disregarded, go on, abandon all weird states and high visions and anything like that. What you are concentrating on is not a vision. In fact, they would say that the awareness of the state of nirvana is much more like ordinary everyday consciousness than it is like having a weird vision. Yes, your everyday mind, that is the way. Yes. Most famous today. Right, right. So, however, if you do get to real everyday consciousness, and you do that by simply asking the question, what on hell is going on here? Really? Not what I've been told. But what do I really feel? You know, look at it.

[01:03]

Just like a child looks at things without having been told what they are, what their names are and so on, just examine. As I pointed out yesterday, if you really listen and then see, you'll find yourself amazed as to how many things there are that aren't so. So all of this lies, you see, through a kind of simplicity, of being almost naive. What is that? Where is me? You know, this thing, famous thing called me, Noah, the ego. Produce it. Show it to me. I'm from Missouri. I mean, nobody could find it. Listen, we'll stop for refreshments, I think, at this point. You will remember that in discussing the meeting of minds that occurred at Mount Savior Monastery, that we found four

[02:23]

sort of leftover problems that needed to be gone into very thoroughly in order to get a truly ecumenical and Catholic worldview of religion without, of course, having any thought in mind of making an organized world religion or anything that would destroy the very important and interesting differentiations between various kinds of practice. And the thorny questions we found, we've already discussed three of them, were, so far as Christians were concerned, the uniqueness of Christ, the question of evil and how it was to be understood and dealt with and the question of the nature of God the apparent contrast between Christian theism and Buddhist atheism or pantheism and then fourthly there was the question of sex and this is a thorny one too because

[03:52]

Naturally, Christian monastic traditions and Southern Hinayana Theravada Buddhism would be pretty much in agreement about this. And so would very many yogis and swamis that I know who will insist that spiritual evolution, liberation necessarily requires that one abstain from sex. A point of view with which one might say the entire younger generation of today and of yesterday is opposed to. In the year A.F.

[04:56]

What, about 50? No, it's longer than that. We dated from his birth. Armed in the wake of Havelock Ellis, Wilhelm Reich, Frank Harris. You could name dozens. There is a balance of opinion in the modern world that sex is healthy. It's very good for you. And if you don't have it, you're lacking spiritual vitamins. After all, we are in a very paradoxical situation whereby we allow any kind of scene of violence and hatred and destruction to be publicly exhibited.

[05:58]

The most outrageous torture and bloodshed can take in a film like El Topo. That's okay. But an extremely affectionate sexual interchange between human beings is considered dangerous to be seen by the public and especially by children. and that to me personally is completely unintelligible. Now if you go to India and look into certain things as they were before British Puritanism was introduced into India, you will see temples like Konark or Khajuraho, holy places, where the sculpture is most frankly erotic.

[07:05]

Nowadays we see this sculpture in a weather-beaten, ancient condition, and it's all grey stone. Originally it was polychromed, like the medieval cathedrals of Europe. The sculpture there was polychromed and was not in grey stone. But time has worn all the paint off. So these were extremely colorful and extremely erotic scenes proliferating all over the temple walls. Now one simply cannot imagine such scenes on the walls of St. Peter's Row depicting incidents from the Song of Songs. It's really inconceivable to the Western mind that there should be such an association of religion and sexuality. And indeed, when Freud came forth with the notion that the two were very much connected, he did it the wrong way.

[08:20]

He said, after all, this religion thing is reducible to sex. and he didn't see the much deeper point that sex was reducible to religion and that when you've explained away you say, oh the spire of a church is nothing more than a phallus the vesica window shaped like this is nothing more than a vagina and so on and so on and so on you haven't explained anything at all You've merely made a translation of one mode of being into another, and doesn't go into the enormously interesting question of what sex is all about. Whether it's for reproduction, primarily? Because if it is, then you're going to ask a second question, what is reproduction for?

[09:28]

Why go on? What's survival all about? Do we have to continue? After all, Jesus Christ died very young and considered that there were certain things of more value than mere survival. It's not healthy to get crucified. Of course Buddha lived to a ripe old age and ate some mushrooms that didn't agree with him and died. But when you say sex is for survival and survival is for what? Sex? Do you eat to live or do you live to eat? Worse than I live to eat. Now, these Hindu sculptures, and you will find in Tibet Buddhist imagery, where sex is taken right into religion.

[10:44]

And we wonder if we could do the same thing in Christian terms. After all, we do have a sacrament of holy matrimony. And the sacrament has somehow been swept under the carpet, because it's as if we were saying, at least this is the way it seems to me, although Alred you may disagree, but it seems to me that we say, well, okay, you can get away with this basically rather reprehensible action if you do it under a special set of conditions namely that you are doing it just with one partner and in order to produce children which will of course give you a lot of trouble and you'll have to pay for it and it was at one time thought that women should suffer in childbirth as a kind of punishment for enjoying themselves in bed

[11:52]

Now, on the other hand, when you take the tantric Hindu-Buddhist doctrines of sexual yoga, they are based on the idea that sex is a manifestation of metaphysical principle, that the union of the male and the female is the same as the union of the yang and the yin of the opposites, and that the curious technique of sexual yoga is this, that the physical and emotional sensations aroused are used as a support for relaxed concentration. In other words, For example, you can hum a sound, and that sound, just continuously hummed, becomes fascinating.

[13:05]

And therefore you can use it as a concentration point, a way of eliminating all discursive thinking from your mind, which is wherein concentration consists. And so in the same way in sexual yoga practices, the feeling of excitement is not dissipated in orgasm but maintained and used like the hum of a sound as a vehicle for complete concentration. As if we were all to sing home together for an hour and get that thing really going, you know, and you relay it so the whole group is constantly with the sound. And you just become Aum, everybody becomes Aum and there's nothing else but Aum. Same way in Zen meditation when you get the koan called Mu, you just concentrate completely on the sound Mu, Mu, zone backwards.

[14:14]

get into, therefore, a very deep state of non-verbal experience where they use the sexual yoga in exactly the same way. Now many Buddhists, especially those who are under a kind of Western influence, like theosophists, consider all that extremely indecent black magic. because many Western Buddhists are crypto-Christians. That is to say, they are psychologically still in the kind of Christianity they were brought up in and have never really switched over. And in India, many modern Hindus, this is the thing we don't readily realize that A well-educated bourgeois Hindu went to school in a British system of education.

[15:31]

Lord Macaulay, who revised all education in India, did it with the express object of wiping out Hindu culture. so that all middle-class Indians and of course high-class Indians were brought up in equivalence of Eaton, Harrow and Winchester. They learned about not the Mahabharata or the Upanishads but Livy, Ovid, Virgil, Caesar and Shakespeare, Spencer, Bacon, etc. etc. They had an entirely Western education so that when I was at the Academy of Asian Studies years ago in San Francisco and one of my colleagues was a very prominent Hindu scholar we he told me that he had not discovered Hindu culture until he was 45 years old that he'd been brought up by an entirely British system of education and I discovered it was exactly the same system I'd been brought up under we knew all the same jokes

[16:43]

The same, you know, Latin puns and funny things like that. It was really weird to see this man looking like the god Ganesha. Big ears, you know, very much like an elephant. And finding that I could talk exactly the same language. But he hadn't found out about India until he was 45. So for that reason the attitudes of the Victorian age have been superimposed. upon Indian culture to a great extent that is to say the high culture of India those Indians who speak English have generally speaking been brought up in that British tradition and so therefore they've been taught to be very squeamish about sex I have a friend who's a Sikh very handsome man he lives in this country And I said, why do you live here?

[17:46]

Oh, he said, in India it's so difficult to get women. So, it has been my experience that The West has a funny sexual hang-up, which is, basically, you may get away with sex as something of a low-order esotericism. That is to say, boys will be boys, and just so long as you do it out in the backyard, we will overlook it.

