Sex, Chocolate, and Buddhism

Dhr. Seven and Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; S.F. Asian Art Museum (asianart.org)

Gorgeous Idea

Rare Buddhist masterpieces on display

Imagine talks that are informal, impromptu, in-gallery conversations. Imagine that they are facilitated by scholars, artists, filmmakers, and writers. Imagine that the facilitators explore ideas arising from the artwork on view in the exhibition "Gorgeous." And when done imaging, visit the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco to see them brought to life. Each facilitator presents an idea that piques the curiosity of the host and the audience then engages in a session to investigate it through two or three artworks:

• Gorgeous Idea: The Aura of an Ore with Jeff Durham

  August 7, 2014, 7:00-8:00 pm (free with museum admission, $5 after 5:00 pm. Meet near the information desk. Evenings, Talks, and Lectures. Buddhist expert Jeff Durham hosted "Enter the Mandala: Cosmic Mind Maps" at the Norton Simon.
  
• Sex, Chocolate, and Kimonos with Tina Takemoto

  August 14, 7:00-8:00 pm (free with museum admission, $5 after 5:00 pm). Meet near the information desk:

Caveat emptor: you get what you pay for.

How do artists use sex, food, physicality, and clothing to seduce and deceive viewers? Tina Takemoto explores how sexuality and race are deployed in artworks presented in Gorgeous that engage with cross-dressing, masquerade, embodiment, and ethnic drag.

Tina Takemoto is an artist and associate professor of visual studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
 
Takemoto's research explores the hidden dimensions of same-sex intimacy and queer sexuality for Japanese Americans incarcerated during WW II. She has...received grants funded by Art Matters, James Irvine Foundation, and San Francisco Arts Commission. Her film Looking for Jiro received Best Experimental Film Jury Award at the Austin Gay and Lesbian Int'l Film Festival. Her articles appear in Afterimage, Art Journal, GLQ, Performance Research, Radical Teacher, Theatre Survey, Women and Performance, and the anthology Thinking Through the Skin. Takemoto is board president of the Queer Cultural Center and co-founder of Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts. On occasion, she makes guerrilla appearances as Michael Jackson and Bjork-Geisha.

• The Skin/Skein I’m In with Việt Lê

  September 4, 7:00-8:00 pm (free with museum admission, $5 after 5:00 pm). Meet near the information desk.
• Behind Closed Doors with Michael Stabile

  September 11, 7:00-8:00 pm (free with museum admission, $5 after 5:00 pm). Meet near the information desk. Details

Sex, Chocolate, and Buddhism
Wisdom Quarterly and Ven. K. Sri Dhammananda (Question Time)

Don't we have a parlor to get to? - Oh, S, we're gonna to be late! - I think they'll understand.

.

"Chocolate" is a fruit seed crushed with sugar.

We have a gorgeous idea, too. Crystal, what should our idea be? We can tell Jeff, and maybe he'll do it.

 

We can take a cue from Prof. Takemoto and concentrate on sex and chocolate! Did you know that chocolate is a fruit? 

What are you talking about? Chocolat is a fat. 

 

Yes, but Theobroma cacao -- "cocoa, the food of the devas" is the bitter crushed pit of a tropical fruit mixed with sugar or some sweetener, like raw agave, to take the edge off.

Chocolate Buddha (Patosoftineto/flickr)

That's rad; we should make raw chocolate, mold it into little Buddha bars, and hand them out at our talk -- our parlor room discussion -- about sex.

They would never go for it. San Francisco is way too uptight.

Maybe, but they let Jeff do Cosmic Mandalas in the main gallery, converting museum space into an actual, working sacred mandala.

True, that's true. But sex is a touchy subject for Americans. We're Judeo-Christian Puritans whether we like it or not, and most of us don't even realize how uptight we are.

"Touchy" subject is right. Maybe we should start with hugs -- chocolates and a snuggle party!

This is a Parlor.

Whatever, did you know that all sexual misconduct is sexual conduct BUT not all sexual conduct is sexual misconduct?

The real life mandala at the SF Asian Art Museum (Dr. Jeff Durham/asianart.org)

.

A woman discover the sensual scent of flowers

What, well, obviously! "All whales are fish, but not all fish are whales."

Fish are whales?

Whatever, things that live and swim in water all day.

What is sexual misconduct?

Who cares, our talk will be about sexual conduct.

Cool.

But Amber's not going to give the go ahead on this presentation.

