For the second year in a row, I was on the four-person team assisting Steve Schwartzberg at the Body Electric retreat for queer male-bodied folks called “Touching the Heart of Stillness” (which I enjoy calling “Touching the Tuchus of Stillness”) at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs, NM. This exquisitely led program integrates silent meditation with mindful erotic touch rituals – a combination that exists nowhere else that I’m aware of. The participants spent 18 hours a day in silence, including breakfast and lunch as well as morning practices of sitting and walking; after breaking the silence in the afternoon, we would conduct our touch sessions, have dinner, meet in small “reflection groups,” and then return to silence, which was a blissful way to enjoy star-gazing in the hot springs on the property under the wide Southwestern sky.
Steve has spent decades sitting for months-long retreats and absorbing Buddhist practice, and in this setting he has found a way to transmit his accumulated wisdom in daily meditation instructions and nightly dharma talks. Master bodyworker Sequoia Thom Lundy occasionally stepped in to lead an intimacy session. Writer and performer Martin Moran offered an hour of yoga/movement each morning. The center’s leader, our beloved Hosen, led Zen practice every morning at 5:30 am. I was mostly content to hold space, track supplies, and be Steve’s extra pair of eyes in the room. He checked in with me several times to see if I wanted to teach something (partly to give him a break from listening to the sound of his own voice). I demurred each time, but then one morning I woke up inspired to give a little talk and share a touch meditation that I’ve developed as part of my practice. Steve was game, but when the moment came he’d cast such a peaceful spell with a series of exercises that it made no sense to pour a lot of words into the tranquility, and I let the moment pass. But here’s what I would have said if I had given the talk I prepared.
Steve has been asking me all week, “Is there anything you want to teach?” I keep saying no, but this morning I realized, oh, there is something I feel drawn to share with the group. I’m reminded of the African-American performance artist Jabbo Jones who used to do a one-man show called “Don’t Start Me to Talking or I’ll Tell You Everything I Know” – a distinct possibility with us old guys. But I’m going to try to stay succinct and focused on sharing some thoughts about how I see the connection between the silent meditation practice and the erotic touch rituals we’ve been weaving together during this retreat.
What we’re doing here is radical and unprecedented. There’s a reason that virtually no other mindfulness meditation retreats incorporate touch and erotic energy because of the danger of misunderstanding and the potential for harm. To do so requires tremendous courage, maturity, and integrity. Olympic judges would rate it about 9.6 for degree of difficulty.
Joseph Kramer started the Body Electric School with the radical generous vision of healing the split between spirituality and sexuality in our culture. We all live with an imprint of sex negativity, often driven by religious prohibitions. “Sex is a filthy disgusting thing and you must save it for the person you love.” Especially for queer people – we grow up being shamed, punished, condemned for our sexual desires.
One thing that’s important to acknowledge is that Buddhism is profoundly NOT a religion. It is a practice and a philosophy that offers guidelines for a better life. It’s not about sinning but about relief from suffering. If you violate one of the Buddhist precepts, you don’t have to confess it to a priest, you don’t have to do penance, you aren’t denied entry into heaven. You may suffer…but you’re going to suffer no matter what. Buddhist meditation practice offers suggestions for reducing suffering: Try this.
In developing the Body Electric School and its classes, Joseph Kramer incorporated things he’d learned from many traditions, including tantra. Tantra is a vast field with many branches and practices, but one way it’s taught in the US and by the Body Electric School has to do with conducting experiments and collecting data: Try this.
What if all things are sacred? What if your desire is holy? What if it’s possible to bring your values of faith, hope, love, kindness and respect from your spiritual practice into your sexual behavior? What if sex isn’t something you do quietly and secretly in the dark and then feel badly about afterwards? What if it’s not just about getting off but about slowing down, connecting to breath, connecting your energy with another’s energy with heart and joy? What if pleasure is a blessing?
There are people here who have been attending Buddhist meditation retreats for 50 years. And they keep coming back. They don’t say, “Oh gurl, I done that before – now it’s your turn.” No, they keep coming back to return to first principles, to refine the practice of breathing, sitting, walking, and paying attention. Likewise, we come to Body Electric intensives to return to the principles that first drew us: the opportunity to expand our awareness of old habits, to heal old shame through mindfulness and lovingkindness, to bring unconscious habits to light with compassion and forgiveness, to address and heal the wounds of self-judgment, denial of pleasure, and erotic malnutrition. We come to wake up.
The gay Greek poet Constantine Cafavy wrote:
He who hopes to grow in spirit
Will have to transcend obedience and respect.
He’ll have to cling to some laws
But mostly he’ll overthrow both law and custom
And go beyond the established, inadequate norm.
Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him.
He won’t be afraid of the destructive act;
Half the house will have to come down.
This way he will grow virtuously into wisdom.
To go beyond the established, inadequate norm. Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him. How’s that for a spiritual challenge? Please share a breath with me.
God! The Bodhi keeps calling to me! I definitely want to go for this next year. I used to wander around that space--sometimes with not many people around--and wish for time to be there in silence and also to engage in mindful touch before returning to silent solitude. What a lovely rhythm. And Hosen is lovey also. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
I'm glad to hear what you had planned to say but didn't, and couldn't agree more.
We come to wake up!