The Face of Sex
Today I spent an hour speaking with academic researchers about sexuality and buddhist institutions. They wanted to know my story and what I’d experienced as a woman who trained deeply in the dharma but then chose to include sexuality in my path... and ultimately made the erotic the centre of my expression in the world. It’s been a long time since i traced back through the past 18 years in that way. From coming to the US to study meditation, to diving into intensive retreat practice, entering teacher training, beginning a very personal sexual exploration, being asked to choose between public identification with that journey and the buddhist institutions I was training with, and every other twist and turn up to where I am at today as a practitioner and teacher.
One question they asked me was whether the actions of buddhist institutions towards me was symbolic of their relationship with sexuality. It had me think of something I discovered very early. As a woman claiming her sexuality, one becomes symbolic of EVERYONE’S relationship to their sex. People’s hopes, fears, conditioned beliefs, hardened resentments, secret desires, and unconscious projections. It’s a most intimate position to be in. To be the one people reveal themselves to in that way. I’ve come to be grateful to have this window into people’s souls, no matter how messy, confused or distorted they are. Because what I see in there is hunger, deep deep hunger for intimacy, for the nutrient of eros, and how much we suffer without it.
I’ve seen people’s terror at the power of sexuality. Really terror at the unexamined sex inside of themselves. And the building of structures to contain or repress it (largely unsuccessful - at least not without sucking the life out of life). I’ve also heard many hopeful fantasies of what it would be like to release it. Usually some version of hard and fast, “mind blowing” cllimaxes, threesomes, sex parties… And yes, I had to get to know this personally, that all of those things can be fun, but they occur very much on the surface of sex. Without really knowing the erotic, without a deep living relationship with it, sex shows up as exagerrated or infantile, hedonistic or perverse. And these are the very projections of sex we see in the world.
Yet sex undressed is actually the most raw, revealing, potent force i know. It’s access into other realms. It’s reflection of self and connection. It’s pure hydration. The fast track to sensing the workings of another’s soul. It’s very few of the things we initially imagine it to be, and so much more of what we actually hunger for. All of the projections and fantasies can’t be avoided. In fact they need to be directly faced, sometimes even experienced, to get to the rich and subtle terrain that exists beneath them. And because I undeniably know what exists down there, I’m not afraid to be seen or related to as the face of it. I just want to invite people in and down to know the real thing.