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In Defense of Promiscuity Part III

Posted March 22nd, 2011 by Jun Po Kelly Roshi in Integral Post
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 <== click here for Part II
 

As promised, I have no intention of replacing one set of Amber rules with another, of being a modern day Martin Luther to nail my new 95 Theses onto the door of tahe Zendo, or onto the foreheads of a particularly horny teacher or two.  We have already covered why the question itself needs to be replaced: should a teacher sleep with their students becomes how do we take a compassionate and firm stand in the Truth, which includes sacred ritual sexuality between consenting adults?

Should a teacher sleep with their students invites one of three answers, all of which are too partial and too unforgiving to be accurate: “It’s wrong”, “it’s okay”, and “it’s complicated” all miss the mark, and the scandals we have witnessed, and the suffering they have caused, seem to bear that out clearly enough.  If you believe in one of those answers, run with it, but understand you will likely be met with disappointment and outrage because you have answered the wrong question. 

How are we, as Integralists, going to language the answer to the proper question: How do we take a compassionate and firm stand in the Truth, which includes sacred ritual sexuality between consenting adults?

Two teachers were sitting outside of a retreat space.  The first looked at the second: “Why is it my students get so angry at me after I sleep with them, and yours don’t?” 

The first teacher responded: “I meet my students in ruthless honesty, compassion, and service.  You meet yours in lust.” 

Because we have been asking the wrong question, and because of the power politics projected onto sexuality, relationships between master and student form in shadow and remain there—until they are dragged, kicking and screaming, out into the open.  Families are crushed, children scarred, sanghas destroyed, bribes handed out, lawsuits filed, reputations destroyed—it is no joke, and no laughing matter. 

The problem is not Amber rules around sexuality or the reactions to those rules being broken.  The problem is not the behavior itself — sexuality as divine connection.  The problem is in how it is handled.  Can we take a compassionate and firm stand in the Truth, a stand that includes sacred sexuality between a master and his or her student?  What say the Integralists? 

I asked one well-known teacher, who has had no scandal around her, “Do you sleep with your students?”  She smiled.  “What, do you think I sleep with strangers?”

What will guide our new language around sexuality between master and student? 

The Truth of Responsibility: a teacher knows when his or her behavior is unethical and inappropriate; if they do not, they have no business teaching, and certainly no business sleeping with their students.  A student knows when he or she is tempting a teacher to cross a line, and when they are being complicit in living a lie.  Ultimately, though, the master is solely responsible for their actions, words, and thoughts, and for the practical and karmic fallout of affairs conducted in shame and shadow.  The buck stops with them. 

The Truth of Transparency: shadow sexuality is done in secret, behind closed doors and behind the backs of loved ones and the community, shrouded in shame, and created out of lust.  If the master is not willing to publicly be seen and declare a tantric relationship with a student, she has no business being in one to begin with.  For married teachers, they must be in open relationships with their partners and seek consent before acting; for married students, the same is true.  Otherwise, the marriage or partnership must end before the sexual affair can begin.  In either case, the sangha should be let in on what is happening.  Transparency exposes shadow to light, it forces integrity on all parties, and it lets people—spouses and other sangha members—decide what they want to do for themselves before they are handed a ball of lies and deceit and already-performed actions to which they now must react. 

The Truth of Integrity: choices have consequences, and a true master will live in the fierce and unforgiving light of ruthless honesty, at all times, regardless of the short-term consequences.  As someone who has lived in and out of integrity, I can speak to its power.  

The Truth of Transmission: the tantric embrace between an Enlightened master and a heart-open and ready student is like no other embrace on this planet.  The student can be given a vehicle of transmission they can take back into their lives, and the teacher’s own insight and wisdom and love and compassion can greatly deepen.  To deny the truth of this is to deny the truth of divine insight itself.

Perhaps I’ll leave the spiritual teachers out there with one thesis after all:  Sleep with the right students, in honesty and in integrity.  And if you can’t tell the right ones from the wrong ones, don’t sleep with any at all.
 

These posts on Promiscuity were conceived and created by Jun Po Roshi, and brought to life by his biographer, Keith Martin-Smith (Kogen).  “Unbreakable Heart”, which details Jun Po’s extraordinary life, be available to the
public in January 2012.  You can read more about the book here.

