Sex, Sin, and Zen Quotes

“Running away is futile. Even if you run very far away from home to a remote mountain monastery, as long as you carry the same attitude you've always had, you'll never truly get away. You'll just end up transferring all the stuff from home onto the other people at the monastery...

Lots of people run away from responsibilities to "find themselves." But not so many of them have a real commitment to the truth. It would be better to find the truth in the life you're living, with the responsibilities you've already accepted. Responsibilities have a way of finding you, even if you run away from them.”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“The lack of fulfillment we feel is natural and normal. That's true enlightenment. It's when we feel fulfilled that we're deluded.

By doing zazen practice, we gradually begin to loosen our grip on the idea that we ought to be fulfilled. We begin to see that our normal condition of feeling that something is missing in our lives is not really such a terrible thing. It's just a feeling. No more and no less. We no longer desperately seek to shove something into that void. We can just let it be just as it is and accept that it's all right...

If we can accept this lack of fulfillment as our natural condition, we can be totally free. We can accept good and bad equally. We can accept loneliness, and we can accept love. We no longer feel that things ought to be different from how they actually are. At the same time we do not complacently accept things that actually do need to be changed. We can understand that it is often our duty to change a situation.”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“We always believe that there's going to be some high, just around the corner that's going to pull us way, way, way up, where we'll stay forever. If our current romance doesn't do that for us, we'll look for a new one. When the giddy high of the first date wears off, we're ready for another fix.

There's no problem with loving something, we coupling up, with enjoying someone's company, and all the rest. But if you want to enjoy all that stuff to the fullest, the best possible way to do it is to stop looking for the big highs, peak experiences, and sweeping flights of blissful romance. All that stuff just causes its own counterreactions. Watch your own body and mind, and you'll see this for yourself.”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“Zazen, on the other hand, is kind of the opposite of sex in that it's really, really boring. And, honestly speaking, most of our lives are pretty boring. So if you want to learn how to be fully present for most of what goes on, it's better to try and do so by concentrating on a really boring activity rather than on a really exciting one...To find the way of being fully engaged in doing the dishes, you might want to try becoming fully engaged in something way more boring than doing dishes. This is why zazen is so desperately dull.”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“Transcending emotions doesn’t mean you have no feelings. You have them. But you recognize them for what they are and respond appropriately without letting them develop into what we call emotions, which are really just feelings that have been blown way out of proportion. A”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“Buddha himself said in the Kalama Sutra, Rely not on the teacher, but on the teaching. Rely not on the words of the teaching, but on the spirit of the words. Rely not on theory, but on experience. Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. Thus”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“Here is what one sexual abuse survivor told me about his practice:

"I tend to go into these four-day funks of self- destruction. My therapist showed me a diagram with baseline emotions for people who have not suffered trauma, and superimposed over it a diagram of baseline emotions for pople who have. Apparently people who have suffered severe traume build neuropathways that lead them to predict traumatic events and then react to them, even if they aren't happening, and the fucks people up their entire lives. She believes it's my yoga practice and daily zazen that keeps my funks to four, maybe five days, instead of lasting for months, or even years. She went on to explain a bit about neurogenesis and studies being done right now about building new neuropathways. I think zazen is beneficial for trauma survivors because it instills in them enough calm and insight to not react in ways that have long-term self-destructive effects. On top of which it builds new neuropathways, rewiring conditioned reactions to trauma, both real and imaginary."

We human beings generally subject our brains to a lot of abuse. WE create neural pathways where they are not needed by constantly rehashing pleasurable or painful experiences in order to more fully develop our sense of self.”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“The balanced state of body and mind that occurs through zazen practice can also occur spontaneously in other situations. As a musician I used to find it when playing onstage. All consciousness of myself and the outside world would vanish, to be replaced by a fluid state of action alone, in which thought and feeling ceased to be important and in which sense of self and other utterly dissolved. Athletes often experience moments like this. So do artists of various kinds. So do many people involved in a whole range of activities to which they have fully devoted themselves. And so, quite often, do lovers engaged in sex.”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“power exchange is the number one thing people play with in sex. It’s out there all the time. BDSM apes it and burlesques it. Because we understand that power imbalance is an essential aspect of nature. Bunnies are made to be eaten. BW:”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“Dhammapada. Anyhow,”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“When you get high on something - including "spiritual bliss" - there is always going to be a low. The comedown is your body / mind returning to balance, or the closest thing to balance that it knows. If you desperately crave bliss while your body / mind needs balance, you are bound to label the changeover as "feeling bad," when in fact it's the best thing that can happen.

Zen practice is not about getting high on anything and in so doing, getting high on absolutely everything. We then find that everything we encounter - bliss and nonbliss - possesses a tremendous depth and beauty that we usually miss.”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between