Our second example comes from . . . the Old Testament!
You can stop rubbing your eyes now. You have read right. The same Jewish scriptures that contain all the moralizing precepts discussed earlier are also home to one of the most unashamed celebrations of sex ever found in religious literature.
When I first ran into this composition, I was floored. I was eighteen years old, and I'm not sure what had gotten into me, but I had decided I would read the entire Bible cover to cover. I wanted to find out for myself what the whole big deal was about, so I was determined to read every passage in every chapter, even those parts that would go on page after page listing genealogies of unpronounceable names.
After several eight-hour days of reading non-stop, I began to think that maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew. My
stamina was running out. If I read about one more story of God demanding bloody punishment against the unbelievers, I was going to lose it. But just when my determination seemed to have reached its limits, I stumbled onto the Song of Songs. When I was done, I read it again. And again. I kept trying to figure out just how this could have possibly made its way into the middle of the Bible. My theory was that one of the original scribes who wrote down scriptures one night got mighty drunk, and mistakenly swapped whatever religious book he was supposed to copy for something out of his personal stash of literary porn.
OK, maybe it wasn't the best theory ever, but none of the other theories made much sense either. Here was a book completely unlike anything else in Jewish Scriptures: The Song of Songs was a series of very explicit love poems, the majority of which were written from a woman's perspective. This represents possibly the only time in scriptures where, in defiance to patriarchy, a female voice takes center stage. This is exciting on its own, but it gets even better. The lovers who are the main characters of the Song couldn't care less for God, rituals, priests, or the law since they don't bother mentioning them much. The identity of this couple is a mystery: it's not even clear if they are the same man and woman throughout all of the sections. At times, it sounds like they are a bride and groom at a wedding party, perhaps even King Solomon and one of his queens, but in other moments they are a couple of shepherds. And in some parts they are clearly not married.
What is unmistakable, however, is their enthusiasm for sex. Not sex for procreation, mind you. But the sex that drives a man and a woman insane for each other—completely swept away by overwhelming passion. Unlike Adam and Eve, the Song's couple is not at all ashamed by their nudity. Quite the opposite. Line after
line, they celebrate each other's beauty in verses that seem to caress every part of the lovers' bodies. From feet to thighs, from eyes to breasts, there's hardly an inch of their bodies where their gaze doesn't stop. Their desire-filled descriptions enlist all of the five senses to fully embrace the very physical dimension of love.
“Those who restrain Desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained,” wrote William Blake.
168
Had he spoken to the lovers of the Song, Blake would have wasted his breath, for their desire knows no bounds. In order to fulfill it, they are willing to challenge the control of their families and of the authorities. The woman of the story runs through the streets of Jerusalem at night looking for her lover, with little care for the night watchmen chasing her. Even more radically, she is unafraid to defy her brothers' attempts at controlling her sexuality. As she sings, “My mother's sons were angry with me; They made me keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard I have not kept.”
169
And later she adds, “But my own vineyard is mine to give.”
170
(Hint: it's not a literal vineyard she is talking about!) Absent from the words of this most assertive woman is any sense of guilt, shame, or sin. She is going to make love with whomever she wants, and she is not about to let family duties, gods, laws, or men stand between her and her lover.
Embarrassed by the obvious physical lust that literally drips from the pages of the Song of Songs, both Jewish and Christian theologians have performed the most complicated mental contortions in order to justify its place in scriptures. All this talk of body parts and sexual metaphors should not be taken too literally, they say. Those passages are really just images expressing the loving union between Israel and God (in the Jewish version), or between Jesus and the Church (in the Christian version), or, as some suggest, between the soul and God (in both the Christian and Jewish variations).
Talk about earning your black belt in the art of bullshitting. Consider this: “My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my insides were moved for him. I rose up to open to my beloved, and my hands dropped with myrrh and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.”
171
Or this, “A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me; he shall lie all night between my breasts.”
172
Or this, “Your breasts are perfect; they are twin deer feeding among the lilies.”
173
Or this, “In his shade I took great delight and sat down, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.”
174
The union of the soul and God? Really?
Great sex doesn't need any justifications, nor does it need to stand as the metaphor for anything besides what it is. It's great sex. Why complicate something so beautiful?
The same desire to make apologies for an example of burning sexuality within their tradition is also found in Hinduism. This time sculptures, not words, have embarrassed prudish theologians—hundreds of sculptures decorating the walls of some temples at Khajuraho and Konark. Just like in the Song of Songs, what we have here is an extremely graphic representation of sexual love—even more graphic perhaps than in the Song of Songs, since the sculpted stone leaves nothing to the imagination. Dozens and dozens of very well-shaped male and female figures have chosen the walls of the temples as the site for a full-on orgy, enacting just about every possible variation on heterosexual love, from acrobatic positions to multiple partners.
Troubled by the super-explicit enjoyment of sex for sex's sake, several people have rushed to argue that the sculptures are not of
gods and goddesses getting it on, but rather, they represent human activities. Others have added that these statues are a warning to leave sexual thoughts outside the temples. Ha! If this were true, it would be one of the worst strategies in recorded history, for everyone would hang out by the external walls and not in the temple itself. Plus, the sculptors obviously had a little too much fun with their subjects for us to think they were just trying to admonish us against sexual pleasure.
No, the sculptures at Khajuraho and Konark are not there to preach and lecture us (it's kind of hard to lecture while you are naked and are pleasuring three partners at the same time . . .) What they do is remind us that, much like the deepest spiritual experiences, sex can open the doors to pure bliss. They tell us that lovemaking is the key to making rigid, separate egos melt into a place of relaxation, happiness, and unity with the energy of the universe. Ikkyū and the mysterious author of the Song of Songs would have understood this.
