Xn3cTs

Tantric Sex
Tantrayana… Vajrayana…

And all we ever notice is the sex! (Just look at how our Christian conditioning has warped our minds…)

What’s so special about tantric sex?

Nothing much.

It’s just that it becomes a sacred/holy activity. A prayer. A rite/ritual (not in its pejorative sense).

So, it’s pretty much how all sexual encounters should be. What’s the diff then?

It’s all in our minds.

Vajrayana/Tantrayana Buddhism is said to be the quickest path to Nirvana because it transforms (transfigures!) every activity into a sacred/holy path. Everything is holy! Everything is divine! Pan-theism!

If everything is holy, then even fucking is holy! Heck, even shitting is holy!

The Theravadin (sometimes pejoratively called “hinayana”) tradition of Buddhism presents a much more stern/disciplined, almost ascetic/atheistic/scientific face of Buddhism.

At least, that’s how it looks to me.

best regards,
ian

Drugs and alcohol can open up a spiritual experience. But, as Bhagavan Das pointed out, it’s a dark (tamasic) path and the danger is in being eaten up or swallowed by the substance, instead of the other way around.

I haven’t taken hallucinogens. (I’d like to, someday, with reformed drug addict Rudy as a “guide.” To make sure I don’t harm myself or another…)

I think my first experience of “psychedelia” was Sesame Street. (”1,2,3,4,5…6,7,8,9,10…11,12… doodoodoodoo…,” among others…) My parents were not hippies. They listened to Bread, middle-of-the-road stuff…

But I had a cool uncle and aunt. My Uncle Boyet brought me to an open-field rock concert when I was maybe 6… where I think I first heard Pepe Smith. This uncle would show me his psychedelic paintings and taught me my first cool words: “Hayuup!” “Haneeeep!”

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I remember this film I saw in one of the French Spring Film Festivals, “Chance or Coincidence” about an “eventologist” (or someething) whose “other” job is to find connections/meanings in the chance occurences of life. I don’t remember the details of the story, it’s a love story (I think). I liked it, and also this Nat King Cole song in it, with the words “For all we know/care…?” Ala lang, baka lang alam n’yo. Am being whimsical here. It might have some meaning in the greater scheme of things. Hehehe.

Was also fascinated by “Sliders” (the TV series with Jerry O’Connell?) and “Sliding Doors” (with Gwyneth Paltrow).

In the TV series (based on a scientific theory, the “many-possible worlds” theory), the character played by Jerry, with his friends and professor (John Rhys-Davies), travel through a wormhole that leads to a parallel universe. Same time, different world. In some episodes, they even get to meet their alter-egos.

The movie “Sliding Doors” is premised on this one triviality: whether Gwyneth’s character is able to get on the subway on her way home or not. And the two parallel lives of Gwyneth play themselves out, each radically different from the other — all because of missing/not-missing a train ride. The movie however makes this intriguing, though perhaps unwarranted, conceit. The two Gwyneths (almost meet physically in an elevator) become “reconciled” during this scene by having only one singular experience, implying that the events which would follow from now on would be the same, even if they diverged earlier. Perhaps her inner reconciliation brought about the reconciliation of two divergent worlds? Perhaps she is owned by a destiny that’s greater than all the numerous happenstance of her life?

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Some people say that Christianity has been misunderstood. It looks to me more like it is Christianity which has misunderstood! The world, perhaps even Christ!

I’m not associating Christ with Christianity. When Nietzsche wrote “Der Anti-Christ” (usually translated as “The Anti-Christ”), his polemics was directed more to Paul and Christendom/Christianity, (a note in the translation says that it is probably more fitting to translate it as “The Anti-Christian.”) The same with Kierkegaard, his beef was with Christendom (the bureaucracy of Christianity). Christianity, as we know it today, is according to biblical scholarship, largely the work of Paul the Apostle.

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Part of the reason why I strayed away from “mother church” is my perception (whether right or wrong) that spirituality is inimical to the body.

You want to be holy/spiritual? Then, deny the body. The body, with its desires (sexual, biological, etc.) needs to be tamed, nay, caged. The body is a burden. If only we can become like angels. Pure, without the body which (unruly and with all these icky secretions, mucus, urine, etc.) always presents itself as a problem, a hindrance, an obstacle.

I’ve no problems with ascetic practices. I see their value. But when these practices get tied up with the denigration of the body, I react.

Didn’t God create the world and saw that it was good? Why then look at the body with an evil eye?

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Personalism vis-a-vis Parochialism

(A Reaction to a Piece on Personalism by Verdman)

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(an old piece written in June 2004)

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“Walang personalan. Trabaho lang.”

- a line from a movie about a cop (played by Rudy Fernandez) who summarily executes a criminal (”Markang Bungo” yata… not sure though…)

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“i think (i could be wrong, most of the time i am), that the root of our problem is our personalistic approach to life. we easily sacrifice objectivity in order to accomodate our personal affiliations, thus negating our chance to cultivate values that are necessary to achieve real progress. personalism is in every fabric of pinoylife. from the moment of birth (kung sino ang magiging ninong), up to the time of death (kung sinong asawa ang may karapatan sa bangkay). whether business, sports, politics, gov’t, etc…. personalism always plays a part. nothing wrong with cultivating personal ties per se, we are a social animal afterall, it’s when personalism is accomodated at the expense of objectivity, this is where corruption starts, first morally, then leading up to plunder.”

