August 2008 Archives

I was hanging out with a friend recently and she saw David R. Loy's book, Money, Sex, War, Karma, on my coffee table and picked it up and excitedly turned to the chapter on sex. She told me she HAD to read that part...immediately. I said sure and asked why. She informed me that her and her girlfriend were considering going to a sex party and she wanted to know what Buddhism had to say about that. I said that I didn't think Loy specifically addressed the issue of sex parties, but that maybe she would find something useful. This led to the larger discussion of casual sex in general. Is there some kind of Buddhist ethics to provide guidance on this issue?

It's my understanding that "sexual misconduct" includes infidelity (your own or being involved in someone else's) and obviously, anything non-consensual. But I've also heard this precept interpreted to include sex without commitment. Loy explains it by saying, "Since the crucial concern for Buddhism is always dukkha, the most important thing is avoiding sex that harms others or causes them pain." This gets a bit dicier. In the case of my friend, I said that while it might all be consensual, she would have no idea what would happen to the other people involved. Might a sex party bring up jealousy and cause fights for other couples after...even if she was confident that her and her partner had an understanding? Or even in her own case, people often feel differently about things when they shift from fantasy to reality.

I think the issue with casual sex is that if you don't know the person that well (and even if you do), you have no idea how they're really feeling. Someone might say they're ok with things being "casual", but sex often brings up unexpected feelings- it's an intense experience that involves all of the senses. And I'd also like to think that sexual energy can be kind of sacred, so if you're just expending it anywhere, are you being disrespectful of or wasting that energy? I suppose it comes down to being mindful and honest with ourselves. It might be easier in some situations to tell ourselves that it doesn't mean anything for the other person either- it kind of lets us off the hook. But do we ever know that for sure? And then there's the whole other question of why. What are we looking for in these situations? Obviously it's about feeling good, feeding a biological urge, etc.- but it can also be about filling some sense of lack that has nothing to do with sex or about our need for some sort of instant gratification or validation. And on the other hand, I completely support people understanding and exploring their sexual desire- I think it's really important for people to feel some freedom around that. But I'd like to think that this can be done mindfully, and that it's ultimately better for everyone involved if that's the case.

Anyway- this is a huge topic and I'm trying to get out of my apartment to go swimming- so, just throwing it out there. What do you guys think?

by Lauren Bulfin

“We’ve had an anonymous complaint,” began my supervisor Cesar sounding oddly hesitant for a man so bounding with aggression that he often throws office supplies at our heads for no reason. “The music is too loud. And the conversations have been…raunchy. And, quite frankly…racial.” (Upon pronouncing this last word, his pale Cuban skin flushed pink.) Cesar looked at our blank faces, hoping for a sign of contrition. Nothing. Cesar continued: “The Deputy Manager wanted to come up in here and tell you guys himself, but I convinced him not to.” Cesar looked at us almost pleadingly: “when it’s just us, we can say what we want, but when there are outsiders around, we have to be careful.” Odd words coming from a man who said things like: “today, I’m wearing briefs instead of boxers. It’s like walking around all day with a wedgie when you don’t have a wedgie.”

The anonymous complainant was obviously the cancer researcher who had occupied an empty desk in our cubicle pod for several days. But it was hard to think about any specific incidents she was referring to due to the sheer volume of inappropriateness. Raunchy? Was it when an elderly coworker who liked to flirt was told that he “shouldn’t make promises the body can’t keep?” Was the researcher offended when I was told I shouldn’t drink coffee because “you know, White people don’t age well”? Or was it when a Black employee said “if that woman had been White you know they wouldn’t a’ never convicted her?”

I couldn’t even categorize whether these events had taken place before or during the researchers’ arrival. We didn’t censor ourselves for no researcher. My co-workers are largely a working-class, multiracial group of people who talk fearlessly about social issues that the students at my liberal arts college spend expensive sums to talk around, using political correctness as a shield.

During the school year, I’d gotten in trouble for the way I expressed myself about these issues, and was forcefully made to realize that I needed to tone myself down. At first I had protested: “but this is me toned down.” And in comparison to my co-workers at the hospital, where any opinion was best expressed as bluntly as possible, often for comic effect, I was toned down. But in comparison to the students in my seminar, I was toned way the fuck up. On one occasion, the White students even got mad on behalf of the minorities in our class.

While I was shaken up enough by this incident to modify my own behavior, I sincerely hoped that Cesar’s speech didn’t lead my co-workers to water themselves down too.   One of the precepts of right speech is to "abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others."  But one of the 'near enemies' of loving-kindness, is comfort, which I interpret to mean as engaging with others in a superficial way, so as to avoid things getting awkward or 'messy.'  Political correctness can be this near-enemy at times.  Yes, I do feel ashamed when one of my White co-worker starts spouting racial slurs in a room filled with people of all different colors.  But when I notice that no one else cares, I find myself caring less.  Words are just words.  When you allow people to express themselves outrageously, you are often clearing the way for them to work out their complex feelings towards a sensitive subject, even if they appear to be engaging only in "idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth."  (A no-no for right speech.).  For example, a Black man at my job would often say things such as: "Well, there are too many White people in the room, I have to leave."  Eventually, he started telling us about all the fucked up things he had experienced growing up in the Jim Crow South.

So I was glad when Cesar barked at me a few days later: “Lauren, I know you’re White and all, but do you have to be so pale? Its summer time, go out and get yourself a tan.”

Political correctness had came and went from our hospital department, much like the researcher.

Stillman Brown is the seventh member of the band (after Nigel Godrich).

I haven't been taken with the beauty of a music video in a while (Zero 7 had a good one back in the day), but Radiohead's "House of Cards" grabbed me this morning.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ]

For an interesting discussion of how it was made, look here. It was created without film or cameras - three types of scanners were used to create the images. Only Radiohead.