[18:50]

Just so long as it's recognized for what it is, which is dirt, we'll overlook it. And so therefore, it's like Arthur Macon, when he was describing an extremely ugly building in a Pennsylvania mining town, called it, it looks like a Presbyterian with a grin. In other words, it's okay if it's something we can leer over. See? And so all girly magazines have a leering attitude about sex. The girls are all sort of made up in a way that says, come on boys, you know, I find it completely revolting. when people leer about sex. But that's legitimate. What is not legitimate is that you should connect it with holiness. And if you should in any way indicate that sex is something completely divine, then trouble begins.

[19:57]

Keep it dirty. That's all right. This is a general attitude of our culture. Whether Catholic or Protestant, because you must understand that American Catholicism is to a very large extent Irish. And that is not true Catholicism. Most of the Irish priests were educated by the Jansenists in Paris in the old days. And the Jansenists were essentially Calvinistic Catholics. They were prudish and very strict in that way. And that became Irish Catholicism, which again is a form of Crypto-Protestantism, as Protestants in lace surpluses. And with the same attitude of the curious sexual hammock, priests out

[21:06]

in the hayfields at night, with a whip, rousing the couples. That must be fun. Oh yeah, but nobody must admit that. So we have got this curious attitude, therefore, of the Lear. which to me completely destroys the beauty of the sexual, to leer about it. I'm not going to say that my attitude is one of taking it terribly seriously, you know, as if I were in church like that. Obviously it involves laughter and play and so on. But I cannot see that all that loving sensuous contact between human beings is in any sense irreligious or unspiritual.

[22:22]

I can see that there are people who are more interested in something else. After all, it's a free country, and you don't have to marry. You don't even have to screw. If you want to, yes, but if you don't, you don't. But what I would like to pose as a question something that I don't perhaps really understand is what are the positive values of virginity? Would you like to talk about that? Well, I would admit that I speak from the Benedictine monastic tradition where theoretically

[23:33]

idealistically, celibacy, virginity, is proposed and, I think to a large extent, pretty faithfully practiced. I think, too, though, apropos of what we've, these entertaining, illuminating, and worthwhile remarks, that we have to bear in mind that there's no such thing as sex in abstraction. What we are faced with is the sex practices of individuals and what they do and under what conditions they do it and for what aim or purpose. I do not think that the Catholic doctrine as formulated by Pope Paul is very satisfactory, and events have shown that it is not really acceptable as a matter of practice to

[24:55]

Catholic body as a whole and that is one of the factors I think that has more than any other has weakened the authority of the church bringing out a proclamation that is so out of harmony with what many people do and what many people think it is right to do. With what Alan has been saying, I agree that I think the people most responsible for it, though, are not necessarily Irish priests, but St. Paul and St. Augustine, who were both twice-born men and who, after their conversions, had a tremendous hang-up about anything in the way of sexual liberty, or even in some cases of the indulgence, just almost tolerated.

[26:07]

It would be interesting to inquire why those two men took the view they did. why it seemed to them such an incidental or a thing so little worthy of consideration compared with other things. That they were, I suppose, both of them, according to their life and according to their understanding, God-intoxicated men. So it must have been, or I suggest it was, because of their preoccupation with, if you like, their ideal of God, that that tradition has come down to the Western Church regarding sex with a great deal, to say the least of it, of caution. But I think that it corresponds too to something in the human spirit, that we are dealing here with the most imperious of man's natural instincts, an instinct that would tend to run away with us, and therefore that it is to be handled and dealt with like a horse that might run away, with a certain care and discretion.

[27:37]

and although it is to be acknowledged as perfectly sound and that its function in appropriate... I think the word to me in my mind is what is appropriate. What is appropriate between two young people or two older people in certain setting in certain circumstances. And among the elements that make it appropriate are again I think the love and respect and that merely to indulge in sex just for the sake of sex, it may be my particular anger, just for the sake of sex, seems to me odd, out of balance, inaesthetic, not in a setting, but inaesthetic, that it should be the appropriateness and the fittingness of it And that is dictated, it seems to me, by a real love and real affection.

[28:42]

One of the most beautiful, perhaps, of Shakespeare's sonnets on the question of love begins, Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment. Love is not love which alters when in alteration finds. So it's first of all the marriage of two Maya. And he ends up by saying, if this be forced against me proved, I never wrote and no man ever loved. So I think that has to be born in Maya. And also, after the fall of India, it was Gandhi, I don't know whether it's due to his party, to his British education, but he was a Hindu, in many ways a Hindu of the Hindus, And he said that it is perfectly possible to practice celibacy and complete abstinence without any damage, without any psychological damage to the personality.

[29:48]

In other words, through what Freud called sublimation. I'm not for a moment saying that people in the nasty right are not for a moment pretending that I have done all this faithfully. And I'm not pretending that I have any great regrets where I may occasionally fail. Because I think that's part of the human situation. It may not mean in the total context takes failure. But I think the ideal of it is a sublime one and a helpful one for certain people. For certain people. And that monks and not at all tied to at least the monks that I know who want to generalize their own situation. The monks that I know who are most faithful in their own observance are most free in what they offer to other people and the last people to wag a pointed finger of scorn or to wring their hands on what is going on in the world whether it be nudity on the stage or a certain amount of sexual

[31:00]

unconventional sexual liberty, whether the same sex or different sexes, they take it all in a very relaxed view while they themselves live up to the, or try to live up to, the particular ideal that they have undertaken. That's all I need to say at the moment. Well, what I'm trying to probe for is But let me put it in a very crude way. What are the kicks in virginity? Well, there I can only speak for myself. I think it's very good for what happens in a religious community and in my own life, is that you're usually engaged with others in a very worthwhile enterprise, namely, say, the bringing up of passing on to others, the younger generation, what one has learned oneself, trying to make the world a little more enlightened than it was when one arrived in it, or came from it, as you would put it.

[32:14]

And working together with other people on a worthwhile objective is in itself life-enhancing, It has been said that love is not so much two people looking at each other, but two people looking away together, the same thing. Well now, in the spiritual life that I have practiced it, or religious life I have practiced it, or try to practice it, I find that Not to be involved, emotionally involved with people, whether one's own sex or the other sex, not to have a lifelong commitment to them, or not to be sort of searching around for some sensual satisfaction from them, has a very liberating effect on the mind.

[33:17]

and that the mind becomes clarified and has a potentiality to get better organized and so that it can enjoy what, the kick I suppose, is what Justin called the Gaudium De Veritate. the joy of truth the joy of being able to look at things without without As you rather coolly and without just Being a sort of caught up in the in in at too much at the sensual level What about oh The mystery of the Virgin This more prevails, I suppose, among nuns than among monks. The Virgin as the Bride of Christ. The Iron Ring. You know anything about an Iron Ring?

[34:20]

But... You've never seen that? No. Yes. No. Well, it is... It is a... That is a... A poetical... allegorical or mythical way, and to some extent I'm sure the feminine mind's satisfactory way of thinking of their relationship with Christ our Lord. and compensating themselves for a lack of satisfaction at the physical level. But there I agree. You were mentioning, and I've only just been reading it again myself, you were mentioning William James's varieties of religious experience. And I would agree with all he said on those topics, that some of those, somebody like St.

[35:24]

Gertrude or even St. Teresa of Avila, were kind of kidding themselves to some extent in the way that they wrote and spoke of those matters. However, I think possibly too that it may be in the individual case, it may be that complete surrender, that self-surrender to the ultimate, to the true self, the surrendering of the empirical ego to the true self, which can be thought of in sexual, expressed in sexual terms and has been often. the yang-yin situation. I think that's just one mode of expressing it. And it's a question again of those who are called, very few are called to that kind of practice or non-practice. And it doesn't for a moment suggest that they are better or more enlightened

[36:25]

or in any more virtuous or their way of life is more desirable, or any of those things. It just means that some people are called to do that, just as other people are called to go become astronauts, or to become bank clerks, or whatever it may be, or be poets, or musicians. Some people are called to be monks, and nuns, and priests, I would think. And therefore I am to live, to live out that kind, or to try to live out that particular calling and acquire that kind of character. Am I being too naive? Well, what I'm trying to fish for is, I can see, I know people who don't seem to have any great, any fundamentally real interest in sex. It's a thing that they can take or leave. And also I can see that in an age when sex meant almost the inevitability of having papooses, that there are certain kinds of work which are not too consistent with having a family.