- Verdman (a nom de plume), On Personalism

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What’s the problem with personalism?

The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with personalism per se. In fact, it is precisely this personalism that makes Noypis so lovable, and as Ninoy put it, “worth dying for.”

It is when personalism clashes with “objectivity” that the problem arises. It thus degenerates to parochialism. Parochialism, i.e., my interests over your interests, my family over your family, my clan over your clan, my my hey hey!… Parochialism, narrow-mindedness, “subjectivism,” bigotry…

The Philippines is relatively a young country. We’ve only started to think of ourselves as one nation during the 19th century, the credit mainly to the ilustrados (which include Rizal). (See Leon Ma. Guerrero’s “The First Filipino.”) Probably no small wonder that we’re still trying to find our bearings… still trying to get our act together.

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wrote this circa 2004…

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I think the better version of that witticism is “I’m a vegetarian not because I love animals. It’s because I hate plants.”

The anecdote might have been simply a hyperbole to convey what I think is a very wise teaching: should it ever come to a point when one’s uncompromising principles lead to the possible loss of compassion, better relax and compromise. I think the head-monk ate the meat not so much because he didn’t want to refuse the host but because his fellow-monks were berating the hotel staff.

Likewise, the “animal-loving misanthropist” bit simply referred to the abundant cases of eccentrics who get featured in the media who shun human society and spend millions of dollars for the upkeep of their pet cats/dogs.

I wasn’t all that concerned with vegetarianism per se.

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The Heart of the Vegetarian Matter
(In Honor of the Flesh We Eat)
by Michael Ian Lomongo

On the 10th day of our Vipassana course in 2003, some of my meditation friends were discussing the idea of non-killing (even of insects), whether we’d continue the practice after the course. I said I’d probably do, but I’d try to keep in mind to always say to the insect/s “I’m sorry but I have to kill you.” (And then, someone pointed out that some American Indian tribes used to have this practice of “talking” to the animal they’re killing for food.)

Circa 1997, I used to regularly attend these monthly Full-Moon celebrations with SUFI-ISIS at either Samat Rd. or Biak-na-Bato (basta somewhere near Quezon Blvd.). They’d have someone who’d give a talk/lecture (on spirituality, various paths and techniques), afterwards there’d be meditation, and then meals!!! Woohoo! (They’ve got it all covered… food for the mind, soul, body!)

And one of the things that really struck me during one of the talks was this anecdote that the speaker shared. A group of monks was billeted in a hotel and they made sure that everything was taken care of (their accomodation, their special needs, like the purely vegetarian meal that they must have, etc.). Came mealtime, and imagine the monks’ chagrin when they found themselves being served meat! Agitated, they called for the hotel-manager and started really scolding and berating the incompetence of the hotel staff.

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Do you believe in love at first sight?

I do.

Saw this little book “The Alphabet of Grace” by Frederick Buechner in the bargain bin of NBS, bought it (for P50), and fell in love with it. Lent it to someone who, of course, lost it. And then, after some time, I serendipitously found and bought a new one (for P300). It’s about the spiritual experience of, in his own words, “a part-time novelist, Christian, pig.” What caught my attention: the title. What I loved in it: a very human, semi-mystical approach to spirituality.

Am thinking of translating it to Tagalog someday. I tried, and never got past the introduction. Will have to find time, someday.

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I’ve been trying to examine my understanding/misunderstanding of the place of eros/desire” in Buddhism and Western philosophy. Re-read Plato’s “Symposium.” (Will had “Phaedrus.” Also the “Dhamappada.”)

Yes, it’s true. I got my understanding of Buddhism mainly through Western interpreters. Jacques Maritain’s “Introduction to Philosophy,” if I remember correctly, makes a distinction between Hinduism and Buddhism that’s quite striking. He says that while 11Hinduism saw INDIVIDUAL EXISTENCE as evil, Buddhism saw EXISTENCE ITSELF all Hindus meant the return to Brahman. (The world is maya/illusion.) The Buddhist Nirvana, on the other hand, is the “cessation of life,” which meant the “cessation of desire.”

In “The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche tells this story about a man who confronts the laughing Silenus about the secret of life. Silenus tells the inquirer, “Do you really want to know? … Here it is: It were better for you not to have been born. And the next best thing? To die early.”

Nietzsche acknowledges the pessimist Schopenhauer as a major influence to his o thinking. Always the onfused mind, I may have mixed all these stuff in my head.

But it’s still quite true that “eros/desire” in both Christianity and Buddhism has been, so to say, problematized. The tradition of Christianity has a wealth of discourses on the dangers posed by desire and has probably more than a number within its tradition whose solution to the problem is to extinguish it, cut it off. The Buddhist notion of detachment/equanimity appears to be quite similar to Stoicism, a kind of indifference to life’s vicissitudes. And the way I see it, this detachment/indifference can only be attained through the weakening of eros/desire.

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