World AIDS Day, 2014
Vastmind
Memphis, TN Veteran
With the intention of bringing awareness to safe sex habits, World AIDS Day, Dec 1.
World AIDS Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_AIDS_Day
From a precept POV :
...' Sexual Misconduct...... Sexually transmitted diseases have increased by leaps and bounds to assume almost epidemic proportions. The whole world was shaken with a rude shock by the advent of the dreaded disease AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, for which medical scientists all over the globe are struggling, without success so far, to find an effective cure.
-- http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/desilva/bl123.html
Here's a another take :
..'True Love
Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. Knowing that sexual desire is not love, and that sexual activity motivated by craving always harms myself as well as others, I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without true love and a deep, long-term commitment made known to my family and friends. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct. Seeing that body and mind are one, I am committed to learning appropriate ways to take care of my sexual energy and cultivating loving kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness – which are the four basic elements of true love – for my greater happiness and the greater happiness of others. Practicing true love, we know that we will continue beautifully into the future.'
-- http://plumvillage.org/mindfulness-practice/the-five-mindfulness-trainings/
Please practice safe sex out there everyone.
If you can..participate in an event, or recognize your own harmful behavior.
Please feel free to post talks by other teachers concerning this precept......
Comments
Has anyone here ever seen a four-monkeys statuette? Well, the four-monkey figure has —in addition to the monkey with his hands over his eyes, another with with them over his ears, and the third with his hands over his mouth— a fourth with his hands over his genital area. So, See No Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, and DO NO EVIL! is the gist. I dunno whether the three-monkey version is original and the four-monkey version is a refinement or whether the three-monkey version is an abridgment of the four-figured one. At any rate, in the old world in many societies the official line concerning ritual or spiritual purity was complete abstinence. Of course, it was understood that not everyone was called to that life, but in a lot of societies based in part on the old religions sexuality was officially relegated to the "sinful" categories, so to speak. And of course, this is the cultural backdrop of European culture, from which we in the West spring. That culture was not premised on pleasure, but on ideals of either holiness or self-sacrifice or right-living (whatever handle best fit the ethnic group).
Today's world is a "Brave New World" in which anything goes and hedonism seems to me to be an apt description of the real cultural dress in which this commercial economy is clothed. Sex and violence in the movies and advertisements is what sells them and their products. We moderns are so well programmed to desire and crave these things that the ads tell us we deserve. We are culturally hedonists and we need, I think, to retreat a bit back to more restrained ways.
From above (Plum Village):
^This is not hedonism. This is Wisdom. Something that always harms both the doer and many in his orbit is indeed Sinful.
Of course, a lot of people were/are more or less forced to be promiscuous by society's unacceptance of their sexuality or what-not. That is a real pitfall of the old belief that sexual indulgence was sinful. Still, there's a world of difference between selfishness and biological hungers. You could not rightly call a starving man selfish simply because he was hungry and asking for some food. Indulgence is selfish, needs are only just needs. Being unduly selfish is sinful; to be needy, merely human.
It's easy to get an STD (sexually transmitted disease) while engaging in 'safe sex' if your partner ISN'T
Sex is a swap of disease vectors (eww) after all. Terrible stuff to say about such a potentially blessed act. Our poor children and grandchildren, this is where our best efforts are theirs to choose or not according to their will. I don't personally know anyone who hasn't learned the hard way when it comes to sex.
While biological needs are most certainly real, I think we do our species a severe disservice in comparing ourselves to animals who have similar needs. In ways, yes we certainly are still animals. However, we are perhaps the only one who can determine that even if we think we have a need, that we do not have to follow the desire to have that need met. We control our needs, or we can. Most animals cannot. They are victims of their biological needs in ways we do not have to be. A wolf must eat meat. It cannot make the choice to be vegan. We could. A small bird cannot fast. It will die within 24 hours because of it's fast metabolism. We can, at least for a time, bypass our need for hunger (without harming our health).
But with sex, I think too many people use the "But I have NEEDS!" as a lame excuse for poor behavior. It's the same line of thinking that makes teenagers think it is ok to gang rape a girl in a dorm room or at a party. They believe their needs are so important they bypass the rights of someone else.
Learn how to control, or meet, your own needs. Expecting someone else to do so is the root of SO many of our problems. So often we are asking ourselves "but what about MY needs!" when we are fully capable of forgoing them all together, or finding ways to healthfully meet them ourselves instead of insisting others do it for us.
"What about my needs?"
Hell, in the old world, the question was, "What is my duty?"
And it was typically answered, "My duty is not to be self-seeking, but to help others, since that is the only path to true happiness."
Gang rape and spreading deadly diseases about would have NO excuse.
Look even ladybirds are promiscuous!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3104305.stm
If your meeting your needs or the needs of your special somebody....please use condoms...
Please discuss safe sex habits with your children as puberty hits. Dating habits are important
to teach too.....
