Zen teacher Brad Warner addresses the notion of preferences. Dealing with them — in bed, and out of it — isn’t, he says, as cut and dried, or difficult, as some would believe.
There’s a famous Chinese poem called “Faith Mind Inscription.” In spite of its lousy title, it’s one of the most profound pieces of literature in all of Zen. The first verse sets forth the premise of the poem right away: “The Great Way is not difficult, just avoid preferences. When love and hate are absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised.”
Of course, when talking about sex and preferences, the first thing people think of is sexual preferences and all the nonsense our culture has piled on top of the matter of who a person prefers to fuck. I suspect most people, when they first hear this notion of avoiding preferences, think of it the way I did when I first heard it. You think, “Oh, my God! I like vanilla better than chocolate! I like the Ramones better than Air Supply! I like lying on the beach better than getting hit in the face with a two-by-four! I have so many preferences! What am I going to do?”
In other words, you think, as I did, that preferences are a solid thing that must be gotten rid of. You imagine that some kind of bizarre mental gymnastics must be involved in forever ridding yourself of all like and dislike so that someday when you go to Ben & Jerry’s and they ask you what flavor you want, you’ll just smile beatifically and say, “Give me whatever you like, for lo, I am free from preferences.”
I mean, my God, it gets even worse as the poem goes on. The next line is, “Make the smallest distinction and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything.” How could anyone do that? Ever?
But it’s not as awful as it sounds. We’re actually talking about something very immediate and direct. It’s related to the question every Zen teacher is asked more often than just about any other, the one that goes, “My brain is all clogged up and scattered when I do zazen. Am I doing it wrong?”
But here’s the deal. Your brain is all cloudy, but you’d prefer that it not be. The difference between what you are and what you think you ought to be causes your imagination to leap wildly. You want to go from where you actually are to some idealized state your confused mind has created. But it’s a losing battle, because the attempt to change from what you are to what you think you should be is the very problem.
The solution is to simply forgo preferences. Don’t make any effort to be what you’re not. Just allow what you are to fully manifest. Keep your posture and stay still. Sit with it. Don’t go against it. Don’t go for it. Only sit and let it be.
In terms of sex, we all have lots of preferences. This goes for people of all “sexual preferences,” by the way. It’s not just a matter of which gender you prefer to shag. Sex brings out all of our loves and hates in a very big way.
For example, we’re not in love, and we hate that. Or we’re in love, but things are going wrong and we hate that. Or we’re in love with this girl/guy/stuffed animal, but we want to sleep with that other one, too, and girl/guy/stuffed animal #1 isn’t into the whole polyamory thing. Or we can’t get enough sex. Or we’re getting too much sex. And on and on and on it goes.
Sex is such a hot-button area in terms of getting us into our various likes and dislikes that this is certainly one of the reasons Buddha recommended that his monks be celibate. But what are we gonna do about preferences if we want to keep on getting laid?
One bit of good news is that the more we can get beyond our preferences, the better our sex lives will be. Instead of wallowing in how things aren’t the way we want them to be, we can dive right in to what we have at this moment and enjoy it thoroughly.
Part of avoiding preferences is learning to like the very fact that you dislike something. In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation there’s a scene in which Data, the android character, is given a special computer chip that, for the first time in his robotic life, allows him to have preferences. He orders a drink, gulps it down, and goes, “I hate this! Give me another!” He’s never disliked anything before, and this itself is a source of great joy and fascination.
The idea of avoiding preferences doesn’t mean that we need to be complacent and leave even the worst situations in life just as they are. The first step in effectively changing something that clearly needs to be changed is accepting the way it actually is. Then we can do what needs doing to make things different without wasting a lot of energy wishing things already were different. For example, you may find yourself in a relationship that’s bad and you gotta either make it better or end it. If you sit around wishing things were different and wallowing in your malaise, you’ll never do anything to fix it.
