Sex (or the lack thereof) and the Single Gaijin

Last Friday, after I got back home from Kyoto I decided to bike down to Shinsaibashi and go out for the evening. I ended up at Cinquecento, a martini bar frequented by gaijin and gaijin-friendly Nihonjin.

A Japanese girl a few stools down decided to introduce herself. Introduce herself rather vigorously, one might say. She was nice to talk to, seemed an outsider in her own country, a hardcore punk rock fan, lonely, and I was happy to talk to her (even as, I must admit, I was eying other women). But I just wasn't interested in taking her home, as she quite clearly suggested.

"Do you like Japanese girls?" she asked.

"Sure. I like all kinds of girls -- Japanese girls, American girls, whatever." In my life I've changed my taste on many issues over time. I've gone from a hamburger-lover to a vegan, from a Catholic to a Zen Pagan, from a fan of sugary soda to a regular drinker of bitter green tea. But I had it figured out somewhere around age five that I liked girls. (It was certainly never a matter of "choice", as some homophobes would have it -- I was born heterosexual and seem stuck that way, even if logic suggests we'd all be better off bi, and thus maximize our chances of a date).

When I said she was cute -- which she was, in a punk sort of way -- but I didn't think it would be a good idea to take her home, she asked, "So are you gay?" Obviously the only reason a gaijin guy wouldn't want to bed any available Nihonjin girl would be that he preferred guys (presumably Nihonjin guys), right?

"No, no, I'm not gay." (I thought the last question would have covered that.)

"Oh, do you have a girlfriend?"

"Well, yes, back in America. We have an open relationship, though...."

"Well then, we should go back to your place..."

So let us pause to consider why a fellow with a healthy libido and under no pledge of celibacy or sexual exclusivity, might still choose to not jump in bed with a willing lady.

One of the precepts of Buddhism, the basic ethical guidelines, is not to misuse sexuality. The question of just what it means to misuse it, is somewhat vague.

To best consider the question, I've come back to sit in gardens at Daitokuji, the temple complex where the lusty Zen lunatic Ikkyu Sojun was once abbot. Ikkyu wore his monks robes to the brothels, and in his seventies took up with a lover fifty years his junior. He wrote poems like "sin like a madman until you can't do anything else / no room for any more" and "a woman is enlightenment when you're with her and the red thread / of both your passions flare inside you and you see"; his philosophy is often called "Red Thread Zen".

There's no question that sex has its hazards on the whole attachment-forming, suffering-causing thing. Love and sex cause a lot of misery. We fall for someone, then pine when they don't return our affection. Or we do manage to get a date, and are disappointed when the reality doesn't live up to the fantasy. Or the thing works out and you have a relationship - and suffer when it ends. The best you can hope for is that it ends when one of you dies! And in between are all the opportunities of jealousy, disappointment, fear, and obsession.

What a minefield! What shall we do?

(I write that, look up, and a kimono-ed cutie walks around the corner away from me. Even here in a Zen garden, writing about the problem of it all, my heart jumps.)

Certainly celibacy is one approach. Not having sex does mean that one is unable to use sex harmfully. Assuming that one can keep the vow - not-doing it doesn't take away the desire. As recent revelations about Catholic priests show, celibacy has its pitfalls.

Also it misses an opportunity to use that energy. A well-known koan tells of a lay woman who supported a monk for many years. One day she sent her lovely young niece to test him. The girl visited the monk in his hut, climbed up on his lap, and said, "How is it now, oh monk?"

The monk replied, "Cold ashes. No fire."

When the girl returned and told her aunt what had transpired, the woman was outraged, called the monk a fraud, and chased him out! He had failed to use the moment to work toward the liberation of all beings.

(Does that mean it would have been appropriate for him to screw her? Maybe; Ikkyu might have. Maybe not, if it would have been just for his own pleasure, without affection or even respect for the girl. But "cold ashes" wasn't right when there was someone bringing energy, heat that could be used to power the liberation of sentient beings.)

We ought to keep in mind that the teachings of old wisdom schools were given in an age before reliable birth control. For a man to have sex meant having kids and taking up the responsibilities of a householder. (Or abandoning your kid and your pregnant girlfriend, which is definitely not the best karma to go generating.) So teachings about celibacy and marriage should be considered in that light.

Celibacy for clergy and monks was also a tool used in some cultures to control the power of organized religion. A powerful priest with kids was sometimes tempted to use his power for his family's benefit.

Marriage is the option put forth by most mainstream religions for laypeople, and in many for clergy too. Find one person and agree to exclusive romantic and sexual relations.

But marriage doesn't remove jealousy, disappointment, fear, and obsession. The statistics on infidelity and divorce show that.

More than that, marriage as we know it in our culture is based on a lie: that one can make a promise about emotion.

Our feelings, like everything else, are by nature impermanent. We may hold a great romantic love for someone today, but we cannot promise to still love them the same way in five, ten, or twenty years, and we can't promise not to fall in love with someone else along the way. It's no wonder that more and more marriages are ending in divorce now that the law allows it -- it's not a failure of people, it's a basic flaw in the model.