[37:48]

I often think of doctors who are on call morning and night. Even writers such as myself, there's a Latin saying, out liberi, out liberi. Either books or children. And I think as an author I've been a terrible father. Because I'm always concerned with my inner imagination and all those things going on about writing. And I have a kind of aversion to playing baseball in the front yard. So, there is a certain practical sense in that, in what we'll call the pre-birth control age. Of course, that's another aspect of the whole thing we might go into. But, what I'm looking for is that I know very well that many people who are priests and nuns

[38:52]

Monks are not sexually indifferent, but are, as a matter of fact, by the very abstinence, more horny than ever, more lusty. And that is one reason why many women are always trying to make a priest or monk fall for them, because of the supposition that they have enormous sexual energy as a result of abstinence. This is of course psycho-hydraulic symbolism. What is damned up is just waiting to come. And then I know again I mean having been a father confessor I know all sorts of things about what go on in church. And very often we have terrible scandals. whereby a great priest who preaches the most marvelous sermons and is a wonderful pastor to his flock and everybody admires, suddenly vanishes.

[39:57]

And everybody says, well what happened to Father so-and-so? Well, the truth of the matter is that he slept with his secretary. And that is the really only reason why people get kicked out. As I've said before, you can be in a state of envy, hatred and malice and all uncharitableness, hardness of heart and contempt of God's word and commandment and be a bishop in good standing. But once you overstep the sexual prohibitions, you're in trouble. I know all kinds of cases. I know the inner history of the lives of many, many great churchmen who were disappeared, suddenly never heard from anymore because of a sexual scandal. It may have been heterosexual, it may have been homosexual, but it was sexual.

[40:58]

I know a very holy bishop who was a good administrator and a fine man who just vanished because he was blackmailed on this account. But it seems to me, you see, this. Any person who is sensitive enough to be fascinated with religion is fascinated with it because he has the sense of the incredible magnificence and beauty of the universe as an epiphany and a manifestation of the glory of whatever it is, God, that underlies it. And therefore, just such a person will be sensuously alert and will find other human beings attractive and lovable at various levels. They may be psychologically lovable, intellectually lovable, physically lovable, so on.

[42:05]

And so the more sensitive a person would be, in other words the more spiritual a person would be, the more such a person would be liable to be sensuous. Well I would agree with what you've just been saying, Alan. But again, I would say that anybody who's not interested, you mentioned people who are not interested in sex, well I would say those people are not interested in other people. I think everybody is interested in sex, certainly I am, and in the sexual situation of everybody that one comes and meets, and everybody that one cares about. And one knows what an important place it takes in their lives. And certainly that sensitivity and sensuousness is there. There is a hierarchy, I think.

[43:10]

The body, soul, and spirit. Spirit dominating the soul, and the soul dominating the body. Not dominating, it's too strong a word. And all these things interfuse, as we know. But there's a valid basis there for distinction. And at the sensual, sexual level, it is the emotional response, the physical nearness, possibly touching, handling, kissing, so on, that fills the horizon. the reason and still more spirit come in to come to some harmonious and suitable, fitting, appropriate judgment in each particular case, how far that tendency, that inclination to some kind of physical union is to be indulged in, how far it is appropriate in this particular case, in this particular person,

[44:22]

To me, I'm afraid, it is almost as simple as that. That the sexuality is there, underlying everything, but underlying and not dominating. And I think that perhaps that's how we've got things out of focus. My feeling in the modern world is that if we take... We may be moving to a better situation. I don't bring my hand over the sexual situation in the world at all. I think possibly nudity on the stage and that sort of thing, may be a means of making sex much more obvious and therefore possibly much more casual in the sense of people being less interested in it, less preoccupied with it. And I think it's very important for priests and monks to be able to move around as ordinary human beings and not always be kind of on stage and taking some kind of party line on these matters.

[45:27]

And to have very rich and full human relationships. I think I've been blessed with quite a few of those, but they haven't evolved into any notable degree in sexuality, I would say. The sexual side, so far as I know myself, is to me tremendously interesting. But there are other things more, as you put it yourself, there are other things more interesting. But we've got, I think, I do feel that religious people should have something more to say about it or do about it than a sort of evasion.

[46:31]

I mean, I think that holy matrimony is not just a license that you may do this, provided you subscribe to the conditions. That holy matrimony should go further than that and consider the possibility of sacramental sex, of sexual communion as a positive sadhana, or a spiritual practice. Well, I agree with that too, and I think the mind of the church is moving in that direction, and if I may say so, I think you have helped yourself to move it somewhat in that direction, in that saner view, a more complete view of the place of sex. But again, it's back to my own little nostrum of not either or, but both and.

[47:38]

Not either absolute full scale 100% indulgence in sex or total abstinence. but not a sort of rhapsodizing about sex, or a withdrawing in horror from it, but something in between, that sex has its place. Sex is here to stay, so to speak. It's arrived, it's on the scene, and let's enjoy and let's have jokes about that too. Perhaps that way the French attitude is somewhat more light-hearted attitude about it. Yes. Maybe the better one. But still it's a question of taking, looking at the whole conspectus of the thing and not You urge a case, because perhaps it's been your karma to do so, but maybe we should... There's another tact to be taken and another support to be given to more... to cooler views of the whole situation, perhaps.

[48:53]

Yes, I mean, when you say about the French attitude, And one may notice also other Europeans, and particularly people who are aristocratic by birth, tend to have a very light touch about it. What do you expect? I mean, what's there to fuss about? And I appreciate that. Because we do get into terrible, I mean, I've known so many scenes of people getting into the most frantic emotional spasms because they took it too seriously. Wrecked lives, broken families. I mean, it's ridiculous. Because it was all, there was not a light heart about it. But on the other hand, It can be a form of yoga, a very, very deep fusion with another person, whereby you learn by a sort of feeling analogy the identity of your organism and the environment.

[50:18]

It becomes a kind of type there. Well, about that. When I was on my travels in the East, I discussed that matter with somebody like John Bofield or Professor Murty. And both of them agreed that at a certain stage, the male and the female can appropriately be joined together in a religious practice, sexual intercourse. But at that stage, the whole process is conducted under the observation and guidance of a guru, and as Murti put it, a very, very realized guru.

[51:21]

That is to say, a person of absolute integrity. And it is preceded by a long period of discipline. before a practical ordinary religious discipline before that stage is reached as the Tibetans themselves say that before you reach the Daitrayana you must go through the Hinayana and the Mahayana so that it is quite a long process both in time and in thought and discipline before that stage is reached according to my understanding Yes, that's a way of looking at it. But you must remember that gurus play certain spiritual games.

[52:23]

And one of these games is putting up barriers, hurdles, to test out how earnest are you? Are you really willing to get into this? Are you going to stick your neck out? Are you going to make the commitment? And so they'll discourage idlers and people who have no real enthusiasm by saying, well, it would take you so long to get to that point that, I mean, unless you're seriously interested, you may just as well not bother about it. Well, now, it's not always true that it takes all that time. Because basically, time doesn't enter into it at all. Many people who say, oh, it will take a long time, and all much, much effort, are people indulging in a kind of spiritual pride.

[53:32]

Because they are saying, I won't accept this as a gift unless I'm worthy of it. Now, we can see this in both Christian theology and in Jodo Shinshu. which make this point, the person who says, well, I have to discipline myself, I have to be... This sort of person is indulging in a subtle kind of postponement. The saying, in other words, I've got to feel that I earned this myself.

