Buddhist Tensions: the Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong

Picking Flowers

If you want to pick flowers, you have to hike.
Climbing up, don't worry about your weary bones.
Pluck the low branches, pull down the high.
Enjoy alike the spent blossoms, the tight buds.

Ho Xuan Huong (1772-1822 / Vietnam)

Vietnamese poet Ho Xuan Huong was a powerfully independent and outspoken woman living at a time when that was very rare. The energy and mastery of her poetry was so high that it helped elevate the status of Vietnamese to that of a literary language. Although her words are infused with Buddhist understandings and images, Ho Xuan Huong had a defiant, highly critical relationship with the Buddhism of her native Vietnam.

One of the tension points present in her work revolves around sex and sexuality. She was a frequent critic of the pious sounding Vietnamese monks who scoffed at women expressing themselves sexually, but then courted and slept with female devotees and concubines. In addition, she fiercely questioned the double standards of a patriarchal society where men did as they pleased when it came to romantic relationships, while women were confined to roles of dutiful quietude.

Ho Xuan Huong was anything but quiet about sexuality, as the following poem attests.

Swinging

Praise whoever raised these poles
for some to swing while others watch.

A boy pumps, then arcs his back.
The shapely girl shoves up her hips.

Four pink trousers flapping hard,
two pairs of legs stretched side by side.

Spring games. Who hasn't known them?
Swingposts removed, the holes lie empty.

Many of Ho Xuan Huong's poems read like expressions of freedom. Not longing for it, but actually living and breathing it. If you want to pick flowers, you have to hike. Climbing up, don't worry about your weary bones. Literally, there's the experience of climbing up a hill or mountain. Where I'm living right now, there is a small mountain that the locals like to climb to get exercise and look out over the city in the valley below. I have climbed to the top multiple times. Every time, there has been a point where I consciously chose to be ok with having some aches and pains, and then - as if by magic - I experienced a jolt of renewed energy that helped me reach the summit. Metaphorically, the same lines of the poem can taken as a directive for life. If you want to reach your dreams, you have to let go of fretting and obsessing over every, little obstacle that appears along the way.

As many great poets do, Ho Xuan Huong captures beautifully the fleeting quality of our lives. Particularly that of high moments, and how a wrong decision while on top of the mountain can bring you tumbling down. In another poem laden with sexual images and tension, Huong offers both high level pleasure and a caution to not go too far.

The Jackfruit

I am like a jackfruit on the tree.
To taste you must plug me quick, while fresh:
the skin rough, the pulp thick, yes,
but oh, I warn you against touching --
the rich juice will gush and stain your hands

Beyond pleasure, the richness of the natural world explodes from Huong's poems. Clearly in love with all the wonders of the waxing seasons, spring and summer, she readily invokes the beauty and vibrancy of each in her words.

Spring-Watching Pavilion

A gentle spring evening arrives
airily, unclouded by worldly dust.

Three times the bell tolls echoes like a wave.
We see heaven upside-down in sad puddles.

Love's vast sea cannot be emptied.
And springs of grace flow easily everywhere.

Where is nirvana?
Nirvana is here, nine times out of ten

Here, Huong offers a poem that appears to be passive, but actually is active and full of tension. A gentle, somewhat melancholy start paired with a fierce, declarative ending. Talk of sadness coupled with the deepest expression of love itself.

Overall, she leaves us with an overriding message pointing directly to spiritual liberation. One that isn't separated from the seemingly mundane and material world around us. The pulpy jackfruit is love. The sad puddles are love. The hike to pick flowers is love.

And love is liberation. Available to all, regardless of who we are perceived to be (or not be) in the world.

Sex, Consent, and Buddhist Right Action

With the verdict in the Steubenville case has come a lot of discussion about rape and sexism, and the state of culture in our supposed "post-feminist" America. I say supposed because like those who speak of a post-racial America, folks who say frameworks like feminism have outlasted their use are either woefully unaware or deliberately trying to reverse the gains made during the second half of the 20th century. At the same time, every framework or set of frameworks has its limits. Which is why I'd like to take up this interesting post from the IDProject blog on Right Action and consent.

