The Reality Method 2.0

The Zen of Sex & Seduction

There has been a lot of ink spilled on Zen — Zen and Archery, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and the list goes on from there. I, of course, want to write about Zen, Sex and Seduction.

In writing this post I am indebted to others who have written very similar things in the past, about both Zen and seduction; my attempt here is not so much to break new group as to concisely reap from the most fertile of the old.

As in Zen, there is value and teaching in even the most menial of recreations :)

Zen: The Thing Itself
Zen is the name for a branch of Mahayana Buddhism (Mahayana is the largest of the two branches of the Buddhist religion).

There is plenty to read about Zen from an academic standpoint, but I want to come right to the point of what Zen is and what it is isn’t.

You hear the term Zen and the phrase “That’s totally Zen” and the idea of a “Zen-like trance” thrown around pretty freely in popular culture; and most people have a vague idea that Zen means “focused” or “ironic” or “karmic” in a very general way.

This is mostly the fault of the hippies in the 1960s. Zen was popularized during this “flower-power” / “enlightenment” generation, who misunderstood and mischaracterized it as a doctrine that said, “Just Be. Whatever it is that you are, whatever you naturally do, is Zen (or your Buddha nature) and therefore moral.”

The anti-establishment crowd loved this, because it gave them a solid theological basis upon which to say “no rules” and also “no judgments.” People thought that Zen would free them from the mundane tasks of everyday life by allowing them to express themselves in any way they saw fit, and also act in whatever way they pleased, because doing so would be expressing their “Buddha nature” and being Zen, and “in the moment”.

But this is not what Zen is about. Zen is, in fact, about internalizing rituals and mundaneness to the point that it disappears from our conscious subjective experience.

A good Zen saying (that I first saw posted on a bulletin board in a FB’s house years ago) is:

Zen is eating your rice and washing your bowl.

That’s not a freedom from responsibility or routine at all; that’s a commitment to exacting standards in routine.

From the Wikipedia on Zen:

Zen temples emphasize meticulous daily practice…The Zen monks taught that in every menial task there is something to be learned and something that the student can later meditate on. Even the abbot performs such tasks as sweeping the floor. The Zen monks believe you can gather knowledge from all things in life, and that in your every action you shape and mold yourself in but the smallest of ways..

Probably the easiest access most Western people have to Zen is driving a car. Most of us drive ever day, or nearly every day; and most of us are so used to driving that we no longer consciously “think” about what it requires to operate a car. We don’t think about pushing the pedals, or shifting gears, or turning the wheel….we just get in, and the car becomes an extension of ourselves, and serves our will in getting us to our destination.

In fact often, you can be driving down the road and you’ll take a phone call, or start thinking about a certain thing, and then 10 or 15 minutes later you’ll “come back” to the present and realize you have no memory of the last 3 to 5 miles of road — the scenery, the traffic, how fast you were going, nothing.

That’s Zen. It’s a mild meditative trance that happens when our actions become so routine, so “second nature”, that they are actually put on autopilot by our conscious mind while it attends to other things, such as a phone call or thought loop.

Zen is repeating actions over and over again, so frequently, in such a regular routine, that they become completely integrated with our everyday experience; and at a certain point, they become so routinzed that they are no longer routines at all — they are subroutine, they become invisible to our conscious mind, and we are free.

The freedom from routine in Zen is the exact same freedom you get while driving when you get on the phone or start thinking hard about something and literally forget the driving time of a 3 or 5 or 20 mile stretch: for those miles, you were free from the task of driving.

Zen + Seduction
All of this talk about routines has a purpose: in the seduction and dating “community”, more specifically the “pickup” focused community, routines are stories or scripts that guys develop in order to be sure of having conversational material or ammo (so they don’t have to worry about running out of things to say, or awkward pauses).

Most “routines” are also particularly tailored and developed socially so they’ll lift the social energy, that is, you have routines that are funny stories, and others that demonstrate personal value (like bragging, only more subtle), and others that are pure flirtatious fun.

Now you’ll come across guys writing on the internet, bashing routines: “It’s all canned, man, you should be spontaneous” and “Be yourself, don’t use other people’s material” and so forth — and in a way, they’re right, insofar as it’s valuable to make a legitimate call for personal authenticity.

But the power of routines, and why they’re so effective, is the same reason that driving and Zen Buddhism are effective: they are freeing.

Guys who get good at pickup and seduction learn routines, use them, and eventually have used them so many times that not only do they become automatic, but the guys come to an understanding of the fundamental structure of the routines, and therefore are able to discard them completely. They are, paradoxically, freed from routines through an early bondage to them.

And this doesn’t just happen with conversational routines: it happens with every aspect of seduction and, for that matter, every aspect of social interaction. The more you go out and socialize, the more you approach and talk to girls, the more you close deals and get into relationships (even short ones), the more automatic the entire process becomes….until eventually, one day, it is effortless.

You are no longer trying to seduce, or trying to pick up: your attitudes and routines and personality and the underlying structure of attraction is so ingrained in you it has become part of you, and are just being, and that is enough. That is Zen.

Zen + Sex
It is interesting to apply these concepts to sex because sex is one thing that, once routinized, will quickly die and kill a relationship with it. Sex must be routinely fresh and refreshing, adventurous and exploratory not only in the narrow technical sense of positions and locations but also in the emotional journey and tempo that it narrates. Good sex, truly bonding and powerful sex, is an ever-changing amalgamation of the old, the new, the sacred and the profane. I just happen to believe that this mercurial mixture can itself be routinized in such a way that it presents the trance-like freedom of Zen just as reliably as your daily commute.

Our brains are complex enough to master this; don’t think for an instance they aren’t.

Sometimes I think that is the key to being a “masterful lover”; the ability to bring Zen into the bedroom in the way I describe above. Good sex, of course, has less and less to do with techniques and anatomy and more and more to do with a relational process: the very term, “masterful lover”, says nothing at all about sex but instead speaks of both “mastery” and “love”; mastering oneself, one masters another in intimacy, and conquering the submission and nakedness demanded by love enacts the paradox of winning through losing.

The very moment of orgasm has been compared to death, famously called “la petite mort” by the French, the little death, and inasmuch as the moment of orgasm washes out our self-awareness and ego, it could also be called “the little Nirvana”, as it engenders (if only momentarily) that release into nothingness that is the goal of Buddhist practice and karmic progression. In this way Zen is very closely linked to sex, and orgasms could almost be said to be “practice” for Enlightenment.

Of course mainstream Zen scholars might disagree, since sexual desire, in and of itself, is part of the cycle of suffering that is endemic to existence. I would argue that if one is able to have sex and have orgasm without desiring it — in other words, while practicing outcome independence — then one is still practicing good Zen.

There is much more I could write about the parallels here, but as usual I think this article is quite long enough as it is, so I will simply invite any Zen scholars, practitioners or other Buddhists in the audience to comment — if they so desire ;)