But bringing the matter of avoiding preferences into even tighter focus than that, being without preference means that when you have preferences — and you always will — you let go of any notion that you should not have them. You let go of your preference for being free of preferences. Even having preferences is not a problem. The real root of our problems as human beings is the way we fly off into imagining how things could, or should, be.
This piece was adapted from Brad Warner’s book Sex, Sin, and Zen and published by permission of New World Library.
I appreciate the broad discussion of "preferences" and the frankness of Brad's approach to sexual matters. I think we could use more of that frankness in Buddhist discussions of sex.
However, insofar as he appears to be using the words "preference" and "sexual preference" to refer to gay men or lesbians, it is a regrettable misuse of language. Brad states this bluntly with his comment about "which gender you prefer to shag."
Let me be equally blunt: My sexual orientation is not a "preference" — it is not something I chose, and I spent the better part of my early life wishing, quite painfully, that I could choose differently. Instead of committing suicide, as we see so many gay teens doing these days, I eventually came to terms with my sexual orientation and made peace with that aspect of reality. But the only "preference" involved, really, was the preference for honesty and truth.
The term "sexual preference" belittles the agony that gays and lesbians often must go through in order to become honest with themselves and others about who they are. Many don't make it that far, and they lose their lives. Others lose their lives through murder, at the hands of psychopaths who cannot tolerate their honesty. If sexual orientation were a simple matter of preference, and if people could just choose to "be without preference," as Brad suggests, then we wouldn't see a suicide rate among gay teens that's up to four times higher than that among heterosexual teens. Most of those kids, I assure you, aren't at peace with their "preferences" — and they would probably choose differently, at that stage, if they had the power. They have "preferences" about the kinds of clothes they wear and the music they listen to and the movies they see and the places they hang out, but sexual identity is on another order of magnitude in terms of complexity. Its causes and conditions, as far as we understand (which, frankly, isn't very far), encompass both biology and psychology, nature and nurture.
I realize that I'm making much of a minor point in Brad's discussion of sexuality — which, in general, I found interesting and provocative, as I've come to expect from Brad — but for me as a gay man, it's not a minor point at all. It's another example of how language can convey and perpetuate misunderstandings — and those misunderstandings can have deadly consequences. Because people believe that gays and lesbians are making a bad choice — having the wrong "preference" — they can therefore believe, quite mistakenly, that gays and lesbians could choose otherwise if they wanted to. That belief is at the very root of homophobia in our society.
Dear Dennis: The error here is mine and not, I think you may find, Brad's. In creating this adaptation from Brad's book I'd mistakenly cut what now appears here as the second paragraph of Brad's text. I seriously regret the error.
Rod, thanks for the clarification, but, for those of us just joining the conversation, could you let us know how the text would have been different, or highlight the fixed parts in the main post (if they have been fixed)?
Oh, I see: I missed your "what now appears here as the second paragraph." Gotcha.
More to Dennis and Tyler: I would like to make clear, on Brad's behalf, that elsewhere he *does* speak of "sexual orientation" and not "preference" as it might have seemed to be flatly applied here. That being said, as you might imagine, Brad has some interesting things to say about how we choose to define ourselves. As the final paragraph in the chapter before the one excerpted here says, "Defining oneself as straight, gay, bisexual, kinky, or whatever designation you prefer* is one way for the ego to try and delineate itself. Such a definition may be provisionally true and may have some us. But ultimately it's not who you truly are. Buddhist practice is about trying to uncover something far more fundamental." (* Note that his use of "prefer" here relates to word-choice. The first page of the same chapter has a footnote that notes Brad's being, at first, uncomfortable, with using the word "queer." The rest of the chapter, though, should make clear that he's not uncomfortable with people who might call themselves that.)
I think you'll find that Brad and his book are in fact going out of their way to emphasize the importance of treating folks of all sexual orientations with the compassion and equality that they deserve.
Thanks for writing; it's really appreciated, and I again apologize for the error.
Thanks for the added paragraph and the explanation, Rod. I'm glad to know there are other parts of the book that go deeper into these issues.
