BG 177: Working with Sexual Energy

Download

Episode Description:

We’re joined again by British meditation teacher, Christopher Titmuss, to continue our exploration into the powerful, and often challenging, realm of human sexuality. Christopher shares a couple of stories of monks dealing with sexuality, one a traditional story and the other a story of a 92 year old monk that he practiced with in Thailand. He also explains that if sexual energy, which is a natural part of our humanity, is repressed than it can wreak havoc on how we engage in the world.

Finishing up our conversation with Christopher, we ask him if there’s anything he’d like to share with the Buddhist Geeks listeners. He responds with a very interesting caution on not over-emphasizing the development of the mind, over the development of the heart and the vibrancy of our “feeling lives.”

This is part 2 of a two-part series. Listen to Part 1, The Place of the Erotic.

Episode Links:

• ChristopherTitmuss.org

Transcript:

Vince: I know this may be a little bit more subtle than what you’ve been describing…

Christopher: Sure.

Vince: …but I guess I also have a question about, not even in intimate relationships where people may choose to make love, but also questions around my sexuality in the world—just on a daily basis of meeting people, of seeing people, of interacting with people, how sexual energy is used, or moves between people. And if you could say a little bit about that, because that seems like a subtle and sometimes confusing area, as well.

Christopher: Yes. When we were monks, I was a monk, there was this story. I mean, some of these Buddhist monk stories have been doing the rounds for centuries. So one of them was the monk was on the begging rounds. You know, in the morning at dawn, he used to go out across the rice patties and through the tracks to the farm houses, or the villages, to collect our food for the morning with the begging bowl.

So this story’s gone from generation to generation, I think it’s probably a thousand years old. So the monk goes out in the begging rounds. And this incredibly beautiful woman comes running by him. And she stops the monk and she gives him a huge smile, and carries on. Two or three minutes later, this young guy comes rushing by. He sees the monk and he says to the monk, laughing. He says: “Did you see this beautiful woman just go by?”

And the monk, in this kind of austere, detached way, says, “No, I just saw a set of teeth go by.” [laughs] And monks used to love this story as a kind of confirmation of detachment.

Vince: [laughs]

Christopher: You know, it is a bit wacky. But, you know, this is a monks life: it’s rather a wacky way of life. One of the old monks in our monastery was, literally, 92 years of age. But a very hardcore meditator. And he did his walking and his sitting, and when he walked, he walked incredibly upright. One day, I remember—this is in the monastery Wat Chai Na in Nakhon Si Thammarat, in the south of Thailand.

And so the young monks, including me, I was in my mid to late-twenties, we were sitting under the tree with him and I had an interpreter with me, and we were asking this very old monk some Dharma questions. And one of the questions we said to him was: “Long Po,” it means “elder brother”. “Long Po, you’re 92! You haven’t got much to look forward to, have you?” You know? “So when you’re meditating and your mind wanders, what does it wander to?” He replied, “Sex.”

And we just roared! And the monks said, “Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu.” Well said, well said, well said. And, you know, a very lovely and quite saintly monk, beautiful I remember, very lovely beautiful presence about him—in the subtlety of daily life, men and women of any age, I mean any age, including 92-year-olds, let alone 19-year-olds, will feel the—what shall we say?—feeling of Eros. The contact with the eye, the interest in the person, the sensual presence of another.

My God, we’re human beings. That sensation brought, pretty well all of us, into this world. It’s a powerful energy—that’s why the population keeps growing. And I get concerned when it’s used or perceived by the Buddhists, in fact by religion in general. There are some exceptions in the Tantra orthodox, genuine Tantra tradition, not the hijacked form we know about. In the Indian tradition of Krishna and Radha, and Brahma and [inaudible], and Shiva and Pavarti, where the romance of life—the Eros of life—is spiritual, and great stories to express it.

But, generally speaking, Buddhist, Middle Eastern religion simply do not know how to handle the feeling of sensuality of the presence of another. Usually, seeing and hearing, occasionally smell, too, of course. And I say, this is normal. This is life, this is healthy. There’s nothing problematic in it, whatsoever. And if one knows one’s a little vulnerable in these areas, then one has just to be mindful of what we say and what the voice is, and what the intentions and the attitude are. And all our practice has to come in so that we don’t create a confused situation. And sometimes, I’ve noticed myself over the years, sometimes one has, one makes mistakes and one gets into hot water about it.

But that’s part of practice. It’s part of the learning process, that we have to ensure that the sensual life is not repressed or thrown out, but is treated very respectfully and, therefore, [inaudible] engagement with the other.

