Lust — Caution — The Perils of Romance

Most people fall first into lust, which they convert into socially acceptable things like romance and move. This article explores this process of sanitizing lust, and suggests Zen alternatives

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Non-attachment and Lust — the Perils of Romance

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

Most people have a great resistance to their lust and passion. 

And yet, most rela­tion­ships start right there. 

Bio­log­i­cal­ly, we haven’t changed much since we swung out of the trees, and the ‘lust-romance’ stage is part of our lim­bic sys­tem. This old­est part of the brain is also respon­si­ble for our “fight — flight” mech­a­nism, and oth­er semi or com­plete­ly auto­mat­ic systems.

A friend recent­ly dis­cussed her 30-year mar­riage, which, she thinks, may be com­ing to an end. She noted, 

“I saw him 30 years ago, fell into lust, left my mar­riage and moved in with him. For 15 years, the ‘great sex with a bad boy’ was all I noticed. Now, I see past that, and there is noth­ing left. How could I have been so blind?”

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

Two things:

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

Thus, this Zen sto­ry (which I ana­lyze at length in my book, Half Asleep in the Bud­dha Hall

Two monks are cross­ing a riv­er, when they meet a beau­ti­ful woman. She asks for help cross­ing the riv­er. The old­er monk picks her up and cross­es the riv­er, while the younger monk looks on in shock (as monks are sup­posed to be celi­bate and avoid beau­ti­ful women.) A mile or so down the riv­er, the younger monk is still in shock, and can’t stop think­ing about the old­er monk’s behav­iour. The old­er monk says some­thing like, “I crossed the riv­er with that girl a mile ago and left her there, yet you still car­ry her.”

The thing is, pretending that something “there” is not there does not make it “not there.”

Par­en­thet­i­cal­ly, this is why the Tantric side of Bud­dhism gets so much “sex press.” Despite being a small part of the whole thing, Tantra does make the point that sex­u­al desire can be chan­neled and used as a way to reach enlightenment. 

One odd rea­son this sort of “hands on” (so to speak) approach was devel­oped was because of “lay peo­ple” want­i­ng to learn a path to enlight­en­ment. The judge­ment was that med­i­ta­tion was too hard for them, so a more prac­ti­cal approach was devised–enlightenment through active engage­ment with the body, through its sens­es. But I digress.

2) The irony of the monas­tic path is it tries to short-cir­cuit the need for moment-by-moment aware­ness, which includes what we feel. And one of the things every­one feels is lust — passion. 

The old­er monk in the sto­ry above makes this point. One can feel what­ev­er one feels, and then move on. He picked her up, inter­act­ed with her, and set her down. Moment-by-moment aware­ness. Not so for the younger monk, who car­ried her with him, in his head.

Meanwhile, back to lust

My client per­fect­ly demon­strates inat­ten­tion tak­en to an extreme. 

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

Peo­ple take per­fect­ly good “turned on” feel­ings, and con­vert them to romance.

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

Romance is a stage

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

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

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

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

Peo­ple caught in romance exude that sick­ly sweet odour of per­fec­tion, as they gaze into each oth­er’s eyes and pro­fess undy­ing and unchang­ing love. The first few cracks in this veneer hap­pen as “I’m just sug­gest­ing this to make you even more perfect!” 

Inevitably, the other shoe drops, and you realize you are in relationship with a real person, foibles and all.

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

Or, you could wake up

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

Non-attach­ment is this: Own­ing that you are hav­ing feel­ings, with­out judg­ing that they are about the oth­er person. 

Attrac­tion (or repul­sion, or neu­tral­i­ty) is what I do when I con­front some­one or some­thing. The oth­er per­son is the oth­er per­son, and I am cre­at­ing my inter­nal feel­ing. If I am attract­ed, I may go so far as to cre­ate pas­sion and lust. It’s always “all about the feel­ings I am cre­at­ing,” nev­er about the “oth­er.”

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

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

Much eas­i­er, I think, to be aware, and non-attached. 

By the way, this is not a pre­scrip­tion to do away with romance. It’s a sug­ges­tion that one could be con­scious­ly in romance. In oth­er words, when you’re ga-ga over a new love, you can say, “Wow! Am I ever in the midst of this one! I won­der what else is going on, that I’m missing?” 

When I see some­one attrac­tive, I could say, “Hmm. I’m in lust. I think I’ll tell him/her what I’m cre­at­ing for myself, and see if (s)he wants to play.” Or I could just enjoy the moment and move on. I’m not required to adopt, get into rela­tion­ship, or mar­ry some­one just because I like the cut of their jib.

The Zen of Relating to Lust

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

If you do not remem­ber the siren pull of not pay­ing atten­tion, you will wake up bat­tered and bruised, again and again. 

The caution is this: “Remember to pay attention, and to prize waking up.” 

As you come back into aware­ness, you see how easy it is to fall “head over heels” about many things, and how ulti­mate­ly you lose sight of your­self. Uncon­scious romance is the height of sil­ly. Choos­ing to be in romance, in lust, in like, in pas­sion, or in inti­mate rela­tion­ship is a mat­ter of “sim­ply notic­ing.” And own­ing that you are, indeed, capa­ble of pro­duc­ing all of those states in yourself.

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

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