Hmmm...I've got it! We'll run it by Seth instead.

Yes!

Worse comes to worse, we'll convince Ashley.

No, worse comes to worse they'll say we're parlor talkers. That chocolate had better be good, good like fudge.

We can quote Ven. Dr. K. Sri Dhammananda, the renowned Sri Lankan Theravada scholar-monk from Malaysia who says in Question Time:

Is sex bad?

As human beings, we have bodies that crave for all kinds of pleasures. Not only sex, we crave for food, pleasurable fragrances, sounds, sights, tastes, and tangibles.

If we deny ourselves these as being "sinful" then we repress natural desires. Instead of repressing these natural desires, we must seek to understand how and why they arise and to realize that it is not in our best intere3sts to pander to physical desires.

The victim of maya (illusion) sees the body as real and craves to satisfy a longing for sense desires (kama), which covers all kinds of sensual pleasure.

As the person, the being, matures spiritually, illusion is replaced with knowledge and wisdom (vidya and prajna). With spiritual matureity, the body is seen as an illusion and the person naturally grows out of craving. Here we see the spritually advanced being renounces sex (and other five sense strand pursuits) just as a child stops playing with toys as s/he grows up.

Quagmire is a pandaka (Family Guy)

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with sex. What is wrong is attachment and slavery to it, in believing that indulgence in sex can bring ultimate happiness.

This is the problem with the exploitation of sex by the mass entertainment industry today -- perpetuating the myth that sex can bring lasting happiness.

The third of the Five Precepts recited in daily Buddhist practice is, "I undertake the training rule to refrain from sexual misconduct." 

First, let's not that there is no compulsion, no fear of punishment for the infringement of any "divine law" here, but rather -- when we recognize the danger of attachment to sex, we freely take the steps (training rule) to grow out of it, that is, "I undertake."

(From Question Time with Venerable Dr. K. Sri Dhammananda, 2012, pp. 40-41, Buddhist Maha Vihara, Malaysia, Sasana Abhiwurdhi Wardhana Society).

Is Republican Gov. Rick Perry GAY?

Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; D. Feldman (davidfeldmanshow.com/KPFK)

"Ask Mister Republican Man" (Tom Tommorrow/thismodernworld.com)

Looking for the mayo, governor?

Rick Perry, the longest serving governor in Texas history, is eying another presidential campaign through his new Warby Parker glasses that make him look even gayer than he sounds.

 

Rumors about Republican Gov. Perry and his personal chef have hung around the governor’s collar for years like the proverbial pearl necklace.

Don't judge a book by its gay cover.

You’d have to be blind not to see that Perry has been resisting homosexual urges since his youth. Maybe he hasn’t acted upon them; maybe he’s strong enough to resist.

Maybe that’s why last week Rick Perry compared homosexuality to alcoholism.

Maybe Rick Perry sees homosexuality as something to be battled one day at a time, like the urge to suck down a bottle of Jim Beam or just some guy named Jim.

 

Be gay if you like, but don't be a hypocrite.

Perry’s comments about homosexuality are lethal. When young, impressionable men hear a governor talk about homosexuality as a choice, as an illness that can be "cured," he is giving bullies license to pick on young gays who often end up committing suicide.

Neither party is any kind of real alternative

While Perry’s predecessor George W. Bush was a white knuckle drunk, Perry is a red knuckle homosexual. Red knuckle homosexual because of all the blood on his hands from the gay men who get beaten up or kill themselves because of his vicious words cloaked in false scripture. More on this later, but let me assure you Jesus despises Rick Perry. More

 

More from the David Feldman Show (davidfeldmanshow.com/JimmyDoreComedy.com)

Liar Donald Rumsfeld caught lying

I've never lied. I'm not a war criminal.

There's a new Erroll Morris film about the liar Donald Rumsfeld. When caught lying, the liar continues to lie. I think it has something to do with the fact that he’s a liar. WATCH: Rumsfeld caught lying about Saddam Hussein and 9/11 (Raw Story)

Brain: The Science of Why They Deny

• Study: 5 NRA "members" have shot off their penises
• Rumsfeld compares Obama to "trained ape"
• 40% of WHITE males arrested by age of 23
• Latino celebrities out and about (People)
• Jewish Downton Abbey
• AUDIO: Libertarian Ron Paul's secret shame
• U.S. claims it captured leader of Benghazi attack 
• Source: Bergdahl physically abused by Taliban
• Apple Corporation's Steve Jobs vs. Govt's Google
• Google: Ads coming to the Internet of things
• George Carlin's daughter talks about her comedian dad
• AUDIO: The Real Mafia
• Our Transgender community (LGBTQ)