Caroline Contillo, the author of the post, argues that Buddhist teachings around sexuality point towards the creation of a culture of consent. The term "enthusiastic consent" was hot stuff back in my college days (mid-1990s) and has returned to the forefront in recent years to address a diverse range of sex scandals, including Steubenville. While I agree with the principle behind enthusiastic consent, it's always felt a bit too black and white of a response to what is decidedly a not black and white world. People consent to sexual contact, as well as many other forms of action, in a wide variety of ways. In addition, people make rejections in a wide variety of ways, which is why the focus on verbal rejections in rape and assault cases is problematic at best, if not a great way to privilege the rights of the accused over the rights of accusers.

There's a lot more I could say about the intricacies of consent, but what I want to dig into goes beyond that. Here's a selection from Contillo's post:

The emphasis in all three aspects of Right Action is consent. The need for another sentient being to agree with your intentions and provide you with an emphatic agreement. To take a life, to take possessions, or to force sex upon another human being against their will is unwise and "wrong" because it is selfish and creates suffering for all parties. Right Action is about using our intention and mindfulness to encourage a culture of consent.

Now, these aspects of Right Action have been framed as things one must abstain from doing. But what if we reversed that and created things that a Buddhist *must* do?

We must encourage life and health (perhaps by learning permaculture, perhaps by taking an interest in health-care reform), we must participate in selflessness, and we must seek an emphatic and freely-given "yes!" in all sexual situations.

I am reminded of something Acharya Eric Spiegel said during the Refuge Vow ceremony I took part in, when discussing the precepts. One of the precepts, in the vein of Right Action, admonishes the participant to refrain from unwholesome sexual activity. Acharya Spiegel made sure to explore this concept in depth. He told us that to him, even flirting your way out of a speeding ticket could be considered a flouting of this precept. "Using your personal charisma to manipulate someone into giving you something" is how he phrased it. That has always stuck with me. If we take this advice to heart, then Buddhism really is a philosophy that puts incredible emphasis on consent.

First off, I reject the notion of "must" she offers. It doesn't reflect the dynamic functioning of Buddhist teachings that are responding to the ever changing world we live in.

But what I'm more interested in is this focus on consent she's offering. I like that she's brought it in here. I don't think I've seen Right Action framed in this way before. At the same time, there's something off about it. Because people consent to things that cause suffering all the time. Either deliberately or out of ignorance. Whatever the case, though, mere consent doesn't really shift us towards a culture of lessening suffering and moving towards liberation. It emphasizes individual freedom and autonomy, but fails to uphold our wider interdependence.

An experience from my college days comes to mind. One night, I was hanging out with a pair of friends playing games and having a few drinks. The male friend of mine had a crush on the female friend of mine, but she didn't share his feelings. In fact, she was interested in me, and that entire evening, I struggled to reconcile my interest in her with my desire to not hurt my other friend. As often happens with college students, we had our share of drinks - not too many, but enough to cloud our judgements a bit. My female friend started flirting with me, while my other friend cooked something for us all in his kitchen. It was a delicate situation to say the least. Eventually, her and I went outside for a bit. It was a warm summer evening, the moon nearly full overhead. We made out for awhile in the alley about a block from his apartment. She repeatedly gave consent, quite enthusiastically I might add, for us to have sex right there in the alley. I continued to struggle with loyalties to my male friend, but continued to consent to an escalation. That is, until we were half naked and at the point of intercourse. Perhaps it was as much about not having protection as about my concerns about our mutual friend back home cooking for all of us. I'm not interested in painting my 21 year old self in a heroic light. However, what happened next - when I told her we should get back to the apartment now - wasn't just about rescinding consent. It was really about weighing the potential consequences. The upset my male friend might have felt about us disappearing to have sex. The possibility of destroying the friendship all together. Unplanned pregnancy. STDs. (I really didn't know her sexual history.) The lists goes on. I already felt guilt about the sneaking around we had done. It didn't make any sense to keep going just because we both wanted to, and agreed to.

I suppose it's possible to argue that consent contains all the rest of the stuff I spoke about. But more often than not, I don't think it does. I certainly have consented to having sex when I probably would have been better off saying no. There seems to be an assumption by the author that when folks are consenting, they're doing so mindfully, with at least some awareness of what that might mean in terms of the Eightfold Path or the precepts. But really, how often is that the case? And how often is consent mainly driven by horniness or lonliness or some other powerful emotion?