Permissiveness with teenagers? Never!
(Not if their yours)
Not quite sure what you mean.
We made sure our daughter had condoms and used them long before she was 20. We had no choice.
With our son it wasn't an issue till later on, but he was well aware of the risks and safe sex.
Really, I have their mother to thank for most of the educating.
Thanks for the question. I meant sexual abstinence and parents and teachers not condoning sexual activity by minors or providing for it. As I have said above, the modern world needs islands of peoples who teach that sexual activity outside certain parameters is sinful and even lethal or self destructive.
Sexual abstinence can be taught and encouraged, but it is a personal choice. Once the choice has been made to have sex, safe sex is the fall back position and protection must be explained and made available.
My daughter became sexually active at about 18. Which is the age of majority in B.C. where we live. The age of consent is 16.
To my knowledge she always practiced safe sex. The fact that she never got pregnent or caught disease is the only proof I have of that.
Granted, I don't know exactly what she was up to all the time, but cosidering the fact that by the time she was 21 she had visited more than 20 countries, it's not surprising.
I don't think she was ever sinful, in her mind or mine.
The modern world needs everyone to teach their kids about sex, it's meaning, it's value, and how and when to do it safely. Abstinence is only a part of the picture in reality.
Permissiveness with teenagers? Never! (Not if they're yours)
@robot, If your son or daughter is out on their own and no longer live under your roof, what choice do you have? The issue I have with the mentality of parents who condone sexual activity by minors (i.e.< those youngsters living under their roof) is that they are aiding the breakdown of society (nice society). Even in the "old world" there were people who didn't play by the rules of "decent society," but they lived on the fringes and were ostracized by most of their fellows —sometimes actually kicked out of the communities in which they were living.
My grandmother was married at age thirteen to my grandfather, who was 9 years older than her. They raised 10 children and farmed. The rules were different: Children could get married earlier back in the "old world."
In that "old world," words such as "young maiden" were important. If "nice" teenagers got together it was for romantic love and not for sex. Sex could be put off and was put off as far as the ability in one of the parties lay.
Well @Nirvana, my daughter is not mine, she is her own person, but I know what you are saying.
To condone or facilitate sex for minors or those legally underage is unskillful and probably illegal. As I said, at 16 a child is legally able to consent to sex in this country. I believe there are restrictions on the age of the person she or he can consent to have sex with. But there is nothing a parent can do to stop it from happening legally.
So it comes down to making a good arguement against sex. Or somehow coercing them.
I suppose we could have tossed our daughter out of the house, but it doubt if that would have helped her to get her degree or stay safe for that matter.
How did you handle the issue with your own kids? Did it work? I congratulate you if it did.
We succeeded. Our daughter has been in a committed relationship (OMG, living in sin), for five years now.
Seems like you did succeed, @robot!
I have no children, robot, thank the Blessed Lord! (I am no martyr! I'll have you know!) Nonetheless, I have many nieces and nephews raised by strict Catholic parents, and believe me: they all fared well. My eldest sister and her husband are both Catholic school teachers —she sixth grade and he teaches in the city's Catholic high school. One thing he teaches his high school students is not to do anything on a date that you would be embarrassed to do with your grandmother. I forget the exact wording, but the kids love it and make banners of that sentiment every year at graduation time and dote on its sentiment.
I commend the Catholic schools for still teaching ideas of personal purity and advising people not to ruin their lives with poor planning and short-term thinking. Indulgence in sexuality merely increases the appetite. I believe that sexuality needs to be sublimated in us all, but to the nth degree in our youth. However, I realize that the media has inundated everyone in sexuality and things glorifying personal gratification so that our highly impressionable youth fall victim to so many impure influences.
Now, I know this website and I know there are many virulent anti-Catholics who would take offense at what I have written, but that is just my belief and my experience. There's an Episcopal Church down the road from me not too many miles that has a plaque on its walls commending an outstanding vestryman who was a pillar of the church and who "believed practically all the doctrines of the Church." Believe me, it IS like that. You may not like all the positions the Church takes if you are Catholic, but it does help you and yours at least in this life in many measurable ways.
@Nirvana ... I'll agree that abstinence is taught in many households in the world.
It is an effective way to prevent STD's and pregnancy. It wasn't my game plan in my house...but hey...to each his own.
Your point is valid with the OP....
For more information about abstinence or any other birth control methods, heres
a link from Planned Parenthood....
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-info/birth-control/abstinence
Just to hit on the precept one more time...here is a snip from
The Five Precepts -- by Kusala Bhikshu
from a talk given at Benedict's Dharma 2
"..Buddhism says, ultimate satisfaction is never going to happen. The activity of sex will never ultimately satisfy your desire for sex.
Now, is that a bummer or what? I mean you can have sex a thousand times and want it a thousand one. When you seek satisfaction through sexual activity, your desire only gets stronger.
I'm thinking it's a lot like hunger, and to be honest with you I'm getting tired of being hungry.