[54:32]

Now so long as he feels that, he is simply aggravating the illusion of his ego. My understanding is, and may be wrong, My understanding is that that intercourse is countenanced when the guru can be assured that the person is really on the way to enlightenment and therefore are coping with the problem, the three great papayas of craving and of aversion and of illusion. And that the discipline is such that in the actual intercourse, the male semen is not spilt, that the control is such, the pleasure is there, and symbolism is realized, and the love is there, no doubt.

[55:53]

But that actually takes place. The whole thing, to use the cliche, is spiritualized to that degree, sublimated to that degree. Well, now look, let me fill in a matter of history here. The Hindus learned this practice from the Chinese. And they call it Chinese yoga sometimes. And it comes from Taoism. Now, what happened with the Taoist form of practice? And you must remember we're talking about people who had, from our point of view, somewhat inadequate biological knowledge. The Chinese felt that the object of this kind of sexual yoga was to transfer the semen to the brain. The Hindus had a parallel idea that there was a psychic force called Ojas

[56:56]

and that if you spilled semen you lost urges and they always thought of a loss of semen as equivalent to a loss of blood which we know now not to be true what the Chinese did was they had a way of having the orgasm which ejected the semen into the bladder And they regarded this as sending it back into the cycle and up to fertilize the brain. The Hindus apparently didn't learn that trick. So they always had what is called technically coitus reservatus, whereby the important thing was not

[57:59]

the ejaculation and the detumescence and the release of tension but the maintenance of tension for as long as possible so that the feeling of that would be the support for concentration well now this is a point of view to which we are not accustomed because Freud didn't understand this at all He thought that the whole point and delight of the sexual act was in the release of tension in the outlet. And so Kinsey's unit of sexual whatever is called an outlet. He could have called it an inlet, but he didn't. But their view was quite... their sensuous view was in a way quite different. But the point was, how long could you stay in a state of tension? And so prolong a certain way of looking at this would be prolonging the delight.

[59:05]

Why get rid of it in such a hurry? But what we get back to is that although, as you say, it is true that in the tantric yoga exercises It is a coitus reservatus or caresa. This should not always be taken too literally. For example, it is said that in Pranayama, when you get real control of the breath, you stop breathing. Now, I think that is a statement that is taken too literally. You don't stop breathing, but you breathe so gently that your breath is practically imperceptible. Also, it's said yogis sit there and stare at their navels.

[60:08]

That must not be taken literally. The navel that a yogi is contemplating is the navel of the world. And the navel of the world is the middle way, that is to say the eternal now that always lies between past and future, from which everything comes. Everything comes out of the eternal now. That is the navel of the world. So in the same way when it is said that the sexual yoga does not have the orgasm, what I think that means is that it doesn't strive for it. that's not the point of it that it might happen eventually as a kind of spontaneous and perfectly unforced event but the focus is not to make that future thing happen and get to it as fast as possible but to remain in the eternal now of complete loving community

[61:16]

at its height. That's the way I interpret it, in what I would call a more sophisticated way than taking it literally. Now, you see, I remember when I was a boy in school, boys in school had a whole lot of folklore. which was sort of maldigested things they had picked up from other boys, and so on, and we all were under the same superstition as most Indians are under, that loss of semen is equivalent to loss of blood. And that it depletes your energy. There's a saying, omni animal post coetum triste est, all animals are sad after intercourse. Well, this isn't true. An animal includes a lot of animals who are extremely happy out there, of course, and full of energy.

[62:26]

As if something had happened to you which you were going to cheer about, like a rooster. Or a hen that's laid an egg. Suddenly it goes into great cackles. This is a triumph, see? And so in the same way you've had a glorious love affair, it's cheers, you're ready to go out and do something, you know. So when you examine under the microscope what really happens, you see that nature is extremely practical. Of all those millions of spermatozoa spent, one makes it. Maybe, maybe not. of all the prodigality of nature, the seeds pouring down from the trees. Why, if all of them became trees, it would be a disaster. So, if every time one should have intercourse only for the production of papooses, it would be very unnatural, because nature doesn't work like that.

[63:33]

I was taking examinations for ordination. We had an examining chaplain who was a very, very sticky rigorist. And he said, what is the church's teaching about birth control? So I said, well, it's like this. I mean, if we really take it to its logical conclusion, you should have intercourse with your wife and wait to see if that has made her pregnant. If it has, don't do it again. until she's had the baby. If it hasn't made her pregnant, you must do it again and then wait to see to the next menstrual period if it took." And he said, Mr. Watts, you're a rigorous. He knew I'd pull his leg. So we have to, I think, as Buddhists, as Christians and so on, recognize that reproduction and survival of the species are not the only things in life and that the sexual relationship is something which also exists for glory

[65:01]

You know, God in the Bible is always surrounded with something called Shekinah. The light of glory. And what's that for? What is God for? Nobody would ask such a silly question. You see, what is the purpose of God? You know, what good is God? What use is God? I never dreamed of asking such a question. Because God is where it's at. That's why in Sanskrit the self is called the atma. The man where it's at. And that's what it's about. See, the glory. Shakina. And so sex is a mundane reflection of this mystery. that there is fundamentally and finally that reproduction is only a by-product of sex and it is a mistake to think of it as its purpose it is something that occurs incidentally maybe yes maybe no because look at the mechanism of it under the microscope and there are only certain times anyway when the female is fertile the rest of the time the whole thing is for glory

[66:33]

You may say for kicks, but you speak the vulgar language. But this whole sense of the world as existing for glory seems to me to be fundamentally important. We say we do things for the greater glory of God. Not for our personal gain, that means not for the advancement of our dynasty or family, but simply for glory. Glory, glory, hallelujah. But couldn't you, in this particular context, substitute pleasure or self-indulgence for glory? I mean, doesn't one in every sexual act have to ask oneself, what are the consequences of this likely to be for myself, for the other party? and so on, and for their friends and relations, and for any offspring that might happen.

[67:37]

And you can't just isolate the sexual act, there and now we've had a wonderful time, and that's it, there's nothing more to be said, just that we've enjoyed the memory of it and whatnot. It is a highly responsible and effectful thing, surely, and one has to think about all that, doesn't one? Yes, but looking at it this way now, the sexual act need not result in offspring if one is A, using birth control or B, doing it at a time of the cycle when it is not reproductive. In either case, We are not going to be concerned about offspring, but of course there is a very great emotional involvement, but that emotional involvement is to a large extent the product of a certain kind of culture and social conditioning.

[68:50]

I see no reason why there should not be sexual relationships between two people that occur only once in a lifetime, like ships that pass at night. A kind of saying, well, why do we have to make the sexual communion a balls in a game with all kinds of tie-ups. And saying, you know, it's like some people say, oh, you, I don't think you're a true friend of mine, you haven't written to me in years. But I find I don't need to write to my good friends all the time to keep in friendship with them. I'm not, I don't feel that dependence. say, oh, we meet and we have a marvelous relationship.

[70:00]

The next time we meet, boom, it starts right again where it left off before. We didn't have to be in correspondence. In fact, not having been in correspondence gives us all the more to talk about. And so in the same way, I would say that I have had some extremely delightful relationships with certain women, whom I've only seen once or twice in my life. but they've enriched my life enormously and I didn't feel the need to make a great fuss about it because all the fuss that was necessary happened at that moment and then it was like they say in the Zen poem the wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection the water has no mind to retain their image And you see, that is detachment. Well, perhaps the women in this case didn't take the same view, maybe.

[71:07]

Oh, they did. There are lots of girls who do. I was pretty sure of that. But it could be, I think it could happen, but I don't know how how truthful, in the ultimate sense, it is to erect that into a general principle, that you can regard the sexual business as just as casual between two people as ships that pass in the night. I could find the greatest difficulty, sir. Oh, but wait a minute. It isn't casual. While at last, it's very intense. Yes, but of course, when two ships are washed in two waves, the two ships wake up and cross each other. It's quite intense. Right. But it's all over. Yes, it's all over. So the Zen poem, the morning glory brooms only an hour, but differs not at heart from a giant pine that lives for a thousand years.