  Google’s Nest acquisition raises data-privacy concerns
  Shocker: Internet of Things poised to grow bigger
  How to program for the Internet of Things 

  Rumsfeld Doc Proves Americans Idiots

  Filmmaker Errol Morris: Donald Rumsfeld proved Americans are gullible morons (Raw Story). In an interview with Nick Gillespie on Reason TV, documentary film-maker Errol Morris claimed that Rumsfeld’s success was dependent not upon his brilliance so much as the fact that the American people “are morons.”

Should we tolerate GAYS? No (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; Sonali Kohlhatkar (uprisingradio.org), S.N. Walters, Tolerance Trap 1

The Tolerance Trap

Texas Governor Rick Perry, speaking in San Francisco last week, likened being gay to being an alcoholic. “Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle...” he said, “you have the ability to decide not to do that.”

“I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic,” he added, “but I have the desire not to do that. And I look at the homosexual issue the same way.” 

 

His controversial remarks come on the heels of the Texas Republican Party expressing its support for so-called “reparative therapy” for homosexuality -- a discredited counseling treatment to “cure” people of homosexuality.

• AUDIO: Segment with Suzanna Walters (entire show)
• David Feldman asks, "Is Rick Perry gay?" answers, yes
• VIDEO: There IS a cure for homosexuality! (Rated R)

What's Republican Perry doing with that pig in his mouth, cannibalism, swallowing? (DFS)

 

We're here, please tolerate us

The progressive response to the idea that homosexuality is a choice is the assertion that people who are gay are born that way, perhaps with a gene that makes them prefer people of their own sex, or in Judeo-Christian terms, “God made them that way.”

Westboro Baptist vs. US Army

Northeastern University Sociology Professor Suzanna Walters has a problem with this approach. She maintains that using the “born this way” approach to gay liberation reduces the LGBT movement to one that will be happy with “tolerance” or “acceptance” by mainstream American society.

 

Gays are evil! God hates them! (Westboro)

But is tolerance something worth fighting for? In asking to be tolerated, aren’t gay rights advocates simply asking society to tolerate the LGBT community like one tolerates anything that is uncomfortable or undesirable?

What does Buddhism say?

In her ground breaking book The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions Are Sabotaging Gay Equality, Walters demands liberation over acceptance and warns against declaring victory for gay rights too soon.

Analyzing pop culture’s depictions of gay characters, the marriage equality movement, scientific research into homosexuality, and religious approaches, she makes the case that nothing less than full equality and a societal transformation is worth fighting for. More

GUEST: Prof. Walters is Director of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, author of All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America.

Bob/David explain Overcome, a Christian Center for Reparative Therapy

It's not okay to be gay (video)

Dev, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; ViceMag.tumblr.com (facebook)

Even after it's leader died recently, the family-run Westboro Baptist Church is still causing trouble. This past weekend a group from the church, protected by L.A. County Sheriff's deputies, was out at the West Hollywood Gay Pride Parade Fest with harsh and offensive signs. Who are these Christian crusaders?

But I'm a Yankee doodle "dandy"!

VICE follows the story of the Westboro Baptist Church as families split and children are "brainwashed" into picketing the funerals of dead American soldiers fighting for a doomed gay nation and bashing homosexuals at every turn.

During that time, VICE interviewed more than a dozen members of the reviled group, including some of the only members not related by blood, the Drains. They welcomed VICE into their homes and gave them access to 17 years of home video footage. In return, VICE produced an unbiased look into the lives of one of America's most despised Christian fundamentalist organizations.

• Watch PART 2
• VICE.com  (full video catalog)
• VIDEO: How to Sell Drugs (Fringes)
• Los Angeles loves festivals
• Gay marriage, pandakas, and kinnars
• There are no gays in China 

Giant Gay Pride Parade Fest (June 6-8)

Dev, Wisdom Quarterly; gaywesthollywood.com/gaypride

LA PRIDE LGBT Pride in West Hollywood 

Christopher Street West Association, Inc. is a non-profit service organization within the... Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Celebration in West Hollywood. The LA PRIDE Celebration is held in beautiful West Hollywood Park.