I've been hungry every day of my life. I'm hungry in the morning, and I have breakfast. I'm hungry in the afternoon, and I have lunch. I'm hungry in the evening, I have dinner. Sometimes I'm hungry after dinner, and I'll have a snack.
I'm thinking if I could end my hunger forever, I'd have a lot of extra time and money. So tomorrow morning I'm going to get up real early, and I'm going to eat as much as I want, as often as I want. I'm going to be so full that I'll never want to eat again.
If I could somehow do that, it would only take a day of two to be hungry again. That is essentially how sexual desire works. It's the same deal.
What did the Buddha say specifically to lay people about sex? He said four things.
He said, do not have sex with people who are married. Do not have sex with people who are engaged. Do not have sex with people who are being supported by their parents -- children. And do not have sex with people against their will.
That's all he said. He didn't say anything else. I'm assuming he felt every community, every city, every state, every nation would initiate their own laws, their own way of moderating sexual activity.
He did say a lot to monks and nuns about not having sex... Let me say there is nothing wrong with sex. Sex is wonderful... It's the desire for sex that keeps getting in the way of our ultimate satisfaction.
Celibacy offers a monk or nun greater flexibility in how they live their life.
I don't look at not having sex as a penalty. I look at it as an opportunity. When I stopped having sexual relationships, I started to see myself in a totally different way. Not having sex became part of my inner exploration, part of my practice.
Now, does not having sex end suffering? No, it just means you suffer in a different way. Desire in not ended by not having sex, desire only ends with Nirvana."
--- http://www.urbandharma.org/kusala/revkus/5precepts.html
The Big Lie that is promulgated, especially in male Black culture, is that Desire is wonderfully desirable.
from T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton, (See Part V below)
I
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
II
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchantment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.
III
Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Dessication of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appentency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.
IV
Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.
V
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always -
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.
Um..........ok.. I'm not a black male.....so...... I'll pass along the info.......
Thanks for feeling so passionate/desirable about this thread.
Attending a teen sexuality retreat at my local Catholic Church? Not so much. Being a queer 13 year-old, I wasn't a fan of being told that people like me were mentally ill. Also, there was an awful lot of victim-blaming in relation to abuse and sexual assault going on in that retreat. I'll pass, thanks.
For a lot of kids, waiting until puberty to talk about sex is waiting too long. Too many people I know giggle their way through the early stuff, and then utterly cannot deal with it when their child becomes a sexual person. So they do nothing. If you are open and honest from the time they start asking questions at like 2 years old, it is much, much easier to be open and honest when they are older.
I'm sure my children (6,12, and 18, all boys) don't ask me everything, and I'm certainly not naive enough to think they don't talk to their friends. But they do ask me a lot of stuff, and sex is a completely comfortable topic in our house, all the ins and outs of it. We'll talk about it at the dinner table while my almost 40 year old self cannot even mention the topic to my mom without her getting flustered. And my mom was a hippie who grew up int he 60s!
My 12 year old is just really getting started in puberty, but many of the topics came up a couple of years ago already. Kids are much more sexual oriented from young ages, largely thanks to the internet and social media and ignorance on the part of their parents.
Talk to them from the start. When they are 2 and ask what their genitals are, tell them. because when they get to be 10 and you are still giggling like a child over their cute nicknames for their body parts, it'll be too late.
@karasti said: Talk to them from the start. When they are 2 and ask what their genitals are, tell them. because when they get to be 10 and you are still giggling like a child over their cute nicknames for their body parts, it'll be too late.
The giggling parents are in poor shape to guide or instruct their kids, if they have a stilted view of things...if they got through it on a wing and a prayer themselves. I think there's potential there to do more harm than good.
Just my 2 cents.
Some of them are truly uneducated. Those aren't the people I meant though. I know people who are RNs even who are too uncomfortable to talk to their children about sex. For most people that I know (and mostly the ones I am talking about) they are educated and fully knowledgeable. It just makes them way too uncomfortable to consider their child as a sexual being, and so they don't bring up the topic or anything associated with it. I know people who have kids going off to college and their only advice is "make sure you wear a condom." There is no discussion of the emotional or psychological aspect, no discussion on what it means to get an STD.
My 2 older kids watched The Normal Heart with us last spring and we had a lot of discussion about it. It was a way to open the door and had more of an emotional impact than simply me talking to them. I can't tell you how many parents said I was irresponsible for exposing my kids to that, yet they have their 10 year old playing Grand Theft Auto, learning all about how to treat women and how sex is for the taking.
In the US especially, sex makes parents extremely uncomfortable. And too few of them go beyond their own comfort to educate and prepare their kids about all aspects of it. Even though most of them have the knowledge to do so. They leave it up to the school to teach sex ed, and tell them to use protection. That is the extent of their involvement and then we wonder how in the world we are raising a culture of boys who think it is ok to rape drunk girls.