Sex study: Light on the Bedroom and Beyond

Kathy Jones (ANI/MedIndia.net, Nov. 15, 2011)

Unhappy pair, happy pair (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and admirer ("Crazy Wisdom," movingpicturesnetwork.com)

There have been preconceived notions regarding men and women's attitude toward sex in the last few decades.

It has been taken for granted that men are more oriented towards sex while women are more commitment driven or men look for attractive mates and women go after social status.

However a new study, while defying all these notions has revealed that not all psychologists comply with these gender-essentialist statements.

Psychologist Terri Conley and colleagues of University of Michigan have asserted men think about sex every seven seconds is not true.

And while it's true that men think about sex more often than women do, they also think about other bodily needs, such as food and sleep, more than women do, Live Science reported.

For the study, psychologists asked research participants to record their thoughts throughout the day.

They found that men pondered sex 18 times a day to a woman's 10 times a day, but men also thought about food and sleep proportionately more than women. That suggests sex doesn't hold as vaunted a position for men as one might expect. More

News of the World

• Anti-sex trafficker Ashton Kutcher puts foot in mouth
• "Ugly" Cooper named People's Sexiest Man Alive 2011
• How parents can protect kids from "sexting"
  
• Occupying cities of love, San Francisco and Berkeley
  
• Occupy Cal makes Occupy Movement History
• Sex and rock 'n roll but no drugs for Dutch tourists
• Saving Santa from commercialization
• Sexual harasser Herman Cain stumbles
• VIDEO: Cain blames sissy veggie pizza
• NYPD's night of shock & awe at Zuccotti Park
• PHOTOS: Cops raid & raze OWS tent city
• How much does Facebook know about you?
• Uproar over art depicting Christ crawling with ants
• She shoots, he scores: Hottest WAGs in sports
• Griffin gets nasty: Comedienne copies Janet’s nude cover

  
• Opinion: Bloomberg's plan at Zuccotti will backfire
• Baby no! Bieber paternity lawsuit dismissed
• Expensive tea's secret ingredient: Panda poop

  
• Penn St. McQueary: I stopped child rape and called cops

  
• Wild claim that Asian geckos cure AIDS kills geckos
  
• Muslim artist defies Islamic prudes, bares all

Dr. Gabor Mate (live in North America)

(DrGaborMate.com)

• When the Body Says No: Taking Care of Self While Taking Care of Others
• Building Our Children’s Resilience in a Stressed Culture
• Taming the Hungry Ghost: Combining Science and Compassion in Healing Addiction
• The Biology of Loss: Recognizing the Consequences of Impaired Attachments and Fostering Resilience
• Kids in Chaos: Recognizing the Consequences of Impaired Attachments and Fostering Resilience
• When Society Makes Us Sick: The Social Roots of Disease
• Women, Addictions and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)
• The Archaeology of Silence: Working with Clients, Reading Between the Lines

• Stories of Strength: Perspectives on Mental Well-Being
• The Biology of Loss: A Biopsychosocial Perspective on Childhood Mental Health
• Fostering Health In A Toxic Society: The Social Basis of Illness and Well-Being
• Taming the Hungry Ghost: Combining Science and Compassion to Heal Addictions
• Beyond The Medical Model / The Hungry Ghost
• Hungry Ghosts, When The Body…, Scattered Minds: Dr. Maté at the 2012 BCAEA Conference
• Beyond Addiction: The Yogic Path to Recovery

Dr. Gabor Mate to speak in LA (KPFK benefit)

UprisingRadio.org (Pacifica), Wisdom Quarterly

• Dr. Gabor Mate to speak in Los Angeles Nov. 30th
• Fostering Health in a Toxic Society: The Social Basis of Illness and Well-Being
• Click for tickets (All proceeds to benefit KPFK)

In the first of Uprising's Speaker Series, world famous Dr. Gabor Mate comes to Los Angeles for an all new talk on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 7:00-9:00 pm at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd.

Addicts in recovery -- are cycling through the "Realm of Hungry Ghosts" (the Peta Loka in Buddhist cosmology) -- could find themselves racing against the clock to beat their addiction in Maine before health insurance coverage for their treatment ends.

• What is the Realm of Hungry Ghosts?

Treatment? Doctors say, "Let's give heroin addicts heroin" (madmikesamerica.com).