What do you think of all this? I'm especially interested in ways folks have reconciled Buddhist teachings around sexuality in our sexually diverse, modern society. Because one of the things I enjoyed about Contillo's post is that she attempted to do just that.

The "Spiritual" Denial of Love and Sexuality?

I recently started my annual re-reading of selections from 20th Century Catholic monk Thomas Merton's journals. For the past few years, I have kept gravitating towards volume six, which arguably contains the most controversial section of Merton's life. Also, having read nearly all seven volumes from cover to cover over the years, number six is the most thought-provoking and revealing of Merton's life and how he understood the world.

At the center of this volume is the illicit relationship Merton had with a student nurse during the spring and early summer of 1966. I remember being shocked when I first stumbled on these entries in the journal, but now I find that there is something so shockingly human about it all that my shock has become reserved for why we're so unwilling to accept and work with the complexities of love, sexuality, and intimacy.

Author Mark Shaw came out with a new book in 2009 addressing this relationship, and how love, sexuality, and lack of both profoundly affected Merton's life and his views on religion and spirituality. Given the discussions about fallen Zen teachers like Genpo and Eido Roshi, as well as the numerous sex scandals that have rocked monastic communities of various religious traditions in recent decades, much of what Shaw has to say is important.

As some of you may know, Thomas Merton was broad in his interest of world religions, and dabbled to some extent in Zen towards the end of his life. He was visited by the Dalai Lama, and Thich Nhat Hanh, long before either were world renown figures. He read everything he could find on Buddhism, and was at a conference of spiritual monastics in Thailand when he was electrocuted by a fan and died in December 1968.

Of Merton's wild, fairly destructive young adult life, and his subsequent entry into the monastery, Shaw writes the following:

Becoming a monk was supposed to cleanse him of these sins, but from his own private journals, I knew this was not true. Instead, Merton’s failure to understand what loving, and being loved were all about caused him frustration, turmoil, and even depression. Beneath the mask of holiness, the plastic saint image promoted by the Catholic Church, was a sunken man who yearned for love while realizing he could never truly be one with God until he found it. Then, as I wrote in the book, the skies opened up and there was a gift, the love of a woman. It is no wonder Merton grabbed the chance to experience love despite the risks involved. And Margie taught him about loving, and being loved, opening up a path to freedom Merton never knew existed.

Anyone who reads the entries in Merton's journal about his time with Margie will immediately feel the profound struggle that went on for Merton between his understanding of the spiritual life and the manifestation of in the flesh love that was right before him. Although at times the way he words things sounds almost like a teenager in love, I really believe, like Shaw, that this was much more for Merton.

I have always found the deep split between the spiritual and sexual in nearly all religions, including Buddhism, very troubling. While it's possible to argue that Buddhism has less of this than Judeo-Christian traditions, I'm still convinced that there's a gap in the teachings that has lead to an enormous amount of confusion, condemnation, and suffering.

Merton took a vow of celibacy in a church that has has a long standing doctrinal split between sexuality and spirituality. The depth of sex scandals that have ripped through Catholic communities in recent years point to this split, and how destructive it can be.

But what if Merton had been a Buddhist monk? He still would have been breaking his vow. And yet, how does this vow square with a spiritual tradition built upon the awareness that everything in life is impermanent? In other words, what happens to a person who takes what might be viewed as a permanent vow (at least in this lifetime), and then discovers along the way that upholding that vow is causing more suffering than liberation?

It's too easy to say that Merton should have either dropped the relationship and kept his vow or should have left the monastery. This was no novice monk; by the time of his relationship with Margie Smith, he was a world renown spiritual writer who was, despite his independent, anti-authoritarian streak, considered to be an important asset by the Church. Walking away from the monastery would have proved to be very difficult, and returning to his vows as they were was impossible. The last two years of Merton's life, following the relationship, proved to be his most exploratory in a spiritual sense, and it's possible to argue that he may have been tossed out of the church at some point if he had lived longer. To suggest that the relationship with Margie had nothing to do with this late life spiritual journey would be a great spiritual denial in my opinion.

In writing this, I'm not arguing that vows of celibacy are wrong, or that breaking those vows should be done any time someone feels constrained by them. That's not my point at all. I do believe we should strive to uphold whatever vows we make in our lives as best as we can.

