Jennifer Welsh (LiveScience.com, June 9, 2011), Wisdom Quarterly commentary
Spiritual sex: beyond the physical (Dr. Linda E. Savage, AlternativeApproaches.com)People who can better communicate and understand another person's emotions are more likely to have a satisfying sex life, new research finds.
Personal attributes such as self-esteem and autonomy also play a role in sexual pleasure and health, the researchers said.
"Sexual health includes sexual well-being, and sexual enjoyment is an important part [of that]," said study researcher Adena Galinsky, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
YodPod, the sun kissed hippie "Source" cult (Guruphiliac)
"How people interact and their ability to listen to each other and take each other's perspective can really influence the sex that they have." [
Top 10 Aphrodisiacs]
The study analyzed data from about 3,200 students, ages 18 to 26, who were surveyed between 2001 and 2002 as part of the third wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
Studying sexual satisfactionRespondents answered questions meant to gauge levels of autonomy, self-esteem and empathy, along with their sexual health and satisfaction. Autonomy is defined as the strength to
follow personal convictions even when they go against conventional wisdom, which usually increases as adolescents age and enter adulthood, Galinsky said.
Communication, empathy are keys to improving sex
Self-esteem is a belief in one's self-worth, which also increases with age. Empathy is the ability to take another's perspective, to see things from their angle and understand and respond to their emotions.
The study found that men were more likely than women to report
having orgasms most or all of the time during sex, with 87 percent of men saying so, compared with 47 percent of women in the study. Men were also more likely to enjoy giving oral sex to their partner more than women were, the study found.
"The reality is that the majority of young men really like engaging in activities in which the goal is giving their partner pleasure," Galinsky told LiveScience. "There is a pretty consistent difference between young men and young women."
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Yogi with a Tantrika. Tantra was a Hindu practice adopted into some manifestations of Mahayana Buddhism with the idea of using the world to transcend the world, overriding the supremely enlightened historical Buddha's guidance (lawrencelanoff.com). Can Sex Really Be "Enlightening"?Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)No, sex cannot not lead to literal enlightenment. In fact, sex (as representative of the bond of sensual desire and craving are the precise impediment the Buddha found to liberation from all bonds.
It is not the Buddha alone who discovered this. Everyone who reaches stream entry, the first stage of enlightenment, finds the same thing. This path is verifiable. Nirvana is experiential.
For all that, the vast majority are not on a direct path, are not fully dedicated to the goal of making an end of all suffering. And the rest of fear liberation and put it off because we think seriously setting off on the path means no more sex.
There is sex. And it can accompany us. Most people will attain as householders. The direct path is abandoning the burdensome household life, and that means taking up spiritual practices that increase one's chances of reaching distinction in meditation in this very life. If craving is an obstacle, pretending one can use sex to reach enlightenment is a frustrating delusion.
Since most of us will be householders and still wish to advance, still wish to have sex (and more of it and better versions of it), we can certainly practice more "enlightened" sex. What would that be? The third Precept is to undertake the training rule to abstain -- not from sex but -- from sexual misconduct.
That's easy to do. We assert that, in workaday life, sex is fine (moral, normal, healthy). Can we limit our sex to people who are able to give consent by virtue of the fact that they are not in a relationship or state that prevents them from giving such consent?
Going beyond that, can we have sex because we want to advance our interest in pleasure and the other person's equally?
Is it possible to not only avoid harm but to do good by establishing connection, compassion, caring, and carnal bliss?
Of course it's possible? Ten people cannot give "consent." Who are the ten? Those dependent on (1) mother, (2) father, (3) brother, (4) sister, (5) relatives, (6) other guardians, (7) a ruler or institution [e.g., because of being a convict or patient who has lost that privilege while under the custody of an official entity, as happens in our modern penal system, just as in days of old], (8) spouse, (9) fiancee [betrothed in a relationship], (10) future spouse [because of being promised in marriage [as by parental arrangement or obligation].
This is the literal, bottom line rule. The spirit of it should be understood to avoid confusion and the condemnation of what the Buddha was liberating us from by explaining the Five Precepts.
Unlike Christianity (a mangled form of the Wisdom of the East in the hands of those wishing to dominate, control, and enforce personal moral behavior in the name of emperors and a patriarchal Church), which says "sin" is what angers or displeases God, the Buddha saw "bad karma." He saw that certain actions are not capable of resulting in the search for happiness that motivates them (when their karmic-results are met with).
He warned of the inevitable consequences of such actions -- like sexual misconduct -- in a sutra that lists the "Ten Courses of Unwholesome Action" (Numerical Discourses, Book of Tens). These actions are called "courses," Bhikkhu Bodhi explains in his audio commentary to the Middle Length Discourses, because they have the strength to generate rebirth in "unfortunate destinations" if they ripen near the time of death. There are ten wholesome courses explained as well.
It is no coincidence that Hinduism has an "eightfold" path or that Christianity has ten "commandments." Both traditions, Patanjali in the first case and Talmudic/Zohar/Mosaic/Old Testament composers in the second, were heavily influenced by the success and widely influential teachings of the Buddha that spread without keeping the attribution and reference to Buddhism that may have originally been acknowledged.
It can be that Christianity (and Islam and Judaism) fails miserably in getting this across about sex. So we are left feeling guilty and ashamed of natural human desire. But such desire is not limited to the human plane. Craving for sensual pleasures in general, and sexual pleasure in particular, is characteristic of the Sense Sphere (Kama Loka). This sphere includes lower heavenly planes as well as the animal and other subhuman planes.
