I think… I’ve found paradise!

Non-attachment and Lust

The first part of today’s title refers obliquely to Ang Lee’s recent movie, “Lust, Cau­tion.†I just saw it, and as is typ­i­cal of Lee, the pho­tog­ra­phy is excel­lent, as are the quite graphic sex scenes. The cau­tion part is amply demon­strated by the end of the film–when lust gets mixed into the sex, the result is not pleasant.

Most peo­ple have a great resis­tance to their lust and pas­sion. And yet, most rela­tion­ships start right there. Bio­log­i­cally, we haven’t changed much since we swung out of the trees, and the ‘lust-romance’ stage is part of our lim­bic sys­tem. This old­est part of the brain is also respon­si­ble for our “fight — flight†mech­a­nism, and other semi or com­pletely auto­matic systems.

A client recently dis­cussed her 30 year mar­riage, which, she thinks, may be com­ing to an end. She noted, “I saw him 30 years ago, fell into lust, left my mar­riage and moved in with him. For 15 years, the ‘great sex with a bad boy’ was all I noticed. Now, I see past that, and there is noth­ing left. How could I have been so blind?â€

Blind­ness, for sure. But let’s talk about Zen for a minute.

Two things:

Now, please put a bag over your head…

1) Bud­dhists, since, well, the Bud­dha, have placed great empha­sis on the monas­tic life — monks and nuns are by def­i­n­i­tion less attached, as they are not per­mit­ted inti­mate rela­tion­ships with lovers. This is, of course, a bit disin­gen­u­ous, as this approach tries to get around lust by leg­is­lat­ing it away.

Thus, this Zen story (which I ana­lyze at length in my next book):Two monks are cross­ing a river, when they meet a beau­ti­ful woman. She asks for help cross­ing the river. The older monk picks her up and crosses the river, while the younger monk looks on in shock (as monks are sup­posed to be celi­bate and avoid beau­ti­ful women.) A mile or so down the river, the younger monk is still in shock, and can’t stop think­ing about the older monk’s behav­ior. The older monk says some­thing like, “I crossed the river with that girl a mile ago and left her there, yet you still carry her.â€

The thing is, pre­tend­ing that some­thing “there†is not there,
does not make it “not there.â€

2) The irony of the monas­tic path is it tries to short-circuit the need for moment-by-moment aware­ness, which includes what we feel. And one of the things every­one feels is lust/passion. The older monk in the story above makes this point. One can feel what­ever one feels, and then move on. He picked her up, inter­acted with her, and set her down. Moment-by-moment aware­ness. Not so for the younger monk, who car­ried her with him, in his head.

Mean­while, back to Lust

My client per­fectly describes inat­ten­tion taken to an extreme. The vast major­ity of peo­ple have a dif­fi­cult time enact­ing, describ­ing, or even admit­ting to their pas­sions and lusts. Typ­i­cally, if you are avail­able and look­ing, see­ing some­one attrac­tive leads to lust (lim­bic sys­tem 101) and then to the sub-conscious thought: “Yikes! I’m turned on, and that’s not a good thing to admit, so I’ll just pre­tend it’s love! Then, what I’m feel­ing is socially accept­able and sanc­tioned.†Peo­ple take per­fectly good “turned on†feel­ings, and con­vert them to romance.

The under­ly­ing feel­ing, then, never gets addressed. It gets sub­li­mated, and cov­ered over with the thin veneer of socially accept­able rhetoric.

Romance is a stage

The Romance stage lasts 6 months to maybe 2 years in extreme cases. When we are in romance, we are quite selec­tive in what we see. It’s like my client, who spent years miss­ing or dis­count­ing essen­tial ele­ments in her ‘bad boy’ husband’s behav­iour. She fell out of romance years ear­lier, but this stage planted the seeds for her con­tin­ued excuse-making.