However, I'm also convinced that how vows manifest in life changes over time. And when it comes to sexuality and spirituality, how much clarity can most of us claim to have when our spiritual traditions are littered with prohibitions, shame, blame, and non-discussions about the intersection of the two?

On Those "Meaningless" Zen Sex Scandals

"Genpo Roshi is quite active here in The Netherlands. But his influenced has waned considerably lately. It's hard to tell if that's just because of the very highly publicized and largely meaningless sex scandal or because people realized what a joke the whole Big Mind® thing was.

The above comments are from Zen teacher Brad Warner's current post on Zen in Europe. For anyone who hasn't read Brad's writing before, his persona is frequently smart ass and irreverent. Furthermore, he loves to take shots at Dennis Merzel(Genpo), to the point where it's almost become a cliche.

Anyway, what struck me in the above comment is the decidedly cavalier attitude Warner takes in regards to the "sex scandal" that rocked Genpo's sangha several months ago. This is not a new view from Brad, nor is it an uncommon view around the convert Zen world. In response to various posts I have written about the scandal that happened in my own sangha, as well as what happened with Genpo and other Zen teachers in recent years, I have received many comments suggesting that "it's no big deal" and/or that the grievances are "all in the students' head, completely blown out of proportion."

This morning, as I reflect on all that I've experienced, and also what I have read about sex scandals in spiritual communities (which are almost always about much more than sex, I find myself thinking about how our attitudes about sex really explode the holy masks so many of us love to parade around in.

There are endless streams of Buddhist writing about compassion, and yet when it comes to suffering borne at least in part from sexual relations, how often does that compassion get tossed under the "emptiness" bus?

Or on the other side of the coin, how often do we resort to fast and easy moral judgments about those involved, be they teachers or students?

In other words, how often do we simply choose a relative or absolute shortcut, essentially out a desire to avoid the karmic mess before us?

For every cavalier statement like Warner's, there are as many or more final and total condemnations of teachers like Genpo, or of the "infantile" students that held their former teachers on a pedestal.

Perhaps it's not terribly surprising, but it is sort of ironic that a lot of Buddhists seem entirely unable to demonstrate compassion when it comes to their fellow dharma brothers and sisters.

And I believe that when it comes to something with such intensity as a sex scandal, which tends to unravel a knot of power abuse along with it, one of the main reasons that so many of us fail to embody compassion is that we can't figure out what compassion truly is in such a situation.

On the one hand, there's a need to deal with the facts of the relative world. A need for some accountability and responsibility taken.

On the other hand, there's the emptiness of the situation, that in an absolute sense, what happened was "no big deal" or that, anyway, "it's ok as it is."

If you think about it, this struggle between addressing the absolute and relative plays out in every moment of our lives. However, the power of sexuality seems to not only highlight the two poles, but effectively blasts all but the most seasoned of practitioners into one camp or the other. If I consider my own experience, it's been filled with a lot of swinging between the two ends, and more recently attempting to find some middle ground in what I say, write, and think.

Nagarjuna's tetralemma comes up for me in all of this. It's essentially a warning to not get attached to any of these four views:

X (affirmation)
non-X (negation)
X and non-X (both)
neither X nor non-X (neither)

When I have deliberately worked with this, examining "answers" or "conclusions" about something, at some point, I have found myself empty handed. Without anything to hold onto. It's startling, so much so that I've noticed getting stuck to being startled. To the point of paralysis.

Yet it seems to me that this is the pivot point, the opportunity to truly embody compassion and liberate suffering. However, ever desiring some solid ground, some fixed right or wrong, we tend to miss the opportunity time and time again.

I'll leave you with this poem from Zen master Ikkyu, no stranger to sex and sex scandals, to ponder.

From the world of passions,
returning to the world of passions.
There is a moment’s pause --
if it rains, let it rain,
If the wind blows let it blow.

Buddhists Talking Sexual Desire

There is an excellent post and discussion about desire going on over at the blog On the Precipice. Specifically, it's tackling sex and sexual desire, which are, for obvious and not so obvious reasons both major stumbling blocks for humans and also gateways to enlightenment.

To open the discussion up further, let's consider a few of the comments made over there first.