[72:11]

What is, see, this is the question, what is the extra value added by time? Length of time. Well, I think an old Bishop Butler said, things are what they are, and the consequences will be what they will be. Why then should we seek to be deceived? For human actions, usually in this time, empirical time sequence, a great many consequences follow. And that is what karma is, isn't it? It's things that go on. And therefore we have to exercise foresight in many of the activities. Yes, indeed. But now, I'm fully willing to admit that lots of karma, karmic waves ensue from this encounter. But it might be very good karma.

[73:16]

Could be, I believe. It could be bad, yes. One never really knows. I mean, it's like it was just published in the papers today that Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo because he had hemorrhoids. And this has also come down because we always thought it was one on the playing field of Eden. But it's a trivial thing. Now, histories like that, the most ridiculous situations, silly little things, create the most enormous consequences. whereas on the other hand the most, sometimes the most devoted, passionate, disciplined act of somebody who creates a work of art with great effort and is entirely ignored and is found one day in a wastebasket so we never really fully know what karma is going to turn out to be

[74:23]

That's why we think we're thinking everything through. We think we perceive the net of causes and consequences and when we're going to do something important we investigate all the data. What should we know in order to decide what to do under these circumstances? And we go into it and into it and we compile reports and finally we've got all this information but too late to get any more. Probably we should have more information, but the time has come to make the decision. How's a weak little coin? If you have the I Ching, you've got a 64-sided coin, which may be a little better than a two-sided coin. But fundamentally, the moment of decision has an element in it of the irrational. Because the more you go into any argument about a decision, the more analytical you get, the harder it is to make up your mind.

[75:39]

I had a teacher of history in school who was a marvellous analyst and scholar. And he would read all the newspapers every day about the current political situation. And he was so impartial. and could see so many sides that he could never do it. But in ordinary practice, everyday practice, isn't it just a matter of weighing up the pros and cons so far as we can assess them and their strife and imbalance and proceeding on that basis? Well that's what we do. Although it has often, I think, a certain ritualistic character to it. Well, ritual is part of life. Oh yes, yes, but I mean ritual in a pejorative sense. Very often, absolutely stupid things I did from any point of view, sound judgment at the moment, turned out to be extremely fortunate accidents.

[76:53]

And vice versa. Some of the greatest mistakes I've made in life were made in a righteous mood, where I was trying to do the right thing. by my conscience, that I acted like an idiot. But let's take an intermission, shall we, and then... Now, once again, questions and comments are invited. I have a question. relates to your comment on appropriateness to the situation and the consequences in terms of sexuality and sexual involvement. And I guess I raised the question of, well, I guess I'm concerned about what is appropriate for identifying morally or psychologically, first of all.

[78:00]

And I think my second question, probably more important than Jim's, is sexual involvement of female really to involve morals? Is it really a moral issue? Well, the Greeks, they identified the good and the beautiful. And they had the same word for both words, for our two different words. And I think it was much the same idea. As Christianity developed, of course, the church worked out largely due to its Judaic inheritance of a law of God handed down to Moses in the Ten Commandments and so on. It was a man not so much doing the beautiful thing or the appropriate thing, but doing the thing that conformed with the will of God as set down in a code.

[79:13]

Thou shalt not commit adultery. And in the words of Jesus, he who looks after a woman and lusts after her has already committed adultery in his heart. Those sort of texts came down in the Christian proclamation and so set up a kind of strong legal ethical code. However, the church, again with the greatest of its minds, Aquinas, he pretty well in his moral teaching, he followed the Greek rather than the Hebraic way of looking at things, and so he worked out his ethical code of teaching not on the basis, really, seriously, of the Old or even the New Testament, but on the basis of the Greek, of Aristotle's ethics.

[80:20]

And I think in doing that he acted wisely because he bridged the gap between man and God. He based it fundamentally on the natural law, the law of nature, and not some kind of arbitrary proclamation, prophetical proclamation, coming as it were down from on high. So that nowadays, if you're asking my personal opinion, the greatest influence on my upbringing has been Aquinas in these matters, and Thomas. I would say that there is really a fusion between the moral and the psychological. And in a question of whether one is, say, to have intercourse with somebody, one has to bring in there

[81:26]

one's own, the judgment of one's own conscience, in the sense of the basic law, the basic, not so much law, as the basic condition, would be that this would be a truly loving act, truly loving of the other person and a respect for the other person and with a prudential judgment on what the consequences are likely to be and what one's state of it. All those things, I would say, have to be considered. I don't think as to whether the act is appropriate or not. That's just roughly my opinion. I suspect that the commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, which incidentally, when I was a small boy, one of my schoolmates was very naive sexually, read as thou shalt not kick the poultry, which is in some ways a sensible commandment.

[82:43]

But anyway, it had to do with a view of wives as property. and therefore taking another man's wife was infringement and was trespassing on his land and just as if you've got a prize mare and you want to raise a very pure stock you don't want any old Stalin going with the mare so in the same way a wife was regarded as a prize child breeder that was particularly for your line and therefore the commandment against adultery must be looked on the same ethical level as commandments against stealing and covetousness. Jesus took a different line on this because he felt that

[83:53]

Divorce, for example, was just like throwing a woman away because once you had bought this cow and you abandoned her and gave her a writ of divorcement, who else wanted her? And therefore she was condemned to be a unwanted woman. And Jesus insisted that women are people. And therefore you cannot treat them as chattels. And I think that thought underlies his opposition to cavalier divorce. He said in the New Testament, it reads more or less like this, that you do not divorce your wife, although it says it would be the exception of the case of adultery. But what it actually says in Greek is a word which means reserving the matter of adultery.

[85:01]

And that means that he is not going to go into that point at the moment. I'm reserving that question, what you should do there. But the passage about he who has looked at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart is quite obviously ironic. because it occurs in a context where he's making fun of legal righteousness. The fifth chapter of St. Matthew is one of the very funny passages of the New Testament. You get the clue to this by the section in which he says that he who is angry with his brother, I mean seriously angry, shall be judged before the court of the lower magistrate. He who calls his brother Raka. That sounds terrible when it's not translated. Raka? Ooh! You know? Well, it's certainly a very mild cut.

[86:05]

Meaning something like we would call someone a dunklet or a, you know. Then he goes to the Sanepin, which is the Supreme Court. And he who says, you fool, shall be in danger of hellfire. Well, that's a pretty funny arrangement. Because you fool is, of course, in the King James, has a capital T, thou fool. And everybody thinks capital means calling God a fool. Whereas there are no capitals in Greek. In the Greek text, it's simply the falcative case. Murray has to say, you fool. It's the mildest insult. So he has inverted the penalties. and made the mildest insult the most capital offence. This is a joke involved here. Because a few chapters later on, in the 22nd chapter of Matthew, he turns upon the people and says, Marai, which is the evocative plural of the same word, you fools who have blind guides.

[87:17]

Well, he himself has committed the crime which he said was punishable with hellfire. No, this is not serious. So he says, if your eye offends you, well, you've got to be pure, at all costs, pull it out. For it's better that you should go one-eyed into heaven than two-eyed into hellfire. Ha, so it is said. You've heard it said of all time, you shall not commit adultery. I told you any man who's looked at a woman and laughed after her has already committed adultery. What's the fuss about? Who hasn't? And so it goes, that whole chapter. I said, when is this? I have not come to destroy the prophets and the law, I've come to fulfill. I tell you, there shall not one, you know what a serif is on a printed type, or in calligraphy, a little typographical ornament, or one vowel point, jot or tittle, a thing like an iota subscript, all those serif points have got to be observed.

