Sex is Good

I was speaking to a friend recently about sex. She was questioning whether it was good for her. It all started because she’d had an amazing night with a lover. The kind of night that flooded her body with energy, woke up her senses and reminded her of her deeper desire. And wow, she was feeling it - desire. But immediately following that desire came sadness. And following that sadness, doubt. It all happened so quickly, if she wasn’t an attentive person she wouldn’t have noticed the progression.

In Buddhism we call this papancha - the ability of the mind to take something and run with it. One might start with a fairly innocent sensation, say heat, but then our mind labels it good or bad. And from there respond with clinging or aversion. And the clinging or aversion provokes a whole host of other thoughts and feelings. Soon enough, we are miles from the original value-neutral experience. Which in this friend’s case was the sensation of sex, and experience it provoked, which was desire.

Of course, the mores of our culture fueled that “papancha”. It’s easy to think of sex as bad or dangerous. If her feelings had come from an experience of love or friendship, it would be harder to make it wrong. But when sex stirs us up, watch out, our conditioned ideas love to throw blame.

As I was talking to my friend, it was undeniably clear that the energy of sex is truly value neutral. Like love or friendship, it can get distorted or be used for manipulation. Or like those things, it can bring us into contact with deeper aspects of self. Which is what happened for my friend. She actually came to be grateful for the sex she was originally doubting, as it had opened her to feel more of what she wanted.

So I say sex is good. Even though what I really mean is that it is value neutral. It’s just rarely the “bad” that we fear it to be.