Katherine, the post author, writes:

I didn’t consciously choose to abstain from sexual activity. Initially it was more a consequence of environmental choices I made in my life–namely to spend an extended period of time meditating in Burma, and thus observing the eight precepts. After some time learning in the fish bowl of a retreat center exactly what desire is like, when I went back into the world, the five precepts were just kind of a given. And as long as I’m still in training–knowing that old habit patterns can out-muscle wise and skillful alternatives, in the absence of a committed relationship, there would naturally be celibacy. Believing a particular train of thought that ran through my head at one point, and in the fear that I might somehow be suppressing desire (e.g., note the delusion of this post), I experimented once (while firmly in the world, mind you). In the language of addiction recovery, we would say I “slipped”. Not that I hold the precepts with such moral fervor, but let’s face it, I’m just disappointed I can’t say I’ve been celibate for as long the x years and y months as I’d like.

It's interesting to me that she uses the language of addiction recovery because I believe that is both something that offers insight, and also a place of trouble for a lot of folks.

There's no doubt in my mind that sexual activity, even if just done in one's mind in the form of fantasy, can be quite addictive. When sex is approached in an addictive manner, it's all about objectification and sense gratification. Instead of moving closer to your life, you move away from it, all the while believing that you are getting something that previously was "missing" from your life. That's the interesting thing about addictive sexual patterns. They trick the mind into thinking that whatever actions are being done will fill in or settle that pit of uneasiness we all feel at our core. Another, more blunt way to phrase it, might be "This orgasm will be the one that brings endless bliss, and remove the misery." That's the trick. And actually, if you experience the rise and fall of the trick, you actually start to shoot from a view of diminished returns. Instead of believing that the coming orgasm or sexual high will bring endless bliss or even long term bliss, you're "happy" with a short term relief from whatever misery and/or longing is present.

This is very much like substance addiction. The cycle of rising euphoria and then falling into withdrawal is a pattern of diminished returns, but one that your mind continues to buy into because it can't stand to face that uneasy pit.

Let's face it, that uneasy pit is really, when you strip off all the emotional and conceptual stuff, merely the emptiness of self. The moving sands that make up our lives. And since no amount of dumping stuff or experiences into it will make it a fixed whole, we are basically left to face it full on, without flinching. But most of the time, we opt to keep trying to fill the hole.

Going back to addiction languaging, though, I also believe that there is a place of trouble there. Maybe many. For example, one of the underlying premises of many addiction recovery groups is that the only way to heal is to abstain from that which you were addicted to, usually for the rest of your life. Now, even if one doesn't literally apply a "rest of my life" approach to celibacy, it's really easy to get hung up on a belief that you must "perfect" your sexual self before re-entering being a sexually active person.

This perfectionism is something you see amongst some folks in 12 Step groups. A person who has years of sobriety, and has cleaned up their lives in many ways, might spend months or even years feeling shame and guilt about a single "slip" where they drank, or smoked a joint, or what have you. There's something quite puritanical about this in my opinion, even if the person in question really is better off always being sober.

Furthermore, while there are similarities between sexual addictions and substance addictions, the very fact that substances are something chosen to be brought in from the outside makes them different. Sexual energy can arise without any external stimulus, and indeed, is simply part of our being. And while some people choose to be celibate their entire lives, the vast majority of us do not, and so some other approaches are necessary in my view.

In my comments to Katherine's post, I wrote:

The relationship itself might be the vehicle for both of us to break through the dangling chads of craving we might enter into the partnership with.

I firmly believe that people can enter into an intimate, even spiritual partnership with the intention to awaken with each other. Which is different from trying to break through all of one's selfish desires alone. Now, clearly this is high-level relationship stuff, something that probably requires that those involved have burned through some of their attachments and selfish acting out beforehand.

Which leads to this comment, from Ted Meissner, author of the blog The Secular Buddhist:

The nice thing is that this time, the time for intimacy with just this moment rather than with Other, can help us grow in wonderful ways that can make us better partners in the event we do find someone with whom we can share — this moment.

The "this time' he's referring to is the period of celibacy Katherine describes in her post. For me, this points to a synergistic approach whereby one renounces acting on sexual energy and thoughts for a time, and then chooses to return to being active again.

However, I also believe that for some of us, that returning might not be to that final, wonderful powerhouse spiritual partnership. It might be something other, even something that you might be tempted to call a slip up or mistake. But which in the end, actually taught you something you were previously not seeing before.