[88:26]

if you're going to be truly righteous. So, I mean, he lampoons the whole system by taking it to a reductio ad absurdum. But it's never been read that way because nobody presumed that Jesus ever had a sense of humor or ever said anything out of the side of his mouth, you know? I mean, he never indulged in any kind of double talk or jokes or anything like that you see he was pulling everybody's leg but it's been raised into a standard of weird affection you see you can't control your thoughts Luther saw that perfectly clearly it's impossible it's like children they hear there's a sin against the Holy Ghost that's awful it can never be forgiven I think, what's that?

[89:30]

Sin against the Holy Ghost, you know, and the child immediately says, down the Holy Ghost, you know, can't help it. Then it goes into paroxysms of guilt. Or, you know, has one committed sin against the Holy Ghost by laughing at a funny limerick, such as Iliad with Jean-Nom de Dijon? He doesn't like religion. He says, my faith, how strange are these three, the father, the son and the pigeon. I don't know, maybe. But there was a young fellow at Dijon who took a dislike to religion. He said, oh my God, these three are so odd, the father, the son, and the pigeon. Now, is this a sin against the Holy Ghost? Well, I mean, obviously not. Because all very devout people, people who are really true, of true faith, always make jokes about their religion.

[90:37]

And I'm sure that since the essence of humor is to make jokes about oneself, true humor is laughter at oneself. And therefore, God, as the exemplar of virtues, must make all kinds of jokes about himself. And Dante described the Song of the Angels as the laughter of the universe. But children, you know, take this literally. and get worried about this dreadful sin. And so they can't help thinking the kind of vertigo drives one if the terrible sin is that simple. It's just a matter of saying a formula. And there you go, see? Now, Jesus is saying that true righteousness If you're going to identify true righteousness with simply obeying the rules, well, here I'll give you a set of rules.

[91:45]

Well, a real set of rules, you see, and this is a write-down and you've got to observe the serifs. Any more questions or queries? The position Alan wants to talk in regards to the uniforce being a religious experience. I'd like to start off with a little space work, if I can, to see if I can get a point out. Right now, this moment, the stuff that's going on about us, continually, on all fronts of life. as the philippine, or the left, the greatest, I mean able to express emotion and possibly religion through its experience.

[92:52]

Does that necessarily mean, however, that every time sexual relationships are engaged, there has to be religious overtones? Well, I would say that it depends on how you define religion. For me, religion is simply the most real the realistic attitude to life, to life as a whole, and so that if sex is carried out realistically, that is to say, the sexual intercourse with a sense of the reality, the truth, awareness, no illusion about the realities of the people involved and what is being done and what its consequences may be, then I would certainly say it is a religious act. That would be moral.

[93:59]

No, I wouldn't say moral. Moral goes, to get back to a Latin word, mores, and customs. And I think we're trying to get beyond just what is customary and conventional to what is the reality of the situation. That is to say, who the person is and what is, to go back to my favorite word, appropriate with such a person and so on. Well in a sense, of course, in really every act, religion is not separate from life as such. Take the Zen poem marvelous activity, miraculous behavior. I draw water, I carry wood.

[95:02]

If you are awakened with your dharma eye, as Buddhists would say, then you see that whatever you do, whatever you look at, whatever you touch, is it And so there is no watertight compartments between this is religious and this is secular. True, but the implication a little earlier in conversation was that it actually has a ceremony about it. It's actual intent to perform a religious ceremony. Well, that's like this. you could say there is a say we take let's make meditations the act of meditation there is I would call regular meditation and ritual meditation and the difference between them is like dancing while you're taking a shower and having a formal dance which guests are invited and so on

[96:16]

Now, if you know and understand dancing, you dance all the time. Everything you do, everything you touch is a dance. But it's especially fun, you know, to put on the dog and have a formal dance. So in the same way, there may be all kinds of sexual relationship. Everything from playing footsies under the table, or I play, to going to bed, but then sometimes just to put on the dog. there could be ritualized sex, which is in this culture knows practically nothing about. And that is where there is mutual worship. High honors paid as if to a god and goddess. It would be, to most Americans, extremely embarrassing. The opposition between the secular and religious has been, as a phrase has been touched on, I always in that context recall a remark of A.C.

[97:33]

Bradley, a one-time professor of poetry at Oxford. He said, the only secular thing on earth is the secular-hearted man. Yeah. Would you think how pious we are in life. Yes. Yes. I had a question about making peace. I don't know why. Now, I'd like to ask a question about the colonial Christian clergy and their sects. Did the question come up at the conference that you attended about whether or not the official Church's vision or the Roman Church's vision was starting to soften?

[98:35]

No, we didn't go into it. We were aware of it as a question, but we didn't seriously take it up. I wonder if the Catholic clergy felt better about having, say, the Swami there. Yeah, well, maybe, but the thing is there was going to be a program to discuss it, but they cancelled it. At Mount Sado, is this? Yes. I think the distinction that Alan has drawn earlier between what is de jure and what is de facto, that is to say what is legislated for and what is actually practiced, applies here. I think a whole lot of things are going on in church and possibly among the clergy which are not sanctioned but are

[99:36]

going to prevail, I would think possibly it's only a matter of time before the ordinary diocesan clergy, that is to say the priests who run the diocese and the ministry and the parishes and so on, would be permitted to marry, I would think, within the predictable future. Because they have a very difficult time, they have a hard life, a routine life, they don't perhaps have much opportunity to develop a very serious spiritual relationship with God, to use the phrase, they are concerned with the activity of administering the sacraments and preaching the word, and they are with fundraising, money raising and the rest of it. so that they would be much supported, I would think, by being able to take unto themselves a wife and have the kind of support that gives them.

[100:49]

I think the case is different with the religious order, particularly with the monastic order, where there is a very much more intensified effort at self-realization, to use the Eastern term, and where there is the compensation of a really of a real community life of Christian charity and the practice of the of agathy and the concelebrated mass in Eucharist every day and that sort of thing. It gives a whole different ethos to the life. Well it's pretty much the same in the Zen rule. Temple priests may marry But no wives in the zendo. And that goes for the nuns as well. So, however, you may leave the zendo without dishonor at any time and marry. And it is a matter of, well, Roshi is supposed like a bishop in the Orthodox Church to be without wife.

[102:02]

that certainly Roshis are not without girlfriends. I have to know. But they do observe the principle that family life and all the disputes and whatever comes up in family life are not appropriate in the cloister. For one thing you see children could not be brought up in a cloister Because you do not know what any child's vocation is going to be. And nobody should be in the cloister who does not have a vocation to be there. That's what Paramahansa would say in Tantra. That's your thing. It really has to be your thing to be there. So you can't force children into it. This is one of the great downfalls of monasticism. Both in the East and the West. Is that pious and devout parents force their children to take monastic training. All those children had no more interest in it than going to the moon.

[103:07]

And so all sorts of funny disciplines were invented to force these children to be monks. But nobody should go to a monastery who hasn't got a real tremendous interest in it. And lastly, a little bit on what you feel the difference is today is in between Benedictine order and other orders of the Catholic Church. You touched on it a little bit earlier when Alan was talking about the gents and the other Catholics and so on. And speaking from my own personal experience with various Catholics, I have a definite feeling, anyway, from hearing you speak and the more evangelistic type people, that there is a definite disparity between you know, how you feel about celibacy or how they feel about celibacy or, you know, married life, general sexual relationships.

[104:10]

Yes, Joanna. You see, the great religious orders are, let's say, the Dominicans or the Jesuits and some of the modern order like the Passionists and the Holy Ghost Fathers and others such. They are a highly centralized institution with a master general in Rome who gives the orders and where Father so-and-so who lives in San Francisco at such-and-such a street or church has to go say next September. And a rule of life is set down, and a local superior has to see that that is carried out. And he has to give a report every so often to the central authority in Rome. And the result of that is that the central authority in Rome, of course, is very anxious to be in line with the latest paper handout today.