 

Jun Po Kelly Roshi

Jun Po Denis Kelly began his Buddhist practice at Zen Center San Francisco in the early '70s, later becoming a student of Eido Shimano Roshi in New York and subsequently a monk. He received his Zen Master recognition in 1992. Interested in bringing his Zen lineage (Rinzai tradition) into American culture without the Japanese cultural bindings, Jun Po left the monastery and founded the lay Buddhist Hollow Bones order, of which he is abbot. A yoga instructor as well, he traces his lineage to BKS Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois. He established the Hollow Bones seven-day Zen retreats for the Mankind Project.

 

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...

Posted March 23rd, 2011 by stefano

The next question of course is, do students have to sleep with their teachers?

Because you know, y'all can go fuck yourselves.

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Questions

Posted March 23rd, 2011 by Stanley

1.     Is it alright for spiritual teachers to sexually exploit their students?

2.     If they can pronounce words like responsibility, transparency, integrity, and transmission; does that make it alright?

3.     Is it alright for spiritual teachers to sell special privileges and titles for sex?

4.     Is it alright for spiritual teacher to exploit their students in other ways? (I assume this would relate to the teacher gaining selfish egocentric money, power, and/or fame.)

5.     Is it alright for spiritual teachers to sell special privileges and titles for money, power, and fame?

6.     Should we even have ethics in our conversations?

7.     If so what would these ethics look like?

An insight I took from this series of posts is that since the integral culture is so young it is not really inflexibly set. We get to decide what our ethics will be right now as we talk.What are your ideas on these questions and integral ethics in general?

 

 

P.S. Ken teaches that all teachers have shadows because all teachers are human. It does not seem like Jun Po quite gets this one yet. Ken also mentions that green is very good about deconstructing things without replacing them. If we deconstruct what Jun Po considers to be Amber rules what will we replace them with other than dog eat dog?

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deepest thanks!

Posted March 23rd, 2011 by Catherine Guidry

 to Jun Po Roshi for this clear and "ruthlessly honest" post.  I especially like:

The Truth of Transparency: shadow sexuality is done in secret, behind closed doors and behind the backs of loved ones and the community, shrouded in shame, and created out of lust.  If the master is not willing to publicly be seen and declare a tantric relationship with a student, she has no business being in one to begin with.  For married teachers, they must be in open relationships with their partners and seek consent before acting; for married students, the same is true.  Otherwise, the marriage or partnership must end before the sexual affair can begin.  In either case, the sangha should be let in on what is happening.  Transparency exposes shadow to light, it forces integrity on all parties, and it lets people—spouses and other sangha members—decide what they want to do for themselves before they are handed a ball of lies and deceit and already-performed actions to which they now must react. 

My father had an affair with a woman he met at church when I was 11.  It destroyed our family and definitely fucked me up enough for it to take years of therapy, meditation to fix.  Sneaking around about sex is bad news. Transparency does force integrity upon all parties, it is the ultimate "what if my best friend knew I was doing this?" reality check.  And sanghas need explicitly spelled out, unequivocably clear rules (yes, I do mean rules, there is a time and a place for them and sex is definitely one!) in broad daylight about what constitutes proper and improper behavior.  A new and more enlightened shade of Amber, if you will, that recognizes the power of sexuality in both the sacred and profane senses.  

Very beautiful and helpful post, Jun Po Roshi, thank you and I look forward to reading your biography.

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Strange how a Zen teacher would turn a simple issue into a complicated one

Posted March 23rd, 2011 by Solomon Kleinsmith

I think you replaced a wrongheaded question with almost as much of a wrongheaded one...

We have already covered why the question itself needs to be replaced: should a teacher sleep with their students becomes how do we take a compassionate and firm stand in the Truth, which includes sacred ritual sexuality between consenting adults?

I'm not sure you could ruin a potentially good sexual relationship more than by injecting ritual. Sexuality is natural, organic and fluid. Ritual is nothing of the sort. Nothing wrong with lust either. As long as the relationship is consenting, and people are being honest with themselves and the other, any other crap you layer on top of it to judge with is totally unnecessary. If you like ritual sex, then by all means do your thing, but that doesn't have a whit to do with moral issues involved.