From a Buddhist practice point of view, I agree with Brad's comment that one's definition of one's sexual identity is "not who you truly are" and that it's only "provisionally true." However, the same thing could be said of one's eye color — but no one calls that a preference. Ultimately everything that we ordinarily think of as our "self" in this life is not who we truly are and is only provisionally true. However, we have the karma that put us here, and it sets the rules to some degree, and we're not always free to just choose different rules even if we would "prefer" to.
This comes back to the ever-important distinction between ultimate and relative truth — it's when we mix up the two views that we most often get confused. Brad's comment that defining one's sexual orientation any which way is just a matter of ego delination is perhaps valid from an ultimate-truth perspective; but on the relative-truth level, sexual orientation can be an example of something that is just part of the given causes and conditions, like eye color. One can't necessarily just flip into ultimate truth and transcend one's relative causes and conditions. I didn't choose to define myself a certain way, I just chose to be honest about how I found myself defined. That doesn't mean the label is ultimately true, but it's also not accurate to imply that relative truth is something that just comes and goes, or that it's just a matter of choosing labels. One's particular karma might come and stay for a whole lifetime, and that's just what you are for that life. Take it or leave it.
That being said, I suspect that, given what you've shared about the other parts of Brad's book, he understands this already. I thank you for your willingness to engage in this conversation, and hope that with these comments I have not derailed what is an otherwise good article. It includes some points that deserve contemplation. Too many Buddhists and Buddhist teachers are stuck in puritanical attitudes towards sex (like many others in American society, I suppose), and Brad's boldness and frankness in confronting these issues is like a breath of fresh air.
good points, Dennis, and thanks again for making them. and if anyone derailed this it was me, so i hope we're "back on track." all best and thanks again.
Great food for thought.
An interesting discussion! The word "preference" here is indeed unfortunate. In the portion of the book excepted above I was trying to look at the Buddhist idea of "avoiding preferences." And so I was riffing on this word. I don't believe that one chooses to be gay rather than straight the same way one chooses to order strawberry ice cream instead of vanilla. And Dennis is correct, far too many people in our culture today seem to think it's something like that.
One of the many interesting aspects of Zen practice for me personally has been the discovery that there is a tremendous amount of variety in the thoughts and desires that arise in my mind once I stop working so hard at defining myself to myself. Among the many things I discovered was the fact that my own personal sexual orientation was not a fixed and rigid thing. Since I'm the kind of person I am, the idea that I could occasionally find men sexually appealing was not really a big shock. Some of the other stuff I recognized about myself was truly disturbing. That I could be attracted to men was no big deal, especially by comparison.
The point I'm clumsily trying to get at here is that sexual orientation — hetero, homo, bi, trans, queer, etc. — seems to me to be just one of a big stew of things we use to constantly define and reinforce our provisional sense of self. Ultimately it's all delusion, even when it's a provisionally useful delusion. Some of it may even be true as far as it goes. But it still falls short of who we really are.
I was trained in the Zen school where we are taught not to draw a hard line between ultimate and relative truth. The party line in Zen is that they are one and the same. Dennis is right about the orders of magnitude between preferring the Ramones to Air Supply as compared to one's sexual orientation. Still, as a Zen convert I'm stuck with having to make the point that it's all relative no matter how real it seems. But even the undeniable fact that I am a human being living on planet Earth is, too, just relative truth. So this is a very big topic, far more than one could possibly do justice to in the comments section of a Shambhala Sun Space blog.
In the end, though, I'm still as hetero as I ever was. As Dennis points out, it's part of my personal karma. In spite of what I found through my practice, I can't just flip to the other side through an act of will. In my own case I'm lucky that there is no societal pressure to do so. It must be really horrible when there is.
But I find I'm more personally at ease with myself because I've been able to drop some of the very hard clinging I did to my sexual identity — among many other aspects of identity. I imagine a lot of people could do with discovering these things about themselves. This is especially true for hetero folks like me, I think. And here's why.