[105:26]

of the year, and so that tends to give to those orders a very legalistic and juridical quality of following the party line, the rather rigoristic party line that Harlan has hinted at in the attitude to sex. And so what is happening in those orders today is that there's a great deal of many people are leaving them because they find the situation intolerable or that they are seeking very earnestly to have a looser rule, a more widely devolved system of government. But in the case of the Benedictines, the Benedictine congregation that I belong to, the English one, which is the oldest of them all, the monasteries are really, for all practical purposes, they are autonomous units.

[106:33]

And so that the abbot is the, there's no real, for practical purposes, there's no one to go, you wish to go beyond the abbot to talk about the rule or the way of life or whatever it may be, or one's thinking. And so there's no There's no appeal to Rome, and anything that comes out from Rome, say in the Benedictine monastery, is hardly taken any more seriously than anything that might come out from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Except by a few of the older fathers, perhaps. Well, take a recent book of mine, which I claim to title The End of Religion. I like to play, and I always have played, the game by the Catholic rules.

[107:39]

But the abbot, he read the book through, the manuscript through, and incidentally the book was attacked very severely by two Catholics, one of them in the Jesuit monthly, in England, and another in the Downside Review, more or less in kind, if it wasn't orthodox. Both of these reviewers were converts, and were in a rather nervous state, obviously, because he had listened in the church. But the attitude of the abbot was — we're now on the subject, we've got to handle it carefully — I used to teach the abbot when he was in school. And he said, well now we've got to send it to Karl So-and-so, who's the most liberal, liberal person in the congregation. And then you have to have the Bishop, because the Abbot was on very good terms with the Bishop, the Lord Bishop. And the Abbot says, well now here's, Graham has written a book, and you know the sort of things you'd have to write.

[108:50]

And so, The bishop said, well, you can get my bit of general. And the abbot talked to the bit of general, and he said, the bit of general looked through the preface and said, well, this is simply a family affair. And that's the whole thing. And that's the thing I got addicted to, of course. Whereas if I had been a Jesuit or a Dominican, or in any other order, I don't think I would have been possible to perhaps accomplish that role. There are many people in today's Catholic Church I'm not very inclined to talk about that. Back to what Alan was talking about, at least explaining that to them.

[109:54]

or a cow or something. And I still see a lot of that happening today. You mean the Catholics are wanting to stand very literally by the law? By the law. Yes, well, it may be my particular hang-up, in that I don't regard myself as a legalist, and so on, but I would be squeamish about... I think husband and wife do belong to each other, and that they have made a certain commitment in that area. So, just first, you are my person, because I would be the... there might be some significance in the fact that the wife... the wife that on, you see, that even St Paul, who was such a squarer to life on all these matters,

[111:06]

He puts the husband and wife on a reciprocal basis in the matter of sexual intercourse. If the husband wants it, the wife should do it, and if the wife wants it, the husband should do it, should cooperate. In any particular case, what is denominated adultery, I would say it has to be considered in terms of appropriateness, my favourite words, in the context. But I have, perhaps due to my upbringing, and being pretty strongly in favour of being against doing it, I don't know what it is. You know what it is. I have no doubt, sir. Is that all right? I guess that's all I can do.

[112:07]

Yes, that's all I can say. That's all I can say. Well, I was just... I mean, it's a silly fact, you know, it's quite sad. Yes, there was no approach to philosophies about different people. Yes. Well, Varda, who used to live on this boat on the other end, he was a Greek, and if he had any religion at all, I suppose he was Greek Orthodox. But he said that all the laws restricting adultery and divorce and so on should be kept in force. Because if they weren't there, it would be no fun to visit them. But just in parenthesis, seeing as this is on the record, I notice, after some remarks, egotistical remarks about my book, I would like to make it clear that the Church's obligation was faithfully discharged and conscientiously discharged, and although there has been some adverse criticism from Catholics in England, the book has just received a national award from the Catholic

[113:35]

Roman Catholic Press Association in this country for being the best book on popular theology published in 1971. This is not just a plug for the book, but just to put it on the level from the Catholic point of view. How do you feel, Stephen, that It's very statistical on the parts of the people who obey the second commandment to assume that God gave him to Moses and the chosen people, and he blacked in. Massive groups of people throughout the world were polytheists, and therefore they are living in sin if that is to the rule of God. And so I just say, well, if you're not chosen, therefore you're going to go ahead and live in sin, and that's part of the tradition, you go to hell, and you have some other set of rules for that. Well, that's the whole point of what has been called the Wiedrig Tunis. You see, those Ten Commandments were originally gifts to the Israelites when Israel was in a state of being a tribal religion.

[114:44]

Those Ten Commandments were still kept somewhat to the fore by the Prophets, although not nearly as much so as in earlier times. But Jesus, he just summed them all up in the love of God and the love of one's neighbour. And he said, there is the law on the prophets, which for an Israelite meant there is the whole thing, that's religious. He just summed it up that way. So that as long as you're trying to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and your neighbour as yourself, that carries with it all the Ten Commandments. And St Paul hardly bothered about the Ten Commandments at all. He just centred himself on faith in Christ, the saving grace of faith in Christ, and communing with God's Spirit. So that the Ten Commandments, as it were, are very much a document of a particular time and a particular place.

[115:51]

Furthermore, the commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, doesn't prescribe polygamy. Solomon had many wives and the whole point was for an outside man to come in and steal another man's wife was an infringement of property rights. That's the essence of the matter. You could have lots of wives. Any good Muslim may have four wives and he accepts the so-called Old Testament as canonical as well as the Koran. Discussion is warming up. I'm going to write a book one day called What the Church Doesn't Teach.

[116:53]

Oh, do you mean, would that mean what the church should teach? No, no, no. What people imagine it teaches and it doesn't teach. Well, it's not just about this, that I was born. Why, you know? Why? Because I'm a Christian. Why? Just by virtue of being a Christian. There are emotions. Well I mean it's like the question of papal infallibility. Pope is only infallible when he speaks extra pleasure. Nobody has the faintest idea what that means. There are all kinds of weird but a loophole in all these supposedly solemn declarations and definitions.

[118:21]

So this is advisable and appropriate because it's always necessary for a religious tradition to be adaptable. That's what means by acting appropriately. Do you have some particular emotional problem in mind that you could share with us? Well, I think it's probably women. And how it's very difficult for a woman to think... For a woman to what? Well, a woman tends to want one of those... It's difficult for a woman to initiate that, you mean. The problem is, my dear, that we don't really know what, quote, a woman, unquote, is, any more than we know what a real man is.

[119:33]

I had a friend who would always say to me, no true woman would ever have said that. And I used to go into what were the... who had written her script, in other words. Where had she got her idea of what a true woman is and does? Now, our late lamented friend Gavin Arthur felt there were twelve sexes rather than two. And he charted them out in a very ingenious way. And I think that what we mean by a true woman and what we feel to be our deepest emotions about certain things are a consequence of a certain kind of cultural background and condition. And I know lots of women today who do not have that particular background and who feel about these things in an entirely different way. I know a group of girls who are proud prostitutes, who have no shame whatsoever or think this is a degrading way of life.

[120:45]

They love it and think it's a great form of career. I'd say it's fantastic, but there it is. But maybe the point you were touching on was when Shakespeare's famous line, love is in man's life a thing of the past. This woman's totally just... Well, we used to have a thing that says, Ligaments, heart of mix. Girls and monogamous. Heart of mix, ligaments. Boy, that's a ligament. Well, we're all as well as women's morals are in agreement.

[121:45]

Man is in his presence. I think your countenance will work best in the works of your specific group. what is an optimal condition. Yes, well that indeed has to be worked out. But then we get back to the doctrine of appropriateness, which is in fact a Buddhist doctrine. That the wise man always does what is appropriate under the circumstances. He responds to karma as it arises. And this is the same idea as the Taoists. It's following the water course. Being sensitive to the flow of the grain, or whatever you call it of nature, of circumstances at the moment. And that doesn't necessarily imply being sort of sloppy.

[122:47]

Because a lot of people who pretend to be spontaneous are faking spontaneity by the simple expedient of doing the opposite of what convention dictates and showing themselves still to be slaves to convention. So it's a matter of great sensitivity to be capable of spontaneity, following the holy Yes. Yes, I know one very well. I have lots of family, my family.