That's not to say there are not successful marriages, people who do make it work. Just because we can't promise that romantic love will last, doesn't mean that we can't promise to work at giving it the best chance to do so. It's like cultivating a beautiful but fragile plant: we can promise to water it, to fertilize it, to prune it, to take the greatest care with it.

But if we promise that that plant is going to thrive forever, we've made a promise beyond our ability to keep. Sometimes the seed just isn't hardy, the plant by nature weak. Perhaps the soil isn't right, or perhaps there is an early frost that catches us unawares. Perhaps there is a blight.

At best, the plant may live as long as the gardener. Those who do have successful marriages don't have them forever -- just for their lifespan. There is a good reason why the mythologies of most pantheons of immortal gods and goddesses feature many stories of infidelity.

And of course, if marriage is the only allowable solution, one is left with the problem of finding a partner. Under the belief that this is the only possible and allowable model of relationships, people turn romantic relationships into auditions for The Big One, rather than seeing each as a worthwhile experience in itself.

Marriage can be a fine arrangement for some people. But to put it forth as a general solution is deficient; to put it forth as the only solution, is cruel and ignorant.

So if we don't go down the celibacy route, and if marriage is not an adequate solution to the issue, how do we deal with sexuality and the misuse thereof? Just screw anyone who's willing? That's just jumping into middle of the minefield. You at least need a guideline for spotting the mines.

The advice columnist Dan Savage has suggested that the rule for getting involved with a much younger lover is the same as for campsites: leave them better than you found them. I would suggest that the same rule applies regardless of age - and not just for your lover, but for you. If both you and your potential lover aren't going to be improved by your encounter - whether it be a single hour or a lifetime - I suggest that it's best to let it go and redirect that energy.

What do mean mean by "improved" in a spiritual context? The thing that most gets in the way of spiritual development is our ego, our sense of ourself as a separate existence, disconnected. So a romantic or sexual experience that improves us, is one that improves our connection, helps us feel less separate from the rest of the world.

The Buddha spoke of four aspects of love: loving kindness toward everyone, not just to our intimates (maitri); compassion for all beings (karuna); sympathetic joy, delighting the happiness of others (mudita); and equanimity, accepting calmly both gain and loss, whatever comes. (upeksha). If our relationships -- sexual or not -- help us cultivate these attitudes, then we're on the right track.

Any supportive human relationship can be of help, but a sexual relationship has the potential to be an especially strong aid. (Or, if misused, an especially strong hindrance.) Human beings -- indeed, all animals -- have a tremendous amount of energy tied up with sex. It's evolution in action; if your ancestors didn't have sex, well, they wouldn't have gotten to be ancestors.

So how can we use that energy for spiritual development?

There are schools of "tantric" sex in some forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, specific techniques that are supposed to help move energy around the body. That's all well and good, but not really the point. (And in Tantric Buddhism, the underlying assumption about sex is often negative, but that we live in a "degraded" age in which ok to fight fire with fire.)

The point is that sharing this energy, this experience of joy, is a way to develop selflessness, of being in the moment, of letting go of our own selfish desire in order to share.

Does this mean that "casual sex" is a good thing? That, of course, depends of the meaning of "casual".

If we mean "casual" as in unconcerned or irresponsible, that's a bad idea, I think.

But if it means without plan, happening by "chance"? I think many of our relationships are started by "chance" encounters (putting aside for the moment the question of what's random and what's forces and influences we don't understand).

Or if we mean casual in the sense of something that occurs from time to time rather than continuously? I think it's perfectly fine to have relationships, romantic or otherwise, that are now and then. A friend or a lover who you only see on occasion -- perhaps you live in different cities, even different countries, but why should you not connect with them the best you can?

And casual can also mean natural, unstudied, or effortless -- and those sound like fine ways to make love.

But this effortlessness, like the effortless movement of a dancer or martial arts master, or like the brushstrokes of a Zen painter, requires a great deal of groundwork and mindfulness. When it works, a romantic relationship continually calls us back to pay attention to our lover, to ourselves, and to the world around us. The danger is that we think we know our lover thoroughly, and we stop paying attention -- we lose Bodhidharma's "don't know". But in a healthy relationship we will keep looking and keep being surprised, brought back by our lover into the here and now.

(There's a popular song from the late 1970s whose lyrics illustrates this perfectly. Rupert Holmes's "Escape", known to many as "The Piña Colada Song", tells of a man who is "tired of [his] lady", in a worn-out relationship. He answers a personals ad posted by a woman who promises new adventures, only to find that it is, in fact, his current lover. In the last verse, the narrator says, "I never knew / That you liked Pina Coladas / and getting caught in the rain / And the feel of the ocean / And the taste of champagne." He has re-discovered "I don't know.")

So the question we face in getting into a relationship is, is going to bed with this person going to hasten - or at least not delay - the day when all sentient beings become enlightened? Is this something that at least has a chance of leaving us both slightly better people? Is getting with them going to get us closer to that ancient heavenly connection in the starry dynamo in the machinery of night? Is this an experience that promotes mindfulness?

I didn't think taking this girl home was going to do that; it just seemed like a tangle with little benefit (past the temporary and obvious). And so I was actually glad (though a little wistful) when she turned her sights on the guy sitting next to me.