Sex is transcended in the brahma plane of what becomes the Fine-Material Sphere (Rupa Loka). Brahmas are exalted devas, "light beings." Almost all of the heavenly planes are referred to as deva planes even though there is yet one higher spheres that transcends even the brahmas. That is the Immaterial Sphere (Arupa Loka).
Sex and Heaven
If one wishes to be reborn on Earth, sex free of sexual misconduct is fine. Our obsession/guilt/remorse/shame are not! These are forms of mental karma that are very detrimental. Such psychological activity does not remain mental but gives way to verbal and physical expression that make it worse.
If one wishes to be reborn in the Sense Sphere heavens, sex free of sexual misconduct is fine. (There is sex and much better sex than we have here on Earth in some higher worlds).
If one wishes to be reborn not only among deities (devas, literal physical beings called "shining ones," which we would likely call angels) but divinities (brahmas) or even as a divinity -- literally not just close to God but as a God -- one needs to set sex and obsession with sensuality aside.
Hindu Brahmins in particular long for such rebirth, considering it liberation from samsara. The Buddha pointed out that this liberation (moksha) is not actual liberation; rebirth are not brought to a final end by such a rebirth.
If one wishes to be reborn among or as a divinity, one needs to develop the absorptions (jhanas) and bring them up and hold them at the time of death. This is the course of action, the weighty karma, that leads to rebirth in those happy, exalted, long-lived worlds.
But these worlds are not and do in and of themselves lead to final liberation -- nirvana. Nirvana is attainable here and in the lower (sub-brahma) deva worlds.
Bearing this in mind, what need is there to feel guilty about sex or to shame others in some Puritanical way that hypocritically runs in our American psyche/zeitgeist. It is not this way in England and France, although it does seem to be in Germany and Italy and everywhere else that does not think through the consequences of reinterpreting and rebranding Buddhism as Judaism, Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, and Hinduism.
So many of our world traditions are trying to get at the same thing. But they hamstring themselves by speaking of "sin" as the fetish and preference of a personal God as if that itself made things good and bad. Creator (genetic manipulator and helper of human advancement from some extraterrestrial plane) or not, karma was not created. The Truth is uncreated.
And the Truth enlightened ones see is that actions motivated by the wide categories of attraction (both sensual, fine material, and supersensual), aversion, and delusion result in grief, result in unsatisfactoriness. Motivation, zeal, passion for the good, intention for liberation, a wish to do what is beneficial (dhamma-chanda) are all forms of desire and attraction; they are not being called lust (kama-chanda).
People seem fond of condemning the teaching that bad karma is undergirded by greed, hatred, and delusion by asserting that "greed" (desire) can be good as if that revealed a contradiction the Buddha had not thought of.
The Buddha and Buddhism and Buddhists distinguish lust and greed from will and wholesome intention, and it is only misguided philosophers (often Western) who act as if Buddhism is praising apathy, non-striving, and psychological emptiness (ennui).
The Buddha, bodhisattvas, and Noble Ones (ariyas, arhants, and pacceka-buddhas) are ardent and diligent. Even those who only attain the absorptions are similarly conscientious, consistent, and persist in the pursuit of the good.
Sex does not have to derail that. The question is this, do we rule sex in our lives or are we ruled by sex? Is it a joyful activity, an ambivalent and shameful one with misgivings, an obsessive compulsive behavior that consumes us, or something we can renounce and do without even as we engage in it? Renunciation is letting go of attachment even if we do not let go of a possession or activity. This is moving towards "enlightened" sex.
Meditators should temporarily abandon and set sex aside. The mind hindered and propelled by sensual craving is going in the opposite direction of absorption (serenity), realization (insight), and nirvana (final liberation). It is not Buddhist. Nevertheless, the person engaged in sex can use that to do good, to bring about the sort of happiness characteristic of the Sensual Sphere, uniting, bonding, connecting, sharing, enjoying and bringing about joy, feeding on bliss.
Such bliss is less dependable and less enjoyable than absorption bliss -- which is "detached from sensuality, detached from unwholesome states of mind [greed, hatred/fear, delusion] and accompanied by applied and sustained attention, born of detachment [temporary renunciation of our possessions and obsessions], and filled with rapture and joy." And this is merely the first of eight absorptions that are progressively more blissful and joyful. So it is often said in Buddhism, "There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way!"
For those with no idea such serene meditative states exist, of course their focus and sometimes obsession is going to be on getting pleasure wherever pleasure is available. And if we seek to make them feel guilty for the pervasive impulse in this sphere, we do more harm than good. We do not bring about virtue in our children, friends, or family members. We bring about the opposite.
And so our world -- our corner of it in the heart of the American Empire, which looks, acts, and feels a lot like the hypocritical Holy Roman Empire good Jesus was railing against in his day [like the temple brahmin priests (brahmana) and the establishment the Buddha rejected as a shramana, a free (possessionless) renunciate -- is not improved. But tolerance and offering wisdom and compassion can help the world.
VIDEO: Amazing Fire Ceremony, Japan's Saifukuji Temple
Young Buddhist novice studies and strives for enlightenment with an entire support network provided free by others (HimalayaCrafts/Facebook)
Everyone must indeed do his/her own striving, but no one need do it alone. Even in the forest, on his quest, Siddhartha could not do it alone. He had a great deal of help, encouragement, and support. Most of this is implicit or ignored because we (as Americans) are "rugged individualists" who prefer stories of remarkable survival, struggle, and success in the face of all odds.
There are many "hells" (narakas) in Buddhist cosmology, of incredible duration and unimaginable misery, but none actually eternal.
