Quote:FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES until today, indigenous Japanese religion, known as Shinto, has maintained a sex-positive ideology, particularly with regard to the role of sex in procreation. Even now, it is possible to see in village festivals processions which feature enormous carved wooden phalli which are taken out of the local shrine and paraded around the fields so as to bless them and make them fecund. Unlike in Christian creation myths where the advent of awareness of sexual dimorphism is seen to mark a deterioration in the human condition (resulting in expulsion from Eden), in Japanese mythology the divine ancestors Izanagi and Izanami are shown to be curious and experimental about sex.
Source:
Buddhism and sex in Japan
I think clearly most of us come from a very different background, having been very negatively conditioned towards sex (at best, a practice that one has to refrain from public scrutiny). We are from a background which teaches to be shameful of our bodies. Still today many people don't properly educate their children about sex. I'm speaking of course of
certain religions which are an integral part of our culture and history, whether we like it or not.
Our society (in the West)'s view on sexuality is totally unhealthy. Today even in my country (Belgium) I have talked to men who would not dare anymore be playful
with their own children in public spaces for fear of being reported for paedophilia. This has been worsened by the media's constant hunger for negativity.
I remember in Japan there were statues of naked women in the center plaza of megastores. Sometimes just standing, sometimes hanging from the ceiling, like flying angels. Breasts and genitals uncovered. If I remember well, there were also sometimes naked children. Like a woman and her little girl. I thought it was beautiful and how sad it is that in my country, in Europe, we can not simply enjoy the beauty of our own bodies.
From a spiritual point of view, as far as I understand, porn is a deformation of reality. In that sense, it's no more a deformation of reality than the filtered news fed to us on a daily basis, or the ill-named "reality shows". In my opinion one can learn about oneself while watching porn as any other material. It's especially interesting to feel one's body or focus the attention inwards when watching this kind of arousing material.. to feel where the sexual energy arises from, how it rises and falls (like waves). The "sex" porn variety I guess is one of the most hypnotizing type of so called "reality shows".
It can be a good lesson in itself, to see how the mind grasps on it.
So yeah I'm afraid to disappoint some of our more conservative members, I have watched my fair share of porn, both western and Japanese. Most interesting I found by observing my own body while watching such material, is that the mind will totally let go of it when you watch it
consciously. By that I mean, you may be drawn to porn initially by a strong emotional impulse, but if you really slow down and observe the mind and the body, and keep the movie secondary (best to lower the audio to minimum), then you find at some point the energy falls down and if you leave it at that, it does not linger in the mind.
I thought that was very interesting because in those days where I was worried of being addicted to porn, I read many resources from feminists and people fighting for banning of porn or certain representation of women, and I was largely unconvinced. More worrying I saw blogs of men who described themsevles as porn addicts, as if they had some kind of terrible diseases, and they would resort to religion (praying) or discussion groups (like alcoholic anonymous) to try to take it out of their life. I kept thinking how sad it is, that the very best way to "heal' themselves would have been to actually watch porn consciously rather than try to demonize it...
As for the Japanese porn I have seen, I agree it was more sensitive than the western type. Sometimes very inventive. My impression is that women are not treated as much as objects as they are in western porn, but there's all kinds of porn as has been mentioned so YMMV. I remember one scene with a girl who was sitting on a chair and wrapped in toilet paper, she looked like a mummy
Then one guy playfully sprayed her with a children plastic gun, which made the paper slowly fall down and reveal her perfect breasts and body. She smiled and laughed through it. It was like the ending scene. They then offered her a bouquet of flowers. Go find that in Western porn! I didn"t see any "sin" in there, I thought it was rather sensitive.