  

2014 Gay Pride in Los Angeles, California, Gay West Hollywood 

LA Gay Pride Parade and Festival in Los Angeles, attracting 1/2 million visitors... 

City of West Hollywood: One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival 

Each year, the City of West Hollywood celebrates Pride month through the artistic contributions of our community with the One City One Pride Arts Festival. 

West Hollywood Los Angeles Gay Pride 2014 

(GayTravel.about.com) The L.A. Pride Festival occurs over Friday, June 6, Saturday, June 7 (from noon until midnight), and Sunday (from 11:00 am till 11:00 pm) in the heart of West Hollywood.

Love, Sexuality, and Awakening: Retreat

Ven. Amma Thanasanti Bhikkhuni (awakeningtruth.org) and Dr. Sharon Beckman-Brindley (metta.org); Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Fragrant blossoming lotus flower, the symbol of opening (tvladusi/flickr.com)

 

Dr. Beckman-Brindley, Ven. Thanasanti

The theme of this retreat is our relationship with various facets of love as part of a path of Buddhist awakening. "Love" includes a broad range of experience -- from a sense of friendliness and compassion, to appreciation toward ourselves, to the desire to release our masks and defenses and rest in a shared intimacy with others [a loss of self and merging with someone or something larger].

Sometimes in our daily life, this shared intimacy is expressed through romantic sexual involvement. [Other times it is sought diving within through asceticism and spirituality.] Ultimately, resting in love, we can embody an unconditional love that has no expectations, where love is an essential quality of "being" rather than a state or circumstance we long for [a trait rather than a temporary state].

 

Time for reflection (true-enlightenment.com)

This will be an eight precept retreat in which we refrain from killing and harming, and from stealing, any sexual activity, incorrect speech, and/or substances which cloud the mind. There will be two meals and an evening snack. We will begin the week using the Foundations of Mindfulness in silent practice. After a few days of silence, we will introduce sessions of Insight Dialogue to explore the theme.

It runs from Saturday May 23-30 in Loveland, Colorado, at Sunrise Ranch within easy access of Denver Int'l airport, yet secluded from the bustle of city life, in the Rocky Mountain foothills. Program contact: Katherine Wolfe (wolfalohalani@gmail.com). More 
 
ELIGIBILITY: This retreat is suitable for anyone self-identified as a woman who has a regular meditation practice and has done a seven-day mindfulness retreat.

DONATION: The teachings are offered on a dana basis (the Pali word for "generosity," the Buddhist practice of giving to one’s capacity).

SCHOLARSHIP: Dana has played an essential role in the Buddhist tradition. In the spirit of this tradition, Awakening Truth does not want cost to be an obstacle to participation and so, are committed to offering financial assistance to those who need it. If you cannot attend the retreat due to cost, please contact the retreat committee: 720-295-1321 or awakeningtruth.retreats@gmail.com.

SPONSORED BY: Awakening Truth, a 501(c)3 organization based in Colorado with the intention of supporting Buddhist nuns, bringing the teachings into the modern world and building a training monastery for [blended-Theravada] Forest Tradition bhikkhunis.

TEACHERS

Sharon Beckman-Brindley, Ph.D., is a Senior Insight Dialogue Teacher who teaches Insight Dialogue retreats worldwide. A clinical psychologist, she has served as team leader for Metta’s Relational Insight Meditation Program; she also serves on the Metta Programs Teachers Council. She has practiced vipassana (insight) meditation for over 30 years. Since 2001 she has studied and practiced the Dhamma and Insight Dialogue intensively with Gregory Kramer. She is also a co-founder and a guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville, Virginia and is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leaders Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She also has over 30 years of practice as a psychotherapist, who has led workshops and retreats on meditation and its integration with psychotherapy for over 15 years. She is a stepmother and a grandmother and lives with her husband and their two cats in Charlottesville.
 
Amma Thanasanti Bhikkhuni is a guest in Metta’s Teacher Training program. She has been meditating for over 30 years, a [Theravada or more eccentric American monastic] Buddhist nun for over 20 years, and has been teaching internationally for over 15 years. He work spans rigorous understanding of Buddhist teachings, non-dual meditation, depth psychology, subtle body energies, and the Divine Feminine. She teaches meditation as an art and skill, integrating body, heart, and mind with finesse and compassion. She founded Awakening Truth [whose rainbow motif suggests a particularly welcome climate for lesbians and gays], whose mission is to create a nun (bhikkhuni)'s training monastery and seeks ways for monastics and lay practitioners to work together to support whole-life practice. She is currently based at the Shakti Vihara Hermitage in Colorado Springs.