For far too long, many religions have weighed us down with all their hang-ups. Thousands of years of whispering in our ears that there is something wrong with delighting in sex have planted a deep neurosis into our psyche. This relentless negative feedback has taught us to be ashamed of our sexual desires, ashamed of any spark of passion, and even ashamed of our very own naked bodies. Once internalized, this message creates a schizophrenic conflict between our instincts and our religious beliefs, and ultimately leads us to declare war against ourselves. “What we want to do” and “what we think we should do” fight each other in a never-ending battle within our consciousness. What could and should be a beautiful experience is
ruined, for it becomes difficult to have a great orgasm with so much guilt hanging in the air.
This is the inevitable result of listening for too long to religions seeking to put a leash and muzzle on our sexual nature. Many of them will tell you that by keeping sex within the confines of marriage, they are preserving it for its proper context and thereby honoring it. They'll add that they consider the body as a holy temple. But these are just empty words. What does it mean for these religions to hold the body as “sacred”? We should remember only after we are married that we are sexual beings. Until then, don't touch, don't look, don't feel: these are the proper ways to honor the body—indeed a very strange logic that equates alienation and repression with holiness.
Nietzsche writes, “Every kind of contempt for sex . . . is the crime
par excellence
against life—is the real sin against the holy spirit of life.”
175
When you take into account the amount of suffering and dysfunction caused over the centuries by sexophobic doctrines, it's hard not to agree with Nietzsche in seeing this as a horrendous crime against humanity.
Perhaps the people responsible for this were/are just scared by the powerful emotions that sex can ignite. Or maybe—if you are in the mood for a good conspiracy theory—something darker is at play here. Many religions, after all, owe their popularity to offering a cure to various human problems, and playing doctor to different sorts of spiritual diseases. If people are healthy and happy, they are not going to line up at their door looking to buy their prepackaged salvation. But if you can convince them that they are sick and in need of redemption, you can ensure a wide supply of customers. Good sex is a threat to this because it builds self-confidence, injects you with self-esteem, and ultimately empowers you—the perfect
antidote to people and institutions seeking control by making you doubt yourself. But if these same people and institutions can manipulate you into feeling bad about something as personal and inescapable as your sex drive, then the trap is set. They don't even need to recruit you, for you'll be begging to be taken in and saved. Once you become convinced that you are a sinner and need a cure, you'll be seeking them out.
Like all good conspiracy theories, this one is fun to entertain, but it doesn't explain everything. Reducing many religions' restrictive attitudes about sex to a cynical ploy to control people is much too simplistic. But the fact remains that good sex and increased self-esteem go hand in hand, and imposing severe limits on healthy sexuality is a guaranteed way to disempower people. So, whether this is done cynically or in a completely innocent manner, the end result is the same.
Worse yet, the more you repress natural instincts, the more they will emerge as perversions. The damage done by puritan ideologies is made evident by the long string of scandals involving those who preach for the harshest limitations to be imposed on sex. Not only are they often unable to live up to their own rhetoric, but when they fail, they go to the other extreme. Consider, for example, Ted Haggard, once president of the super-powerful National Association of Evangelicals (which represents over 45,000 churches). Very conservative guy that he is, Haggard regularly condemned any type of sex outside of marriage, but he ended up having to resign after tales began circulating of his crystal methamphetamine-laden meetings with gay hookers. Crystal meth with gay hookers?!? Wouldn't it have been easier to just be a little more relaxed about healthy ways to experiment with sex? Or consider the horrendous record of countless Catholic priests officially preaching against masturbation and
the “sins” of consensual sex outside of marriage, but at the same time raping young kids. There's no escaping it: too much self-repression breeds perversion.
So, one of the very first steps to build a healthy religion is to do away with all the negative superstitions surrounding sex. Abstinence doesn't make one holy—just miserable, angry, and well on the way to insanity. All the emphasis placed on virginity all but ensures that most people's first times will be awful: too much pressure creates self-consciousness, and self-consciousness just kills the moment by making you too tense. And why should marriage be the one and only context in which sex is allowed? As long as everyone involved is adult and willing, why so many rules?
One of the things that bugs me the most about many otherwise very nice spiritually inclined individuals is their very annoying habit of coming up with complicated rationalizations to somehow justify their sexuality. When I hear them speaking of sex as a “loving spiritual connection,” it makes me want to throw up. It's not that I'm a complete barbarian who doesn't see their point, but too often they seem to be trying too hard to find some respectable excuse for raw passion. It's almost as if sex needs to be domesticated before it can be considered acceptable.
Now, I am the first to be turned off by a vulgar, gross attitude, for that's just the flip side of puritan repression, and it ultimately spoils good sex. But at the same time, sex doesn't always have to be about a spiritual connection, or an expression of the deepest love. As long as it feels good for those involved, and they walk away happy, sex can be great in and of itself. Nourishing love and emotional connections through sex is obviously wonderful, but insisting that this is the only legitimate use for sexual pleasure may just betray some
hidden sense of shame about openly enjoying the honest, sweaty, lustful side of life.
Good sex is the greatest antidepressant ever invented. It clears the mind, relaxes the body, and makes us more open to the beauty of it all. By removing stress and tension, it brings us to a happier place where being in love with life is easy. This is why laughter erupts spontaneously after an orgasm. And this is why the healthy thing to do is lift the heaviness under which religions have buried sex. What we need is more joy and celebration, not rigid rules and self-repression.