Vince: And do find…have you found that certain things come about when that type of energy, which is so powerful, is repressed? Is pushed away, or pushed down somehow?

Christopher: Definitely. I’ve read psychology, obviously. Bucket-loads of it, read a lot of Freud analyses. And, I don’t take a view of—how should we say?—that the root of everything is sexual desire. I just don’t think that is true, that there are many men and women who live a celibate life. I live in a street with 56 houses. There’s lots of men and women in the street who are not in relationship, living quite happy lives, getting on with their life rather well, and they’re not having any sexual life.

But when it’s repressed…repressed means, “I want and I can’t have,” or, “I shouldn’t want.” One’s got a morally judgmental view, or interprets sexual desire in terms of something bad or guilty in some way or other, and it’s blocked off, rather than learn to experience and to understand the typical outcomes that come. One of them is moral judgments about other people, that’s for sure. The tendency towards feeling things in moral absolute, which is “right” and “wrong”.

And the Buddhist world and Buddhist institutions, West and East, will often settle—my observation and experience—for the simplicity of viewpoints of “right” and “wrong”. Finding fault. Name and shame. This kind of viewpoint, so the moral absolutes tend to come in. And the other is power, which is not totally unrelated. And I noticed this, especially in the monastery, but also outside of it. That sometimes when men and women are not at ease with sexuality and sensuality and Eros, just not at ease with it, then the mindset easily wants to be in control.

Power and authority gets an exaggerated importance. And some pressure seems to go on there, when something else is being repressed inside somewhere else. So the moral certainties, and power and control, seems to be two of the outcomes of people in not handling their sensuality, their sexuality, their romantic feelings, of life very well.

Vince: That makes a lot of sense. Wrapping this conversation up: are there any other important things that you would want to mention or you would say to a group of people listening to a show called Buddhist Geeks, and who clearly are mostly householders and mostly are living sexually engaged lives?

Christopher: Yes. [laughs] Just before we started, just speaking about the word “geeks”—and thank you for a very clear explanation. I do think it’s incredibly important and helpful, for there to be plenty of Buddhist geeks around. So with most things in life, many things in life, there’s an immense plus. But one has to be aware of the Achilles’ heel. Or to put it in a kind of Buddha language for the moment: there is value, but to be mindful of the limitations. So what I have in mind here: there are people who have credible love of Dharma practice and very committed to it, and, along going with it, of course, a lot of excellent technological knowledge. People like me who are hopeless.

I can use my Word documents on my computer. I can just about keep up-to-date some of my websites and do a bit of writing. But anything which is remotely sophisticated, in terms of technology, is out of my league. The person who looks after my computers—in fact, I’ll ask him if he describes himself as a Buddhist geek. But he was a British monk for 16 or 17 years, disrobed, and now looks after [inaudible] websites here in Totnes, where I live. And the guy has some computers, etc., etc..

And that’s an incredibly important service. You know, people who have good knowledge of technology, and thank goodness for you all. What one has to be careful about is too much in the world of technology—information, the small-screen television, computer, or cinema too—could be reducing the heart’s life, the feeling life. And it can be, for some, a bit of a gap between the mind, which the Buddha encourages the developments of the mind—there’s many discourses on the value of development of the mind—but, equally, gives equal emphasis to the value of the heart, the development of the heart.

And in a way, your questions today, addressed matters of the heart, matters of the body, sexual energy and touch, and matters of the mind: being clear about the whole process, both for one’s self and another. If there’s too much in one area, if the geek has—what should we say?—a capital “G” to it, rather than a small one, the probability that feeling life will get neglected. And if it gets neglected and then suddenly we meet somebody, and there’s the touch, and the arising of strong pleasant feelings—there’s interest and curiosity, etc..

We have to know ourselves and be watchful whether the impact is too strong. We’ll get caught up, almost for sure, in some incredible story, and the story becomes the fantasy. And women pick up, and men, any kind of pressure in those areas. And the other is, we can get out of touch with our feeling life, because we’re too much in the world of information, technology, and knowledge, and then we wonder why we’re not in a relationship? Right? It isn’t happening for us.

And that’s because the heart’s simply not getting the opportunity to develop. And sometimes the partner, or the potential partner, wants to be with somebody who—yes, has knowledge—but, also, has a lot of heart. So we have to be quite clear with ourselves: is my mind ahead of my heart? Is so much being given to my mind, it’s at [the] expense of the heart? And that dialogue of heart and head is an ongoing one.