The Maine Morning Sentinel reported [on Oct. 15, 2011] that state officials for Medicaid and MaineCare programs have proposed capping prescription drug and counseling services at two years.

The move would save money but hit the state during an epidemic of addiction to painkillers. A Sentinel editorial opposing the cuts to treatment programs predicted the result “would be a self-defeating exercise that could end up costing much more than the short term budget savings.”

Drug use remains controversial in the US. Addicts are stigmatized and often considered unworthy of help.

Portion of scroll (thangka) depicting the plane of hungry ghosts (pretas) who suffer from intense craving with no store of profitable karma to alleviate their craving. A store of merit is a tremendous blessing human and superhuman beings often take for granted.

However, there is a growing movement for compassionate models of addiction treatment. The approach has a strong advocate in physician and bestselling author Dr. Gabor Mate.

Doctor Mate, What is the "Realm of Hungry Ghosts"?

After a career including 20 years as a family doctor, Dr. Gabor Mate spent 12 years as a physician in Vancouver Canada’s downtown Eastside, notorious for its highly addicted population of indigent and transient residents. His experience with this complex population is chronicled in his bestselling In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction.

Dr. Mate makes a convincing case that without abandoning medical treatment, the social and interpersonal basis of disease from addiction to attention deficit disorders must be examined and understood to effectively treat and prevent them.

Dr. Mate’s medical expertise combined with a rare kindness, humor, and intellect have made his books bestsellers. He is now a much sought after speaker on health. A, and he is coming to Los Angeles to give a talk tailored for the KPFK audience.

Dr. Gabor Mate is the bestselling author of four books, including When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress Disease Connection. Based in Canada, Dr. Maté ran a popular family practice in East Vancouver for two decades. For seven years he also served as Medical Coordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital, caring for the terminally ill. More recently he worked for twelve years in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside neighborhood with patients suffering from hardcore drug addiction, mental illness and HIV. In 2009 Dr. Maté received an Outstanding Alumnus Award from Simon Fraser University, and has recently been appointed Adjunct Professor in SFU’s School of Criminology. In 2011 he will receive an Honorary Degree from the University of Northern British Columbia.

• Uprising Media presents Gabor Mate on Nov. 30
• All proceeds benefit KPFK
• Tickets are $12.50 each ($25 a pair) for general admission at 7:00 pm and $50 each ($100 a pair) for the pre-event reception plus preferred admission at 6:00 pm.
• Purchase tickets (brownpapertickets.com)
• NOTE: Metro red and purple lines have a stop (Wilshire/Vermont) just blocks from Immanuel Presbyterian.

Sex Slavery is Kind of Sexy (video)

I. Rony (Wisdom Quarterly)

How did sex, such a lovely thing, turn into slavery, abuse, and rape? It cannot help that so many societies are hypocritical about the subject. It is taboo to even mention. We are shame for any overt sign of lust or longing, for any lack or limitation. All that hypocrisy and shaming comes back.

There is a less savory side to trying to satisfy sensual cravings.

It comes in the form of organized sex abuse. Maybe we should rethink our attitudes, mores we contribute to by participating in mainstream media images and roles. The result of ignoring the issue is not a tragedy in Thailand (the Southeast Asian hub), Hollywood, New York, Paris, London, and Amsterdam. It is a tragedy everywhere.

It's one arena where whites are in as much jeopardy as everyone else, only we do not know it. "That's something that only happens over there," we say. Where? Where our dads go on business? It may be sexy. But imagine a world where ordinary sex were sexy.

The story is best told in pictures, but words are worth...

In England and Latin America?

In Capitalist Russia, the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?

In human-rights-loving China, the People's Republic?


But at least our children are safe.

• Is rape by police legal or just not that illegal?
• Lower testosterone comes later in life
• Tibetan monks tour NJ to teach peace, love, kindness
• VIDEO: "Occupy ISRAEL"? Massive rally in Tel Aviv
  

Study: Women are attracted to other women

Huffington Post, Wisdom Quarterly

Admiring another woman’s looks could have an underlying meaning, because according to recent research, 60 per cent of heterosexual women find other women sexually attractive.

The latest findings from Boise State University discovered that:

• over half of the 484 straight women questioned had been attracted to another female at some point in their lives
  
• a further 45 per cent admitted to kissing a woman
• 50 per cent confessed to enjoying fantasies about other ladies.