Should a teacher sleep with a student is no different than any other "should A sleep with B". There is no static question, and every instance is unique, but the only issues that really matter, in very different ways in each case, are consent and honesty.

I love some of the work you all do here, but boy are you guys (unfortunately) very skilled at turning simple things into insanely complicated rambles. Even more strange that a Zen teacher would take something and turn it into a multi post series of essays. I thought the whole idea was to get to the root of things, but most of the time the content I see on here hacks away at the leaves.

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Defending false distinctions

Posted March 23rd, 2011 by William Harryman

 Roshi says: "The problem is not Amber rules around sexuality or the reactions to those rules being broken.  The problem is not the behavior itself — sexuality as divine connection.  The problem is in how it is handled.  Can we take a compassionate and firm stand in the Truth, a stand that includes sacred sexuality between a master and his or her student?  What say the Integralists?"

False distinction there.

Blurring the line between sexual/relational lines and the spiritual line is fine in a consensual monogamous (or even polyamorous) relationship - but not so much in a teacher/student relationship. I think a teacher who believes s/he needs to sleep with students is engaging in rationalizations.

Telling ourselves stories to make wrong actions feel right - and making false distinctions - is still a rationalization. The problem is not in how it's handled, as Roshi suggests, it's in the way the issue has been framed and the terms defined in these posts.

Sexual energy may on its own have transformative power, and if that is the teaching, then teach it to couples or pair off singles, but keep your own pants on. Dr. Ruth taught a lot of "amber" people (we need to have these conversations without reducing people to a color or a stage - no one is fully amber, or turquoise, or plaid - we are complex human beings) to have good sex and she never slept with any of them.

For sexual expression to be TRULY transformative (I'm thinking of Dr. Wade's book) we need to engage the whole system, the emotional, the relational, the sexual, the physical, the spiritual - all levels and most lines (going light on the ego or rational) -- all of that, all at the same time. It's called relational sexuality (I just made that up) and it takes time and work and honesty and intimacy to build this with even one person, let alone several people who are students, not partners. 

Why hasn't Roshi spent three long posts helping us learn how to be open, present, giving, vulnerable, wild, tender, and ecstatic with our partners? Now that is a teaching I could support. 

This series of posts, not so much. Feels like effed up priorities to me. 

I have seen very few teachers who I feel (necessary qualification) get it right with sexuality, and none of them want to justify sleeping with students.

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I am.

Posted March 23rd, 2011 by Shikha Sabharwal

I am the teacher and the student and the Love and the rage and the anger and the judgment and the indignation and the hurt and the sorrow and the joy and the fear and the guilt and the shame and the longing and the lust and the life and the way

and all the rest of it.

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The Mirror

Posted March 24th, 2011 by BriXri5

Jun Po,

Thank you for holding up a mirror for the rest of us to look at ourselves with. The reactions and responses to this series of posts offer great insight to those willing to look at themselves. It's been nice to witness the unfolding of the story/message as the struggle with its content unfolded in myself. The small truly mirrors the large in many ways.  

Part of what is uncomfortable for me (as I'm sure it is for others) is the rift between teacher and student. As a student I'm disinclined to have sex with a teacher due to the evaluative role of the teacher (performance anxiety and sex doesn't sound like a good time). As a teacher I'd be disinclined to have sex with one of my students because of the level or responsibility on me as the teacher. Outside of highlighting some shadow work I have to do, both roles I inhabit point out something important. Namely, we are all teachers and students. Further, we are all sexual beings. I guess that means the end of the species for those saying it's flatly out of the question?  

Which is the point I think you were trying to make by detailing how developed as a person this woman was. She had much to teach you as well. Who was in fact the teacher or student in the story? At whom should the lashing blows of incredulity be directed? :)

Sincerely,

Brian

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Comment subscription

Posted March 30th, 2011 by Solomon Kleinsmith

I'm not sure what sort of terrible comment subscription plugin they use here... but I've been getting about a dozen notifications a day since I commented, and there is nowhere near that many comments. Something is seriously wrong with it.