Scary LA: LIONS! Don't visit this summer

Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; Ipagn28 (buzzfeed.com)

"I met some Los Angeles people once. I hated them." The Grumpy Guide to Life (Chronicle Books). See Grumpy Cat live, Monday, Aug. 4, 2014, 6:00 pm, at Kitson, Santa Monica Place, Ste. 120 and Aug. 5, 2014, 6:00 pm in Las Vegas, Nevada (shopkitson.com)

L.A. with its own Himalayan foothills (Nat'l Forest) just behind the megalopolis (buzzfeed)

Sightings of big cats in our "Central" (Griffith) Park have been confirmed near the Hollywood sign. They are peaceful but not safe for children or crouchers. (Burma Charwoodland/Firstfire53/flickr).

 

According to the last census, Los Angeles is the Most Densely Populated Urban Area in the US. At nearly 2,000 more people per square mile on average than New York, we can’t compare Manhattan to Culver City and call it a day.

 

"Entering a space of privilege and prejudice"

Where does anyone think the traffic comes from? It’s people, commuting from one place to another. It has already been pointed out that due to the lack of a center, people move from where they live to where they work or play. It is a great expanse to cover, and most of it is covered in concrete and asphalt, which facilitates travel. It is actually just much more evenly distributed in terms of density than east coast cities.
 

A dozen Southern California fires rage destroying Pendleton military base. Arson, sabotage, Pentagon incompetence, Santa Ana winds? Mother Nature avoiding violence? (scpr.org)

 

Post-Native Los Angeles, Old Mexico

What L.A. really is is BIG. It’s massive. It's not a metropolis but a megalopolis. It is widely spread out, spilling into neighboring cities and counties...

And there are A LOT of people there, too, distributed in hundreds of communities, living in any number of configurations, speaking hundreds of languages (the L.A. Almanac says 224). More

After the earthquakes and the toxic petroleum street spill, there were some fires.

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  Puma 35 (P 35) is a wild lion in Santa Monica
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• PHOTOS: The mountain lions of L.A. are real!
• Compassion: don't use rodent poisons!
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• Are L.A. lions getting weak from inbreeding? 
• AUDIO: Killing our native cats with rat poison
• VIDEO: Real Grumpy Cats attacks dog to save boy

Traveling up Beachwood Canyon to the old Hollywood sign, circa 1932 (weirdca.com)

Hollywood sign with 8-ft. long nocturnal predator lurking in the dark (Maya Sugarman)

On ridge above the lights of Los Angeles, a male cougar labeled P-22 made his way from the Santa Monica Mountains to Hollywood's Griffith Park -- an island of habitat surrounded by homes and freeways (Steve Winter/National Geographic/scpr.org)

Preliminary DNA evidence shows that P-32, one of three cubs recently born in the Santa Monica Mountains of the City of Los Angeles, is inbred (National Park Service/SCPR.org)

Not fit for cat food -- massive LA fish die off over the weekend. Rat poison runoff? (LAT)

Know why L.A. has so much smog? So the God can't see what we're doing down here.

"Inequality for All" especially girls! (video)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Prof. Robert Reich, UC Berkeley; Kathryn Joyce, Amy Goodman (democracynow.org, May 8, 2014)

Ah, don't touch me! You're a girl!

Is the Protestant world teetering on the edge of a sex-abuse scandal similar to the one rocking the Catholic Church? Reporter Kathryn Joyce, whose cover story in The American Prospect profiles Boz Tchividjian, a law professor at Liberty University -- a school founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell -- and former prosecutor who worked on many sexual abuse cases. Prof. Tchividjian used his experience to found GRACE -- Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment. GRACEmade headlines in February when a famous evangelical school, Bob Jones University, hired it to interview faculty and students about their experiences with sexual assault, then fired it before the it had a chance to report the results -- only to hire it back after a public outcry. Prof. Tchividjian happens to be the grandson of the famous evangelist Rev. Billy Graham. More

How about the economy?

(Moyers & Company) Bill Moyers talks with economic analyst and former Sec'y of Labor during the Clinton Administration Prof. Robert Reich about the new film "Inequality for All." it opened in theaters across the country aiming to be a game-changer in our national discussion of massive income inequality.

• Todd Akin’s "legitimate rape" comment sheds light on Paul Ryan’s extreme stance on abortion
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