“Women are encouraged to be emotionally close to each other. That provides an opportunity for intimacy and romantic feelings to develop,” says Prof. Elizabeth Morgan from the study. A previous study found that the chances of a woman being attracted to other women increases as she get older. More

Sexual Misconduct?
Wisdom Quarterly
"I kissed a girl, and I liked it, taste of her cherry Chapstick," Katy Perry likes to brag. And as a society we love it. And as parents we worry. And as college girls we think we're the only ones. Is bisexuality or lesbianism "sexual misconduct," breaking the third of the Five Precepts?

This is a difficult question. When asked and pressed one very prominent Buddhist scholar-monk told us yes. He may have worried about why we were asking. The question was specifically about women engaging in sex with other women. But since a man was doing the asking -- and since by monastic disciplinary (Vinaya) rules penetration is what counts as intercourse and "defeat" (parajika) -- the venerable elder may have worried more about the questioner than the question.

(androgynousbeauty)

Obviously homosexuality, bisexuality, experimentation, and child molestation (bacha bazi, pederasty, pedophilia) are rampant throughout the world. But almost nowhere are they spoken of freely. The taboo against molestation and incest is not in committing it but in talking about it, particularly by victims. Molestation leads to unwanted sexual feelings.

If there were no homosexual molestation, it is very likely there would still be a significant percentage of homosexuals in the world's population. However, it would not likely carry the stigma it now does due to its being confounded with the very disturbing issue of child molestation.

Sex with children and children having sex with one another is sexual misconduct (kamesu micchacara). The sexist definition of the term is recounted by monks (in the absence of a nun's tradition in the oldest Buddhist monastic disciplinary code, which is only now being revived after a long absence). The term is detailed for monastics since it involves any sexual or erotic behavior. But for lay Buddhists it is limited and somewhat unclear.

Found in the Numerical Discourses, Book of Tens, Discourse 206 (AN X.206), "sexual misconduct" is defined as sex (presumably intercourse) with a female who is protected by (dependent on) any of ten types of guardians. Surely the same applies for females, who in many traditional societies are spoken of as if they had no sexual agency and were merely receptive.

• "Abandoning sexual misconduct, one abstains from sexual misconduct; he does not have intercourse with women who are protected by their (1) mother, (2) father, (3) mother and (4) father, (5) brother, (6) sister, or (7) relatives, who have a (8) husband, who are protected by (9) law, or with those already (10) engaged."

(See Bhikkhu Bodhi translation, In the Buddha's Words, p. 159, based on MN41; Saleyyaka Sutra; I 286-90).

• Study: Brits prefer reading a good book over sex
• Study: Junk food makes healthy men infertile
  

PETA plans PORN site to Save Animals

PETA.org, Wisdom Quarterly, Huffington Post.com


Porn for Chicks, Foxes, and Puppies?
Editorial Staff, Wisdom Quarterly

We are prudes. We do not approve. We love animals and consider them worth saving and sparing from human torture for their flesh and pelts. Yet to excite the passions of a world aflame in lust is karma that harms activist and audience. Will we look? Probably. Will we protest? Yes. Will we pose nude? No. Will we applaud or censure those who do? No. Do we condone it? No. Is anyone asking us? Not as such. Does the intention justify the means? No.



We must agitate and enlighten people and call their attention to the plight of our fellow humans, earthlings, and all living beings. But to do so in a way that calls their attention in one way and brings them down in another, that is not the win-win possible here. Is this an effort from within to undermine PETA as an organization? Maybe.



It is not the first such campaign. There was a similar effort by another organization to save the forest by this exact means. The world will be great when it is sex-positive, full of integrity (non-hypocritical), violence-free, equal, and compassionate. Let's bring that moment into being. Make love, not war. Go topless. Be free. Be so considerate of others that their passions are not aroused to their ultimate detriment.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

• Vegetarian/Vegan
• About PETA
• Cruelty-Free Companies
• Community
• Contact PETA
• Shop
• More

Celibacy: Helpful vs. Unhelpful (cartoon)

Wisdom Quarterly (SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS COMMITTEE)


The high or supreme life (brahmacharya) is one of study, self restraint, and a vehicle to the world of the brahmas, which are neither male nor female and without sex. These heavens were the goal of Brahmins in the Vedic Brahmanism of the Buddha's time.