Romance is designed to bind the cou­ple together. Bio­log­i­cally, this stage was meant to lead to breed­ing and babies. Remem­ber, 100,000 gen­er­a­tions ago, we lived to 30 or so, so the bio­log­i­cal imper­a­tive was extreme. Romance makes lust palat­able. Being in romance meant over­look­ing all the stuff that might cause the cou­ple to part ways. “He†didn’t lie–he’s just pro­vid­ing “addi­tional information!â€

Com­ing out of romance hap­pens as we start to notice things about our part­ner that we do not like. Prior to the moment when “things change,†we either miss the quirky stuff entirely, or think it endear­ing, or think, “If she loves me, she will change.†Falling out of romance, it’s, “Holy crap! I can’t live with that! Where did that come from? He lied to me!â€

Well, no, “he†didn’t.
1) Up until then, you did not want to see this stuff, so you ignored it, and
2) both of you were on your best behav­iour, san­i­tiz­ing the expe­ri­ence so your part­ner wouldn’t run from the room.

Peo­ple caught in romance exude that sickly sweet odour of per­fec­tion, as they gaze into each oth­ers eyes and pro­fess undy­ing and unchang­ing love. The first few cracks in this veneer hap­pen as “I’m just sug­gest­ing this to make you even more per­fect!†Inevitably, the other shoe drops, and you real­ize you are in rela­tion­ship with a real per­son, foibles and all.

All you can hope is that you were not com­pletely blinded by your lust. Mar­ried to a bad boy/girl, as opposed to just a lit­tle blinded. No won­der the monas­tic life seemed to be a cure.

Or, you could wake up

If you think about it, all of the trou­ble started when we stopped being hon­est, and just fell into the “lust papered over by romance†trap.

I once worked with a guy who had a psy­chotic break because he’d bad­gered his girl­friend into hav­ing sex with him, and then blamed her because he wanted sex all the time. He twisted and turned the story so much that some­how his bad­ger­ing and pres­sur­ing her was also her fault. He really, really, had a dif­fi­cult time admit­ting to his own sex­u­al­ity and lust, so much so that he snapped his mind.

I’ve seen this on a much smaller scale, with a cou­ple of peo­ple who get their shorts in a knot when I write about top­ics sex­ual. When I say, “Isn’t it inter­est­ing that you are upset­ting your­self over men­tions of sex,†they reply, in effect, “Maybe you shouldn’t write about it. You’re prob­a­bly offend­ing a lot of peo­ple.†They miss their discomfort–the dis­com­fort they are cre­at­ing over what they imag­ine I’m writ­ing about.

Much eas­ier, I think, to be aware, and non-attached. By the way, this is not a pre­scrip­tion to do away with romance. It’s a sug­ges­tion that one could be con­sciously in romance. In other words, when you’re ga-ga over a new love, you can say, “Wow! Am I ever in the midst of this one! Wow! I won­der what else is going on, that I’m miss­ing?†When I see some­one attrac­tive, I could say, “Hmm. I’m in lust. I think I’ll tell her what I’m cre­at­ing for myself, and see if she wants to play.†Or I could just enjoy the moment and move on. I’m not required to adopt, get into rela­tion­ship, or marry some­one just because I like the cut of their jib.

The Zen of Relat­ing to Lust

Cau­tion. He says with a smirk. The cau­tion part is to bring into focus how strong lust is. It causes us to go brain-dead, to stop pay­ing atten­tion, and to rapidly turn it into romance. Instead, exer­cise the same cau­tion all of Zen being requires.

If you do not remem­ber the siren pull of not pay­ing atten­tion, you will wake up bat­tered and bruised, again and again. The cau­tion is this: “Remem­ber to pay atten­tion, and to prize wak­ing up.†As you come back into aware­ness, you see how easy it is to fall “head over heels†about lots of things, and how ulti­mately you lose sight of your­self. Uncon­scious romance is the height of silly. Choos­ing to be in romance, in lust, in like, in pas­sion, or in inti­mate rela­tion­ship is a mat­ter of “sim­ply notic­ing.†And own­ing that you are, indeed, capa­ble of pro­duc­ing all of those states in yourself.

In short, you do not have to treat lust with fear, nor do you have to san­i­tize it–you sim­ply have to see it, own it, and choose how to enact it.