The notion that sexual relationships are honorable, fulfilling and beneficial is obviously true, yet this truth has experienced the greatest difficulty in being publicly acknowledged.
The difficulty varies. If the idea is more often admitted in the East than in the West, this is perhaps because the condemnation is less organized. Asia did not have to put up with too many puritanical religions and it did not have to tolerate an accepted philosophical system that sundered body and soul, mind and spirit.
Descartes could no more tolerate wholeness than could Thomas Aquinas -- though for quite different reasons. For both, and for the religious and philosophical systems that followed, division was necessary.
Though Asia certainly has its dichotomies, these often do not include the sexual; in fact certain religious adepts can advocate this aspect of faith without running a risk of intellectual ridicule or excommunication.
One such was Ikkyu, Zen's most famous priest, later Daitoku-ji's chief abbot, forever at odds with the church he represented and forever faithful to the Zen that had illuminated him. In a poem named "A Woman's Sex" he wrote: "It has the original mouth but remains wordless/ It is surrounded by a magnificent mound of hair./ Sentient beings get completely lost in it./ But it is also the birthplace of all the Buddhas of the ten thousand worlds."
The translation is by the author of the book under review. He comes well-qualified, since he wrote not only "Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu," but also "Lust for Enlightenment: Buddhism and Sex."
Now he gives us "an exploration of the vision of sacred sex -- consensual, noncoercive, nonpossessive, mutually fulfilling and beneficial, and totally intimate -- as expressed in human culture, past and present, East and West."
He does this not only through text, but through pictures as well. In keeping with the Tantric tradition that "it is art that most directly reveals the truth," Stevens includes many visual images (nearly all published here for the first time), and in so doing provides a basis for the appreciation of erotic art.
"Good erotic art cherishes, celebrated and elevates sex; pornography cheapens, degrades and negates it. Erotic art presents the sexual experience in a bright, positive and sympathetic manner; pornography relishes violence, violation and perversion."
The 120 examples include Cycladic statues, Taoist couplings, pre-Columbian earthware, Thai folding books, Roman bas-reliefs, statues from Konarak, Indian watercolors, Tibetan mandalas, Eric Gill woodcuts, Henri Matisse linoleum-cuts (see the cover illustration on this page) and a wealth of material from Japan.
Indeed, of local pre-eminence in the field, Stevens says: "In terms of output, it is likely that more erotic art -- both fine and folk -- was produced in Japan over the centuries than in any other land."
One also learns that "A well-formed lingam has the power to fascinate, a word derived from the Latin fascinum, a name the Romans used to denote the male sex organ."
Also that "misguided coaches attempt to deny their players access to sex before important games in the belief that such deprivation makes for a meaner and more aggressive team." On the other hand, "the English National Ballet recently urged its dancers to have sex before a show to inspire them to make their performances more passionate."
Stevens' admonitory earnestness sometimes betrays a proselytizer's urge, but his cause is a good one, and now that the British Museum has moved its erotica out of the closet and into the vitrines the time has certainly come for redress.
Aiding this is a 45-page annotated bibliography that is the best on the subject that I have ever seen -- thus concluding an enlightening and even inspiring volume.
Copies are locally available (2,000 yen postpaid) through the author, Professor John Stevens, Tohoku Fukushi University, Aoba-ku, Kunimi 1, 8-1, Sendai 981-8522.
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