Sages, mendicants, yogis, ascetics, monks, spiritual seekers, shaman wanderers (shramans), temple priests (brahmins), and magicians all found it useful to turn away from sensual indulgences. Even food became a healthy necessity taken in moderation (often combined with complete fasts).

This left a surplus of life-energy (spiritus, prana, or chi) that could be dedicated to spiritual exertions -- cultivating an open, unbiased heart, a serene and luminous mind, a receptive attention span, unswerving dedication to knowing and seeing, enlightenment, liberation, or various meditation objects to cultivate such useful qualities as:

• mindfulness
• loving-kindness
  
• concentration (samadhi)
• serenity
• absorption
  
• supersensual bliss
• purification
• intensified or higher mind

With all the benefits that come of withdrawing and secluding oneself from sensual pursuits, there are few benefits to guilt, shame [unless it guards against karmically unprofitable actions], or hypocrisy. When one eats, one should enjoy it mindfully. When and if one has sex, one should enjoy it. Since there is value to restraint, when one is practicing restraint, one should enjoy it, reflecting on the benefits.

To do otherwise makes celibacy a farce, a front, a hypocritical veil. What benefit is there to deny the body while obsessing and indulging the mouth and mind and waiting for an opportunity to act on it?

• I Can Afford College.com
  

Sex or Meditation? Top 10 Promiscuous Cities

Wisdom Quarterly (SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS COMMITTEE)

In just one hour of trying not to think about sex, Binky discovered how kinky he really is ("Life in Hell" by Matt Groening).

It probably does not happen to anyone else. But when we meditate, our minds tend to drift toward sex. Why the mind likes to relive (past) or imagine (future) pleasant sensation, we cannot fathom.

The eye is not trapped by forms... and the body is not trapped by tactile sensations. If it were enlightened beings would not be free, or freedom would be as easy as sitting alone in the dark.

The mind is like a monkey trapped five times over. Imagine a silly monkey (or rabbit) who has wandered far from its familiar realm. It sees honey and grasps it.

The honey is not only sweet, it's gluey. It can't let go. It grabs the honey with the other hand to get its first hand loose. That hand gets caught, too. It uses a foot, then another foot, and finally its mouth -- and is caught five times over, stuck, in a ridiculous quandary.

The mind obsessed with sex is like that. Its senses fall into bondage. But the honey is sweet! Yes, and the glue is gluey. If we do not rise above, we stay trapped right where we are.

Where are we? CBS News reports that there are ten top cities for furtive honey searches. Mindfully meditating never hurt a monkey. All of its distress came from letting its mind wander far from the present moment. Even the Nazis couldn't keep the monkeys safe.

• VAMPIRE MONKEY: This Chinese sucking species lives solely off other animals’ blood, one of the only primates to do so. It creates complex nests similar to the weaver bird's. It uses handmade tools like humans and is possibly the "missing link" in the evolution of modern humans (Yoon84).

Top 10 Promiscuous Cities in America (CBS News)

Hitler gave NAZIs sex dolls for protection

A new book reveals that the French resistance and Allied bombers weren’t the only threats that Hitler’s Nazi soldiers faced in Paris during World War II. Turns out syphilis -- spread from dalliances with French prostitutes -- presented a more clandestine danger. To combat Nazi soldiers’ temptations from the Parisian joie de vivre, Hitler gave the okay to manufacture blow up sex dolls [invented by Nazis?] as a more hygienic alternative, reports The Herald Sun. More

That Thing (doo wop)

• VIDEO: Santa Monica customers strip for free clothes
  
• Fun facts about kissing
• Top 10 photos that shocked the world
• Reasons for not having sex on purpose?
• There are as many reasons to quit giving up the goods as there are people to stop giving them up. And hey, you can’t really blame them -- hurricanes, earthquakes, tropical storms. Nature is doing some serious blocking.
• Chimeras: Lamb gives birth to lamb with human face
• Half human-half goat born alive in Zimbabwe
  
• VIDEO: Extraterrestrial-Human hybrid baby
• HELL TV: Girls love to see themselves on camera
• VIDEO: Hopping the US Border in 15 seconds
• The immigration question is a hot button issue. One bad solution was to build a giant Berlin wall near the Mexican border. But American girls can climb over in 15 seconds.
• Predicting weather and earthquakes (like New Zealand)
• Close encounter: UFO Fest gives visitors a view of the unexplained
• We can all save KPFA together
• Eccentric or Undiagnosed?
  