[123:54]

I just certainly get the impression that most of your talk today has been about the man's way of looking for the man. Do you have a relation to what women is about, being man's way? No, it's like saying mankind obviously includes women. Well, I don't know. I'd like to do it, yes. Well, you see, it's a verbal tangle because we've got no word which means equally he and she. Unless we say one, one she. Sort of awkward. And so we say, we use the male to designate both. The male to embrace the female. Yes. Q. But your question of freedom, we have really... you've just... this is the only conference you've been at, isn't that right?

[125:07]

We've really been, one way or another, been discussing that the last... the talks, there's a tremendous opportunity about that. Attaining true freedom is the same thing as attaining salvation. Yes, I mean, salvation doesn't mean salvage. Salvatoris, in the Greek sozo, means to heal. And to heal is the same word as holy, and the same word as whole. to be free is to become whole and that is the state in which you realize that the separation between your organism and the rest of the universe is only formal and that once you no longer feel put upon by the universe as an alien force and therefore conversely no longer feel that you've got to boss the universe and make it submit to you

[126:13]

But you discover that the relationship is one like a moving snake. Now which side moves first, the right or the left? You see, they move together. And so in the same way, the art of being able to act appropriately to circumstance is possible for one who has this true freedom, that is to say, who is no longer alienated from his universe. So that everything you do is something that the universe does, and everything the universe does is something you do. You can feel it that way. This is the way it is felt in the state of cosmic consciousness. And so, this is doing the will of God. Yes, it's beyond comfort. And it gives one a curious feeling of walking on air.

[127:26]

No, not so much that. Now, there is that sage of it, which seems that there is a razor's edge you have to walk on. Where do we go? Do we do it this way? Do we do it that way? And I'm not too much of this, not too much of that. And, you know, keep the balance. But after a while, you stop your fear of falling. And it's much easier to walk a tightrope. You see, there's really nowhere to fall. The universe doesn't have a concrete floor underneath. Everything is falling around everything else. All the planets are falling around the sun. And the sun is falling around the galaxy. And so it goes. Everything is just zooming around in space. And the thing we call energy, force, is gravity. It's the same thing. But there's no concrete flaw because God is more like space than like the rock of ages or the firm foundation.

[128:43]

So I keep saying that what we need religiously is not so much a firm foundation upon which to take our stand as to learn how to swim or for that matter to fly. Well, faith is the attitude, not of, here I take my stand. This is the firm ground. See, very definite, very conscious, right here, see? Well, that's, to me, pseudo-faith. Faith is a relaxed attitude. It's like a baby. A baby in a car crash is not very liable to get hurt, because the baby doesn't resist. The baby doesn't know there's a crash, it's just blub [...] bl

[129:55]

And since then, NASA has said it's a policy that we should be trying to keep the fallout contained and bring it back to the real world, to these planets. Could that be symbolic to me? Yeah, but it's a relative flaw. I mean, there is the Earth, but the Earth is floating. Underneath the Earth, there is not a tortoise to support it. And underneath the tortoise, another tortoise, and so on. But human action is conducted, isn't it, Ellen, not on this kind of cosmic plane, but with minute particularities. inch by inch, so to speak, and those can be sort of swept away into larger categories, in fact into no categories at all. But human action and moral action, so-called, is a particularity, each particular thing that has to be done or not done.

[131:04]

And when we don't really solve any problem, do we? Unless we can, I mean, in our personal lives, unless we can deal with those particular problems. No, that's true, but we cannot deal with the particular problems unless we see them within the larger context. Otherwise we get too obsessed by them. And things are in the saddle and ride mankind. After all, we know that we are, as a planet, we are floating in interstellar space, and in that space there is no up and there is no down. But clearly we wouldn't put chairs on the ceiling in this room, or attempt to live that way, because the difference here between up and down is perfectly plain. But yet, this room is floating in interstellar space. Now if we neglect that, if we neglect the larger context, we forget that Earth is a spaceship. And if we neglect that Earth is a spaceship, we abuse it.

[132:15]

But a lot of nice human acts being done by people over the years who never knew that the Earth was a spaceship. They might have known it in some way. That is to say, they might have had the fundamental thing we call, in Christian terms, faith in God. That is to say that although everything may go wrong, it will all come out in the end. You know, somehow the fundamental confidence in the whole system, and that's what I mean by the infinitude of space. You could say space is the universal mother that embraces everything. Space has been one of the great images of the divine inclusiveness. The Sixth Patriarch of Zen, Huineng, likens the true mind to space, which contains all things, good and bad, mountains, rivers, great earth, the sun, stars and so on. It's not an empty space, it's an all-containing, an all-embracing space.

[133:19]

And so he says in the same way one should cultivate one's mind, not to be an empty mind. but to be a mind that is able to embrace and act appropriately under all circumstances. So behind, you see, if we don't do that, we get this terrible situation, which has arisen in Christian history, that the particulars are absolutized. Let's supposing we say that a certain act is so wrong that a sin is of a mortal nature. and therefore incurs the penalty of everlasting damnation. Now that seems to me to be doing what the Chinese call swatting a fly on a friend's head with a hatchet. That it is putting too heavy a weight on the particular and therefore it has the same effect as judicial torture.

[134:23]

It brings the law into disrespect. But aren't we in danger? The other danger of absolutizing these cosmic notions and saying that you can't really get the picture right until you know that there were a spaceship floating in space. Yeah, well, some equivalent of that is, I think, true. In other words, you cannot make a distinct form on a piece of paper unless you've got an empty piece of paper. That gives you the ground for doing something definite. So naturally, how the form is made is very important. What is difficult, I think, for human beings is to distinguish between the more important and the less important without considering the less important unimportant. The little details are all important, but let's keep a sense of proportion. And that seems to me, that kind of sense of proportion, of gradation, a sense of hierarchy, is tremendously marvelous, faculty, that we have.

[135:32]

But the difficulty is, so much religious teaching is based on the way one gives instructions to children. Where you say, two and two are four, my God, and they are never five, or anything else. But it's not entirely true. Because, what happens when you add 2 a.m. to 2 p.m.? Two kinds of what? Plus two kinds of what are equal to four? If I add two baskets of sand two baskets of rather big rocks with a lot of space in, I'll get less than four baskets. You see, it depends of course. So it isn't always the case, but if you tell children that, they will immediately make exceptions and say, well today is Tuesday and on Tuesdays two make five, whereas on all the other days they make four.

[136:40]

Something like that. But the old way, the old Greek way, at least the Aristotelian way, has come down to us and still avails to some extent of dealing with these problems, these niddiquity everyday problems, is not by Not by insisting on getting them in proportion, in relationship to ultimate cosmic consideration, but by training and introducing into education, really, in practice of right habits, practice of virtue, in other words. in the Greek sense of the great moral virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. And training young people, educating them to act somewhat along those lines, that enables them, it seems to me, to have a sort of a ready-made rule of thumb for dealing with situations

[137:58]

without them having, although it's highly desirable, and if they have that kind of interest and that kind of mind, to go into these wonderful poetical ideas with which I am in complete sympathy myself. But having had to deal with young people over many years, I know how few of them are and how little a sense they would make to many of them, that this question of practice of the old square-town virtue does come in a pretty big way. Well, the truth of the matter is that both Alred and I were brought up in old-fashioned English schools, and therefore speak out of a cultural background which was strict. and that in a funny way gives us an extraordinary degree of freedom because if you don't have any idea of any standard you could never make a definite form.

[139:14]

Do you see what I mean? If you don't know what a straight line is, you don't know what a wiggly one is. And so there is some importance to having compasses, plumb lines, protractors, rulers, and Euclidean instruments, even though they are abstract and the universe itself is predominantly wiggly. Well now look, it's long after time when we should have drawn this to a close.

[139:54]

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