Following a long term relationship that led to a period of renunciation for me, I had a couple of short flings that basically ended my desire for sex without a deeper commitment. Intellectually I knew the fleeting quality of causal sex, and personally, I hadn't really engaged much in it previously. However, it was the multiple casual experiences over a short time that finalized a break with any interest in it.

On the other hand, there is this comment from Barry Briggs, of the blog Ox Herding:

Over the past five years, with guidance from my teacher, I’ve undertaken an examination of my own sexual impulses, desires, addictions and actions. From one perspective, it’s been rather gruesome. From another perspective, it’s been liberating.

That "gruesome" aspect is one of the main reasons why people don't want to pay much attention to this area of life, choosing instead to either repetitiously act out of habitual, addictive patterns or severely repress desire and/or wallow in guilt and shame about it. I have been in both of those camps, and they are flat out death beds if you ask me.

So, it's a really tricky balance. For example, with the casual sex examples I mentioned above. Someone who is just acting out of their addictiveness could easily claim their actions are all about "learning," while the reality is more about using someone else.

Which is why I really like this point, from Katherine's post:

There’s a lot of ego and, as such, a lot of dukkha–harm to myself, harm to others–involved the moment an interaction heads south of the waist line. Part of that is our own emotional baggage and habits of behavior, part of it is deeply conditioned on a subconscious level from our parents and ancestors. The good news is we can unlearn some of that. We can lighten the load.

Lighten the load. That makes a ton of sense to me. It's a little bit like the peeling the onion metaphor. That you're stripping off layer after layer as you go.

Moving towards naked if you will.

That's where I am aiming to go. How about you?

The Red Thread of Passion: A Few Thoughts on Buddhist Sexuality

Rev. Harvey Daiho Hilbert-roshi, over at his blog, has been considered the Buddhist precepts, or ethical guidelines one by one. His current post is about the precept on sexuality, which tends to stir up a lot of confusion for most of us.

No sexual misconduct: I vow to use my sexuality to enhance and nurture the lives of others

Consider this vow as it is written. How often do we understand our sexual behavior in the context of its power to enhance and nurture? It seems to me we spend an awful lot of time fretting about the morality of sex and far too little time on considering its humanizing, spiritual, and healing potential.

This spring, our center was planning on having a class to examine these very issues. So few of us signed up that it was canceled. To me, that speaks volumes about our collective baggage around sexuality.

I remember after the debacle in our community, which among other things involved a sexual breach between a student and the former teacher, there was a ton of energy around developing a detailed set of policies and procedures for addressing issues like sexual misconduct. In and of itself, this was necessary, and the work done continues to be a benefit for the sangha. However, when reflecting on the comments Rev. Harvey made, as well as that canceled class, it strikes me that my sangha, collectively, represents the heavy lean in society towards prohibitive, puritanical views about sexuality.

A few upfront observations: Just as we are eating beings, sleeping beings, or breathing beings, we are also sexual beings. Just as killing and stealing can be disruptive to community life, sexual conduct has the power to destroy individual lives within community. Sex is at the center of much of our waking life. We spend an awful lot of time in denial about our sexual nature. We spend the rest of our time trying our best to act it out. Personally, I have little time and patience with our societal neurosis over sex. We do it or we don’t and we should not infuse sexual conduct with notions of moral purity or impurity.

Pretty strong language, don't you think? I personally like it. It's refreshing. No mincing words. No trying to massage things to keep people comfortable.

I don't want to be comfortable with puritanical thoughts about sexuality; I want to be liberated in all that I do. Sex can be wonderful, healing, joy producing, and maybe even a source of liberation. We all know about the horrors of misuse, but most of us haven't deeply explored the flip side. That's my guess. Tell me if I'm wrong. But all nudie mags, how to orgasm books, and sex toys aside, do you really feel like you have fully embraced and experienced your sexuality? Do you have a holistic sense of it? Or is it another part of you life compartmentalized, fragmented off as "not spiritual enough," a "hindrance," etc?

These questions go for those of us who have, or desire to have, active sex lives, and those who are celibate. No one gets around the red thread of passion. Best to go at it head on, with eyes wide open.

* Image is of the painting "Red Thread of Passion" by Patricia Brown. For more of her work, see this link.