• Jain Festival at Mattancherry
  

The Four Truths of Recovery

(thesun.co.uk)

Amy Winehouse was a Jewish-Buddhist. But it was a first when she pulled out of a festival [Rock En Seine Festival in Paris] because she was in a state of Buddhist relaxation. The singer has been trying to find peace in her chaotic life by chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.

For those who have alcohol, illegals drugs, or engage in addictive routines to unwind, Amy found a better option: Nicherin Buddhism, perhaps the most questionable form of devotional "value creation."

The Sun quotes a source as saying: "One of her musicians introduced Amy to Buddhist chanting. She chants for ten minutes in the mornings and just before she sleeps.

"Amy has also been watching the interview clip of Tina Turner chanting on YouTube [on Larry King Live] and she reckons it's already affecting her in a positive way.

"She has a string of Buddhist beads that she chants with, which she keeps in a red silk scarf.

"She says chanting is filling her life with positivity while she is trying to sort herself out." More

Buddhist 12 Steps

AgainstTheStream.org

1. Addiction is Suffering.

• Understand, acknowledge, admit, and accept all of the ways drugs, alcohol, and so on have caused suffering in our lives. Action: Write an in-depth and detailed inventory of the suffering you have experienced in association with your addictions.

2. The Cause of Addiction is Craving.

• Understand that all forms of addiction have their roots in the natural human tendency to crave for life to be more pleasurable and less painful than it actually is. The substances we have craved and become addicted to must be abandoned and renounced. Action: Investigate, analyze, and share the inventory with your mentor or teacher and come to understand the cause of your addiction/suffering.

3. Recovery is Possible.

• Freedom from the suffering caused by addiction is attainable, IF we are ready and willing to follow the eightfold path. Action: Study and apply the Buddhist teachings on enlightenment (awakening) and eventually you will come to a verified-faith in the path of recovery/enlightenment through the actions you take on the path.

4. The 8-Fold Path to Recovery.

• The eight factors or folds of the path are to be developed, experienced and penetrated. This is a path of action not blind faith, recovery will only come from taking the right actions. This is not a linear path, it does not have to be taken in order, rather all of the factors will need to be developed and applied simultaneously. This is a guide to having a life that is free from addiction, not a process that we go through once or twice, the eight folds of recovery will have to be maintained through out one's life.

Is Porn Driving Men Crazy?

Text by english.aljazeera.net

Some experts speculate that pornography is making men more interested in perversity and less interested in their own partners.

It is hard to ignore how many highly visible men in recent years (indeed, months) have behaved in sexually self-destructive ways. Some powerful men have long been sexually voracious; unlike today, though, they were far more discreet and generally used much better judgment in order to cover their tracks.

Of course, the heightened technological ability nowadays to expose private behavior is part of the reason for this change.... What is driving this weirdly disinhibited decision-making? Could the widespread availability and consumption of pornography in recent years actually be rewiring the male brain, affecting men's judgment about sex, and causing them to have more difficulty controlling their impulses?

There is an increasing body of scientific evidence to support this idea. Six years ago, I wrote an essay called "The Porn Myth," which pointed out that therapists and sexual counselors were anecdotally connecting the rise in pornography consumption among young men with an increase in impotence and premature ejaculation...

The hypothesis among the experts was that pornography was progressively desensitizing these men sexually. Indeed, hardcore pornography's effectiveness in achieving rapid desensitization in subjects has led to its frequent use in training doctors and military teams to deal with very shocking or sensitive situations.

[The military "trains" teams using "hardcore porn"? Might that have something to do with the outrageous rates of rape and sexual assault against fellow soldiers, both male and female, in today's military?] More

• Sex and surveillance
• Life after capitalism
• Egypt readies for "march of a million people"
• Former Cameron media aide meets police
• Yemen president Saleh appears on TV
• Syria condemns US ambassador's visit to Hama
• Texas executes Mexican citizen despite Obama appeal
• Honduras' very own war on terror
• Failed peace talks led Palestine to the UN

Binge-drinking: Why hangovers and bad decisions don't stop us
(CBS) Ever swear off drinking while battling a nasty hangover? You're certainly not alone. Many drinkers experience regrets over one-night stands, shouting matches, and other drunken antics. So why do people continue to drink? Psychologists may finally have found the answer. Simply put... More

Female Sex Maniac Still on the Loose

Original news item Lite-News (Aug. 13, 2010)

Nikki Lee: "I’ve had sex with 5,000 men in nine years (but never the same man twice)," boasts the 25-year-old beauty therapist and model.