We need to treat everyone we meet with respect and dignity regardless of their orientation. That's for sure! I believe that the Buddhist practice can help establish that by allowing more people to see how fluid their own identity — sexual or otherwise — actually is. The we cease to view others as eternally different from ourselves.
Dennis, I get your larger point. I'm also gay.
But, I do have to disagree with you a little bit here. You said, "[t]he term 'sexual preference' belittles the agony that gays and lesbians often must go through in order to become honest with themselves and others about who they are."
I don't think the term "sexual preference" does any such thing. It's a term. We can have a debate or discussion whether sexual preference is descriptive, accurate, etc. But, that's just a discussion, debate, etc. There are people that use the term sexual preference that are not "trying" to be offensive. Do I bristle a bit when I hear the words used? Yes. But, I think part of being a Buddhist is developing an awareness of your own thoughts.
So, I am aware of the bristling, but I am also aware of the fact that I have no idea at the intent of the speaker. I also hope that I am, moreover, aware that the suffering I feel isn't from the words themselves: it's from my thoughts about those words. That's a really big difference.
For me, one of the coolest things about Buddhism is that it teaches you that you have the key to eliminate suffering in your life. No one else is in control.
So while I don't disagree that sexual orientation is probably a better way of expressing the thought I don't want to miss the importance of "thoughts" in this discussion.
@Brad: Thanks very much for the honest and searching response. I really enjoyed it, and laughed at your comment about the other things you discovered about yourself….
@Brandon: I see where you're coming from, and agree for the most part. And I never said that I thought Brad was "trying" to be offensive — quite the opposite. I recognized that his intentions were good, but the word choice was unfortunate (which Brad also acknowledges above in his response). But I will share that one (straight) man wrote to me off-site, after I posted these comments, and said that he learned from this discussion. What he learned, he said, was about the importance of using language that doesn't alienate and perpetuate misunderstandings.
As a practitioner of Buddhist meditation, I'm able to recognize the role of thoughts and emotional reactions, and keep some distance from that. But just as importantly, the deeper I go into my practice the more I begin to understand the importance of "engaged Buddhism" — a kind of practice in the world that involves meeting problems and injustice not just with quiescence and seeing my own reactions, but also seeing where I can contribute to making things better. Sometimes that means giving, or just being there in some way; other times it means speaking out or taking action to correct a situation that needs correction. And yes, that means making a judgment about what is right in a given situation — but that's what we do all the time. Hopefully as practitioners we do it with a little more mindfulness and compassion.
Today I read about another gay teenager in my own home town in Oklahoma who killed himself a couple of days ago after attending a city council meeting that was filled with anti-gay hate speech. Also just a couple of days ago, nine men beat, tortured, and sodomized a man and two teenage boys in the Bronx in a vicious anti-gay rampage. And the New York Times today features a story about Carl Paladino, the GOP candidate for NY Governor, who made a speech yesterday in which he said this:
"I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option — it isn’t."
According to Newsday, Paladino's prepared text also included this gem, which he chose not to say out loud: "There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual."
What does this have to do with Brad's article? Well, nothing. And yet…people like Paladino are able to get away with saying the things they do, and contributing to the atmosphere of violence and hatred towards gays, by perpetuating the myth that being gay is a choice, a "preference," a "lifestyle." As long as we are silent and allow that myth to be perpetuated, we are complicit in our own oppression. That being said, Brad obviously had NO intention of perpetuating such a myth, and he clearly understands that it *is* a myth — and how much unhealthy bullshit happens because people believe in it. After reading his response, Brad is actually my hero now. 🙂
I hate how incredibly PC all of this starts to sound, but the main point was about the importance of using language that honors and recognizes who people are and doesn't reinforce misunderstandings, even in subtle ways — because misunderstandings are the root of violence and hatred. But I do see now that Brad was playing with the word "preference" in a different way that was further clarified by Rod's addition of the second paragraph.
It seems somehow fitting to be having this discussion on National Coming Out Day. Have a good one!