I find the song simultaneously prophetic and oddly calming, and these sensations correspond to the two readings I see in the lyrics. One one hand, it is perhaps the most simple and direct ballad Yorke has ever penned. It also continues the band's running engagement with the apocalyptic and post-societal. Thom Yorke's deep and public concern with global warming (he's a spokesman for Friends of the Earth) has informed many of his songs since Kid A (and perhaps more indirectly, the manic transcendence of Ok Computer). For example, from the vintage Idioteque:

Ice age coming
Ice age coming
Let me hear both sides
Let me hear both sides
Let me hear both
Ice age coming
Ice age coming
Throw 'em in the fire
Throw 'em in the fire
Throw 'em on the
We're not scaremongering
This is really happening

Yorke has said one of the triggering images for the song was disintegration and "House of Cards" seems to speak, in part, to a mass breakdown of mechanical technology and public works. But Yorke sings in such a gentle, ethereal voice that it actually sounds pretty nice, like a nap on a summer afternoon.

The infrastructure will collapse from voltage spikes
Throw your keys in the bowl
Kiss your husband good night

And for all of us going happily about our energy-using, carbon-belching lives:

Denial Denial Denial

A few readers of the One City blog brought up a great point last week in response to my post about organic food, one that I think merits discussion of its own: is "eating local" even more important that eating organic? Is it fresher? Better for you? The environment? Most important (to my lazy self), is eating local worth the effort? Because getting up early on a Saturday morning to shop the local farmers' market is, uh, not my idea of fun.

Here are a few links about how to eat local and why:

http://www.foodroutes.org/how
http://www.foodroutes.org/why
http://www.eatlocal.net/how

Have any of you seriously tried this? Is the food better? Do you think you're really saving tons of energy and fossil fuels by buying food that's produced locally? (I'm thinking about how much energy it takes per pound of food to drive a pickup truck full of apples from upstate NY to Union Square vs. a barge full of bananas from South America -- economies of scale here -- but that probably isn't a fair comparison. And there are still trucks that have to drive the bananas to our stores...)

Anyway. Until you guys can convince me otherwise, my idea of eating local will remain the bodega nearest my house, and the awesome restaurants on Graham Avenue. And this place:

For the last few years I have been producing reality television shows, an interesting crossroads of storytelling, documentary, and mockumentary. A key component of all of these shows is the interview.  Part confessional, part narrative device, partly real and partly scripted, the interview is the place where the real people playing themselves gets to clarify the inner monologue of the character they think they are portraying.  In other words, the interview is where they get to tell you what REALLY happened, at least from the perspective of the role they think they play on the show.

Over the last few years I’ve conducted hundreds of these interviews over hundreds of hours, and one thing is clear - no two people ever remember an event happening the same way, no matter how quickly you interview them after the event occurs.  People will disagree on everything from the time of day an event occurred, to the color of their friend’s shirt, to the most basic components of a conversation.  Because I conduct the interviews based on a filmed version of the events (aka evidence) part of my job is to let the cast disagree about the essentials of the scene to counterpoint what the viewer sees “really” happening.  However, sometimes I need a cast member to talk me through the events in a way that jibes with the filmed version, and it is amazing how infrequently anyone can remember the “accurate” version of events.  I usually have to coach them through with gentle suggestions to get the play-by-play we need for the edit.

I also have found that after a certain period of time has elapsed, usually a few weeks, the more likely it is that the various cast members will have the same memory.  This is the direct result of memory contamination in the form of shared discussion about an event.  The more time that elapses, the more the memory becomes a shared or communal memory, rather than an individual memory.   Influenced by other versions of the story, their own desire to be the hero of the story, and the biological limits of the human brain, the memory becomes tainted.

Whether applied to the mundane events of a reality show, or the stories that lead a nation into war, the simple truth is that there is no simple truth.  There is no cross-roads where your truth intersects with mine. We may come to agree on a truth because of a need to belong to a group, or a desire to avoid conflict, or apathy, but this “communally shared truth” is nothing but another story we tell ourselves.  All truth is filtered through the swamp of heredity, biology, personal and cultural mythology, time and distance. We might use words that seem to agree with each other, but there is simply no way that I can ever directly experience what you perceive as truth.  So if a shared truth does not exist, where does that leave us when trying to agree on what reality really is?

I did not expect that working on reality television shows would bring me to this philosophical conundrum, but it has.  As I have deepened my explorations of my own mind and Buddhism over the last year, I have started to understand that truth is that which exists in the present moment, and everything else is a post-truth labeling of that moment with varying degrees of accuracy.

If all of these “contaminants” of truth (heredity, biology, mythology, time and distance) are “me-centered” experiences - i.e. there is an “I” who experiences truth which is then subject to these contaminants as I experience them - then it stands to reason that truth is something that exists separate from “I”.   This is not meant as an argument for moral relativism, where everything is okay because nothing is real.  On the contrary, the more I explore this idea the more I desire to move my own personal lower-case-t truth into the world of the upper-case-T Truth.  In my fleeting, tantalizing glimpses of upper-case-T Truth, “I” shut up for a second (If I’m lucky) and stop telling myself stories, making plans, building defenses, and otherwise doing all the mental backflips that I do 99.9999% of the time, all of which I am doing to prove to myself that I still exist.

In those fleeting moments of capital-T Truth, I see that we do in fact share a communal Truth that is separate and distinct from biology, heredity, mythology, time and distance. In those moments, devoid of storytelling, my existence is not dependent on “me” being separate from everything else.  I exist because everything else exists.  And though the stories I tell myelf about who I am may be interesting - and even essential to making me “me” - ultimately they are beliefs, not truths, and should be subject to the same rigorous examination that my cast members sit through when I interview them.