Is it a compliment or a slap in the face to "victims" of promiscuity?

[Some may hail it as the triumph of feminism and gender equality, but others sadly recognize the telltale signs of childhood trauma.] A 25-year-old beauty therapist has claimed to have slept with 5,000 men in just nine years -- or 3,285 days.

Nikki Lee also boasts about having a "personal best" of four men in one night and she claims she has never had sex with the same conquest twice. In an admission that will shock most people, the blonde Essex girl has told how she has had casual sex in nightclubs, alleyways, parks, cinemas, and teen discos since losing her virginity at 16.

"Obsessed" with conquests, objectification, one night stands

Miss Lee, who also works as a model, admits to going on regular sex holidays, where she sleeps with men in clubs, on beaches, and even on balconies. She averages having sex with two men every day and has kept the details of each of them in a little red notebook -- all with scores.

By the time she was 21, Miss Lee claims to have had sex with 2,289 men. Although the admission, made to a weekly real-life magazine, cannot be verified, has been called "emotionally very dangerous" by a relationship expert. More>>

Promiscuity can spread all out of control like an addictive drug to the brain, and we build tolerance. But What the Bleep do We Know?

• What are we coming to when these are our top artists and celebrities? Ke$ha, Lady Gaga/Beyonce ("Telephone"), Rihanna ("S&M"), Britney Spears, Paris Hilton (night vision technology), Kim Kardashian, gender-bending and celebrity lesbian roles and displays (Sandra Bullock, Annette Bening, Marlee Matlin of "The L Word" fame, child star Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, the cast of "Sex and the City," Christina Aguilera, Lindsay Ronson-Lohan, Katy Perry... What would parents do without Rebecca Black, Justin Bieber, prodigy Jason Kertson, and the Jonas Brothers?
• Chinese seek all-lesbian Chako Paul City, Sweden
• Country, too: Jessie James' "The Boys of Summer"
• Problem with sex? Find out at SASH.net
• No men OR women needed: artificial sperm and eggs created for first time: Sperm and eggs have been grown in the laboratory in a breakthrough process that could change the face of parenthood forever.

If men and boys do it and have for a long time, why should women and girls hold back?

"Radical Acceptance" - Tara Brach

Guided meditations on radical acceptance by Dr. Tara Brach (goodreads.com)

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. - Rumi, Sufi poet

Something is Wrong With Me

"When I was in college, I went off to the mountains for a weekend of hiking with an older, wiser friend of twenty-two. After we set up our tent, we sat by a stream, watching the water swirl around rocks and talking about our lives. At one point she described how she was learning to be 'her own best friend.' A huge wave of sadness came over me, and I broke down sobbing. I was the furthest thing from my own best friend. I was continually harassed by an inner judge who was merciless, relentless, nit-picking, driving, often invisible but always on the job. I knew I would never treat a friend the way I treated myself, without mercy or kindness.

"My guiding assumption was 'Something is fundamentally wrong with me,' and I struggled to control and fix what felt like a basically flawed self. I drove myself in academics, was a fervent political activist and devoted myself to a very full social life. I avoided pain (and created more) with an addiction to food and a preoccupation with achievement. My pursuit of pleasure was sometimes wholesome -- in nature, with friends -- but it also included an impulsive kind of thrill-seeking through recreational drugs, sex, and other adventures. In the eyes of the world, I was highly functional. Internally, I was anxious, driven and often depressed. I didn't feel at peace with an y part of my life.

"Feeling not okay went hand in hand with deep loneliness. In my early teens I sometimes imagined that I was living inside a transparent orb that separated me from the people and life around me...." - Tara Brach

Tara Brach, Ph.D.

Psychotherapist and Buddhist meditation teacher in the tradition of Jack Kornfield at Spirit Rock Meditation Center (who wrote the foreword), first-time author Tara Brach offers readers a rich compendium of stories and techniques designed to help awaken from what she calls "the trance of unworthiness."

