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.

India recognizes a "third gender" (pandaka)

Ashley Wells, Irma Quintero, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

People from the Puritan US to Putin's Russia may dislike gays, but the question is, Do they have rights? Do we not all as sentient beings, at least as human beings, have equal rights?

"Homophobia can kill you," says Discovery (news.discovery.com). So be pro-gay or neutral.

  

Hijras mourn in India (wiki)

The Supreme Court of India recognized a legal third gender for hijra and transgender individuals (Buddhist pandakas).

What are or were pandakas in the Buddha's day? "People of non-normative sexual natures, perhaps originally denoting a deficiency in male sexual capacity," according to Peter A. Jackson ("Non-normative Sex/Gender Categories in the Theravada Buddhist Scriptures," Australian Humanities Review, April 1996).

 

Buddhism, Sex, and Gender

The best account, and one of the very few, we have ever come across concerning Buddhism and homosexuality, which is the frame for discussions of pandakas, is an academic collection of essays edited by Jose Ignacio Cabezon: Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender. Of particular interest is the contribution of Prof. Donald S. Lopez.

Buddhaghosa, apparently, put together a clinical description of pandakas -- often offensively and misleadingly translated as "eunuchs" when they are in fact non-normative individuals. Ancient sketches of transgender and cross-dressing individuals had many disparate presumptions about their character, habits, and proclivities as well as the karmic source of their condition. It cannot be asked, "What was the traditional view of homosexuality in Buddhism, Jainism, and Brahmanism?" without reference to pandakas because they were not distinguished from "perverts" and third-gender-rebels.

• Is "swinging" sexual misconduct?

Ancient India with Afghanistan (Gandhara, Kamboja) and Pakistan at upper left, Burma and Thailand at lower right, Nepal and Tibet at the center top, and famous Buddhist sites on the plains of the Ganges river (wiki).

 

Sex in the Pali Canon

Gender of devas is fluid in Indian iconography

The Pali canon -- a ancient collection of sutras and other sacred Buddhist texts including the disciplinary code (Vinaya) and commentaries -- contains numerous references to homoerotic behavior and to individuals who today would [today] be variously identified as hermaphrodites, transvestites, transsexuals, and homosexuals.

However, none of the sex/gender categories named in the canon precisely matches any of these contemporary notions. But it combines instead elements of these diverse physiological, gender, and sexual conditions in distinctive formulations. 

Dharmic renunciates say no to pandakas.

Most Buddhist canonical accounts of non-normative gender and sexuality are found in the Vinaya, the monastic code of conduct, and they are listed among the many explicitly described forms of sexual activity proscribed and forbidden for monks and nuns (bhikkhus and bhikkhunis).

In analyzing Theravada Buddhist accounts of sex and gender, it is vital to keep in mind that the tradition began as a Monastic Sangha, an order of celibate male and female renunciates, and that the Vinaya is a monastic not a layperson's code of conduct. 

Scriptural accounts of non-normative sex and gender also need to be understood in the context of the tradition's general disdain of sexuality and its distrust of sensual indulgences.

Buddhist Thailand's third gender is the kathoey

Nevertheless, according to Jackson, what makes accounts of sex and gender in these ancient Indian texts especially fascinating is their contemporary relevance in Thailand, which together with Sri Lanka, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia forms part of the Asian cultural sphere in which Theravada Buddhism remains a vital cultural institution. More

Growing up in India, I never met openly gay...

PRI's The World (12-11-13)

Deepak Singh never met an openly gay person when he was growing up in India. That, of course, has changed in the years since, with people of many different sexual orientations coming into his life. But the news out of India's Supreme Court decision makes his heart grieve. [That was last year.]

Supreme Courts rights traditional wrong (NPR)

Singh should be happy today (4-16-14) because India's Supreme Court has just legally declared a third gender (hijra) that gives rights to its LGBTQ community (lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and questioning). The third gender is neither males who want to be females nor females eager to become males. Nor are they regarded as sufficiently "male" by each other or the larger community. There really is a third gender, and it is now enshrined in law...at least in India. In India, Supreme Court hands down landmark ruling recognizing transgender citizens.

 

Hancock just returned from seeing the wonders of India

God kills anti-gay Westboro Baptist preacher

I. Rony, Wisdom Quarterly (EDITORIAL); SCPR.org via the Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

People-hating, gay-bashing, God-fearing Westboro Church members (npr.org)

 

The New Hate

It is a sad day in West Hollywood as news arrives that the tribal god of the Judeo-Christians has struck down yet another wayward minister/sinner who preached hate instead of love, prejudice instead of tolerance, bias instead of forbearance. Yea, know ye that the "wages of sin is death" (i.e., that the god will kill you if you stray). Fred Phelps, Esq. leaves us this day for a grander vision of karma (vipaka) in the hereafter than we are yet privy to see. For, lo, he preached invective and damnation on his walk with the lord from on high, frequently stating that "God Hates F*gs" and "Obey or Perish" without a trace of irony. 

Wah! I take it back! I take it back!!

Have we anything to learn from his example, or shall we too stray in the fields of the lord disregarding the good news that we are capable and responsible for the decisions that lead inevitably to our actions (karma)? May he rest in peace and find renewal of spirit, not wrestling as those he condemned in life, but in the fullness of the mercy he now seeks. Aum'n. [In all seriousness, we hope he's okay, for to hate a hater is a great mistake.] See the full story.

"As it turns out, God actually hates small-minded, bigoted, blind fanatics..."