in the sexuality of others. In some ways my raison d’etre is to please others sexually. In doing so I reach a pinnacle of my own sexuality. Concern for others is my sexuality. It does not detract from it at all. It enhances it every time. Seeing the look on my lover’s face when I am pleasuring myself is far more wondrous than the climax I can give myself.
“To think of others first, we do something for them; then, in one way or another, sooner or later, it benefits ourselves”.
The bodhisattva is to care more about others than oneself.
If we are ultimately to find our true self, we have to do it with the consideration of others in mind. Sometimes the consideration for one person conflicts with the consideration for another, and that is a quandary too but being sexually enlightened has to involve the needs of others and the willingness to desire what others want too. Sometimes, of course, the conflict is with the desire of others and what you actually want. Sometimes, what one person might consider to be selfish action is actually helping them along their pathway.
As I said, therein is the joy of the yin and yang of life, and indeed sexuality.
Ultimately, what is the Way? It’s “anuttara samyak sambohi” – the best way, the unsurpassable way, the perfect wisdom. It is our life itself.
In order to be sexually enlightened we have to embrace our sexuality as part of life itself. In doing so we may catch a glimpse of one’s true self.
The man rests a while to sit.
Satisfied, he returns home with all the water that he requires.