The sense of self-hatred and fearful isolation that afflicts so many people in the West can be transformed with the steady application of a loving attention infused with the insights of the Buddhist tradition, according to Brach.

Interweaving stories from her own life as a hardworking single mother with many wonderful anecdotes culled from her therapy practice and her work as a leader of meditation retreats, Brach offers myriad examples of how our pain can become a doorway to love and liberation.

An older Catholic woman in one of Brach's weekend workshops, for example, recounts how she learned to ask her God to help hold her pain. Like Brach's colleagues Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, and others in the Insight-meditation (Vipassana) tradition, Brach is open-minded about where she gathers inspiration.

Garnishing her gentle advice and guided meditation with beautiful bits of poetry and well-loved if familiar Dharma stories, Brach describes what it can mean to open to the reality of other people, to live in love, to belong to the world.

Obviously the fruit of the author's own long and honest search, this is a consoling and practical guide that can help people find a light within themselves (Reed Business Information, Inc.)

• "Radical Acceptance offers gentle wisdom and tender healing, a most excellent medicine for our unworthiness and longing. Breathe, soften, and let these compassionate teachings bless your heart." — Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
• Metta Refuge: Tara Brach and Radical Acceptance

Sounds True: Tara Brach on Radical Acceptance

• AUDIO: "Meditations for Emotional-Healing: Finding Freedom in the Face of Difficulty" (Tara Brach)

• 5 strange courting rituals from around the world

"Sex Addicts" (Pandakas) in the News

Wisdom Quarterly (shocking exposé)

Oh, that Quagmire! Peter Griffin and Brian the dog walk in on Glenn Quagmire (R) committing adultery with his best friend Cleaveland's wife, Loretta Brown ("Family Guy")

Pandaka: lechery, perversion, transgression
Wisdom Quarterly (based on Religion and Homosexuality)

References to pandaka ("pervert"), a deviant gender category usually interpreted to include transgressive sex addicts, can be found in ancient Buddhist texts (Pali and Sanskrit).

The term, however, does not have a fixed meaning over time. It is generally (mis-)translated as "eunuch," which most pandakas are certainly not.

Far from neutered, they are consumed with acting out in perverse, extraordinary, transgressive, and deviant (unethical, even illegal) ways.

Leonard Zwilling (1992)* refers extensively to Ven. Buddhaghosa's Samantapasadika, where pandakas are described as being filled with defiled passions and insatiable lusts dominated by libido. The Abhidharma states that due to the obstruction of being obsessed with sexuality, a pandaka is unable to achieve enlightenment in that lifetime. In the future, of course, change and rebirth means it is not a permanent obstruction.

The cartoon character Quagmire (in Seth MacFarlane's "Family Guy") is the poster child to explain what this term means. He could be renamed "Glenn Pandaka" in the Hindi/Sanskrit-dubbed Indian version of the show, although they might not see the humor in such aberrant sexual misconduct.

A pandaka is not a eunuch, homosexual, adulterer, or transgendered individual -- but may manifest in all of these ways and more. "Pervert" may be too harsh in that in modern American usage it connotes a judgmental attitude. But "sex addict" brings peels of laughter because most of do not believe sex can possibly be an "addiction," or if it is, then we imagine we all are such "addict."

Sex addiction (satyrism and nymphomania or pansexuality) is, in fact, very real. But it is not what it seems and not what we imagine. Sex for the "sex addict" is not enjoyable; it is compulsive and terribly unsatisfying.

Dr. Gabor Mate (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction) gives an excellent explanation of one characteristic of addiction: "Acting out" is what one does while playing the game Charades exactly because of an inability to talk it out.

Unable to grasp or express what is happening, our psyches behave in odd and compulsive ways we can hardly begin to explain. So "acting out" has come to mean misbehavior, particularly sexual misconduct, rooted in childhood trauma, confusion about sexual orientation, and an apparent inability to inhibit impulses.

This inability leads to cheating (violating one's own relationships), adultery (violating others' relationships), indiscriminate sexual practices, promiscuity, the insatiable need for novel stimulation... all the while being unable to tamp down the fire that is in fact being fed by everything that is being thrown at it.

Repression and denial are not healthy solutions since pushing it down here only causes it to pop up there with greater force.

