sex for buddhists, as promised

Okay, I finished the book. Lemme tell you first of all that I was quite disappointed in it. Much of it was stuff I already knew from all those other Buddhism books I read: that the main Buddhist principle is "do no harm" and because they are not so much into the rules and regulations and the whole authority thang, it is up to *you* to decide whether any of your sexual expression is hurting you or anyone else. If so, knock it the fuck off. And then there's a whole long chapter and part of another that is basically a transcript of a long interview he did with Nina Hartley (i.e. big ol' pr0n star who was actually raised as a Zen Buddhist by her hippie parents). She's not as interesting as she thinks she is.

And the author, Mr Warner? Well, he's a punk rock guitarist turned Zen Buddhist monk turned writer, and frankly, he comes off as kind of a douche. He's quite dismissive of other forms of Buddhism, maybe unconsciously. He actually even makes a bit of a flip and disrespectful comment towards the Dalai Lama, which c'mon now. He's the Dalai Lama, the spiritual (and political) leader of millions of people, and I've never heard anything about him that suggests he is not worthy of a modicum of respect. He also takes a dig or two towards Thich Nhat Hahn and though he doesn't mention Sharon Salzberg by name, he definitely sneers at the popularity of the metta meditation (you know, that loving-kindness thing I do?) in the West. In fact, he mocks Western "Buddhists" like me, who like the parts of Buddhism they've read about but who aren't actually practitioners, which fair enough. I am certainly ripe for the mocking. And he also mocks The Secret, which, yeah, +10 for that.

But the worst part of this book? Apparently no one copyedited it. There were at least three or four instances of words omitted or added to sentences, or a verb in the wrong tense--the kind of thing that happens when you go back and rewrite a sentence to make it sound better but you botch the edit, and then *you* can't see the mistake till you've reread the paragraph fifty times, if then, because you know what it's supposed to say. That's the kind of thing that happens in, y'know, a blog. I would NOT expect that kind of thing in a professionally published book I paid $14.95 for at the Borders. Give an unemployed editor a job, yo!

I did read one thing in the book that fascinated me in that he was looking at a concept from one direction and I myself have noticed the exact same thing in the opposite direction. It's interesting enough to me that I'm tempted to look at his blog and see if it has contact info, then email him about it. But besides that, there were some random things in the book I did not know. Did you know that in 13th century Cambodia, daughters of wealthy families were deflowered between the age of seven and nine by a Buddhist priest? Did you know that in modern Japan there is a bodhisattva called Jizo who is considered the guardian of "water children"--that is, children who were stillborn, miscarried, or aborted--and little statues of him are decorated with red bibs and offerings of flowers and little toys by parents who have lost or, especially, aborted a pregnancy? You know I like knowing these little crosscultural facts!

So, anyway, I can't really recommend you spend your $14.95 on this book, but I did read it in about three days and it did not give me tendinitis. So there is that.

And on another note, and speaking of crosscultural facts, my secret sources (okay, Mr Indemnity) tell me that our friend Man-well is already making trouble in Chicago, including pretending he doesn't speak English and demanding to do an interview in Spanish with an interpreter. Oh, Manuel Aristides. Part of me will always love you.

xoxo