Pornography, pansexuality, molestation, transgression, seduction, betrayal, sexting -- things we sometimes take rather lightly are in fact serious lapses in conduct (karma) that get us in a lot of trouble, particularly if we're in the spotlight.

More sex is not a solution when it brings distress, humiliation, self-loathing, low self-esteem, ignominy, jail time, ostracism. Even when it is rooted in having been molested or otherwise traumatized as a child, which of course is unfair, our actions still bring results for us.

In spite of the fact that so many of us are victims (of verbal, emotional, religious, ritual, psychological, physical, and sexual) abuse, part of the condition is to blame ourselves. Caught in a cycle of shame, we "act out." It is hardly sexy.

One addiction is often accompanied by another -- alcoholism to mask painful memories and unpleasant feelings associated with buried memories, drug abuse that makes appearing in porn seem like a good idea, thrill seeking and body art to try to get feeling from something (combating anhedonia, subclinical depression, bipolar disorder, etc.).

Dr. Mate points out that he has never met a sex addict who was not molested, which is not to say that all molested children will become sex addicts.

Sexual anorexia and bodily dissociation are also common expressions of what is coming to be recognized as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) resulting from incest, abuse, assault, rape, and other forms of trauma.

We have a taboo around incest and rape. But the taboo is actually not against committing incest. It is about talking about it, particularly by victims.

There are many degrees of affliction. And nearly all of us have been "traumatized" in life in some way or another. So what makes a free spirited enjoyer of sex a "sex addict"?

The answer is very simple. It is explained by America's favorite sexologist, Dr. Drew Pinsky (addiction medicine specialist and board-certified internist) from Loveline radio, "Celebrity Rehab," and his own CNN blog:

When in the face of increasing consequences and distress, you continue to act out and feel unable to stop...you just might be a sex addict.

• *Leonard Zwilling (1992), "Homosexuality As Seen In Indian Buddhist Texts" in Buddhism, Sexuality & Gender (Jose Ignacio Cabezon, editor, State University of New York, pp. 203-214).
• PHOTOS: Rihanna S&M (idolator.com), Congressman Weiner (npr.org), Governor Schwarzenegger (seeker401.wordpress.com), Lady Gaga (wikipedia.org), PM Silvio Berlusconi with Pope Benedict head of an army of pedophile priests (bilgrimage.blogspot.com), Charlie Sheen (dabxblogger.com), Ke$ha (dipity.com), Dominique Strauss-Kahn (guardian.co.uk), sex vampire (disclose.tv), Dr. Drew Pinsky (guardian.co.uk), Hugh Hefner (gossiprocks.com).
  

Anyone who thinks "sex addiction" is "sexy," funny, or fake might ask to visit an SAA meeting then try to keep from cringing as they hear what addicts go through.

Hugh Hefner, "Playboy" or Pandaka?

(Huffington Post) Hugh Hefner has gleefully enjoyed a sexually liberated life. But few know it all started with a little erotic dabbling within the Playboy czar's own family.

In his book, Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, Steven Watts writes how after Hefner wed his first wife, Millie, in 1949... Hef then went further, trying a foursome out on his own family....

The book also claims Hef once tried a gay tryst. "Hefner's thirst for sexual experience became so strong that he even had a one-time homosexual experience," Watts writes.

Larry Flynt?
Superhero Hef and his superheroine playmates may just be living the American dream revved up after marriage. But Larry Flynt, of Hustler and Flynt Publications fame? He confessed to bestiality and a harsh childhood with difficult parents -- reminiscent of a grown up Cartman ("South Park"). This would go a long way to explaining how he went off the rails from compulsion to obsession to the creation of a pornography empire comparable to Playboy, Inc. only more prurient with its "Chester the Molester" comic strip (echoed in Family Guy's character "Herbert") and accusations of molesting his biological daughter.

• The Persistence of Gender: From Ancient Indian Pandakas to Modern Thai Gay-Quings (Kathoeys)
  
• HustlingTheLeft.com
  
• Larry Flynt's Hell the Right to Be Left Alone?
• Barack Obama gay affairs, mysterious deaths?
• Recovery from Molestation, Rape, Incest
• Non-normative sex/gender categories in Buddhism
• "Pandaka" does NOT mean gay, but that's what gets focused on