섹슈얼리티에 대한 기독교의 독특한 선입견

### 종교적 맥락에서 본 섹스와 신체에 대한 서구의 집착
* 👥 서구 종교, 특히 기독교는 성에 대한 독특한 선입견을 가지고 있으며, 종종 **'죄악 속에 사는 것'을 불규칙한 성관계**와 동일시합니다.
* 🚫 기독교와 유대교는 역사적으로 **성을 금기시해 왔으며, 많은 종교 지도자들이 성을 죄악시**하고 더러운 것으로 여겼습니다.
* 🔒 교회는 성적인 행동에 대해 엄격한 규정을 시행해 왔으며, 이로 인해 다른 부도덕한 행동은 간과되는 반면 **성적 '일탈'로 인해 추방당하는 경우**가 종종 있습니다.
* 💔 서양 종교에서 성에 대한 부정적인 시각은 **육체적 쾌락이 일시적이고 궁극적으로 만족스럽지 않다**는 믿음에 뿌리를 두고 있습니다.
* 🧘 특히 인도의 동양 종교에서는 영적 깨달음을 얻기 위해 **육체적 쾌락으로부터의 분리**를 강조합니다.
* ⛔ 연사는 육체적 쾌락으로부터의 분리가 영적 성장을 위해 필요하다는 생각에 도전하며, **육체적 세계의 무상함이 아름다움과 생명력의 일부**라고 주장합니다.
* 🔗 연사는 신체를 통제하거나 초월해야 할 하등하고 동물적인 요소로 보는 서구의 관점이 **종교적 사고의 문제적 측면**이라고 제안합니다.
* ⏳ 궁극적으로 화자는 물리적 세계가 신성한 존재에 의해 창조되었다면 **왜 실수나 올무로 여겨지는지 의문**을 제기합니다.

서양 남성의 성에 대한 집착은 기독교의 성에 대한 독특한 강조에서 비롯된 것으로, 육체적 세계에 대한 억압적이고 변태적인 태도로 이어집니다.

i don't think i need to tell you that in a very special and peculiar way western man is hung up on sex. [Music] and the major reason for this is that he has a religious background. [Music] quite unique among the religions of the world. i'm thinking specifically of christianity and in the secondary way judaism. in so far as judaism in europe and the united states is strongly influenced by christianity. but christianity is of all religions in the world the one uniquely preoccupied with sex. more so than prioritism. more so than tantric yoga. more so than any kind of fertility cult which has ever existed on the face of the earth. there has never never never been a religion in which sexuality was so important. and these are a certain very simple standards by which this can be judged. in popular speech when you say of a given person that he or she is living in sin. [Music] you know very well that there you do not mean that they are engaged in a business to

defraud the public by the sale of uh badly made bread or uh anything of that kind. You know that they're not uh setting up a check forgery business. No, people who are living in sin are people who have an irregular sexual partnership. [Music] In the same way, when you say something is immoral, uh it pretty much means that it's something sexually irregular. I remember when I was a boy in school, we used to have a preacher. He came to us every year, the same man once a year, and he always talked on the subject of drink, gambling, and immorality. I remember the way he rolled it around his tongue, and it was very clear what immorality was. [Music] And also, I might point out that the present company accepted the Unitarian Church being somewhat unusual. Most churches in America and in England and in other parts of uh the Western world are frankly sexual regulation societies. They occasionally get excited about other moral issues, but really not very much. In other words, when you ask what can people get kicked out of church.

for let's suppose you consider important ministers bishops priests and so on they can live in envy hatred malice and all uncharitableness and be in perfectly good standing but the moment anything about their sexual life becomes a little unusual out you go and that's about the only thing you can go out for you study for example a roman catholic manual of moral theology these manuals of moral theology are technical books about sins of all kinds just exactly what they are how they are done how grave they are for mostly for the advice of confessors and they're always arranged according to the ten commandments and uh when they get to the commandment thou shalt not commit adultery the volume expands like this in fact it occupies two thirds of the whole book all the details so we have in a very special way got sex on the brain which isn't exactly the right place for it [Applause] [Music] now this needs going into because it is not as simple as it looks [Music]

there are really two roots of the whole problem. One of them is the problem of why sexual pleasure, of all pleasures, as a kind of really supreme pleasure, is singled out for religious people to be particularly afraid of. This is not only true in Christianity. I say Christianity emphasizes it in a certain way, but in Asian religions also, especially in India, there is a prevailing view that if you want to attain real heights of spirituality, the one thing you must give up is sexuality in the ordinary sense of genital sexual relationships with man or woman, as the case may be. And this reflects in part, you see, an attitude to the physical world, because it is, after all, through sexuality that we have, along with eating, our most fundamental relationship to materiality, to nature, to the physical universe, and it is the point at which we can become most attached to the body, to the physical organism, to material life. That's one reason why it's problematic. The other reason why it's problematic is

more subtle and that is that sexuality is something which you cannot get rid of. [Music] Do what you may, life is sexual. In the sense, for example, that you are either male or female. There are various other gradations, uh, but basically they are forms of maleness and femaleness. And also that every one of you is the result of sexual intercourse. And this feature of life can be looked at in one of two ways. You can say, on the one hand, that all man's higher ideals, his spirituality, and so forth, is simply repressed sexuality. Or on the other hand, you can say that human sexuality is a manifestation, a particular form, or expression of what is spiritual, metaphysical, divine, or whatever you want to call it. I hold to the latter view. I don't think that religion is repressed sexuality. I think, however, that sexuality is just one of the many forms in which, uh, whatever all this is expresses itself. But you see, if this thing is something you cannot get rid of, and if you realize that indeed a way of life in which sexuality is in

some way put down or repressed is nonetheless an expression of sexuality. Then we come to a view of a religion in which sex is a very special taboo, which is rather unusual. It's normally said, You see, yes, Christianity is a religion in which sex is taboo, and this is simply no getting around it. [Music] I know up-to-date ministers today, I think sex is all right. It's perfectly okay if you're married and you've got a mature relationship with a woman. It's all right, and they kind of damn it with faint praise. But if you read anything of Christian writings prior, shall we say, to 1850, to set a date rather arbitrarily, you will find that it's not all right, not at all. It's tolerated between married couples and strictly for the procreation of children, but on the whole, to do without it is [Music] best. If Paul put it, it's better to marry than to burn, to burn with the fire of lust, and ultimately to burn in hell. But always consistently, there is simply

no getting away from it in all the writings of the church fathers from saint paul himself right through to saint ignatius loyola or any of the great relatively modern uh leaders of catholic spirituality or you can look at calvin. You can look at great protestants john knox on the whole the sex is sin and sex is dirt and you can say very simply that this is all bad and something very wrong but i want to point out that there is another side to all this. There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it and as a result of all these centuries of sexual repression and associating it with dirt the west has developed a peculiar form of eroticism but that is a an aspect of this whole problem which i don't think is really very profitable to explore. I just want to mention it in passing that the whole attitude of anti-sexuality in the christian tradition is not as anti as it looks.

it is simply a method of making sex. [Music] prurient and in exciting in a kind of dirty way. And I suppose is to be recommended for people who are not feeling very frisky and uh need to be pepped up. The other side of the problem is much more interesting, that is to say, uh the first thing I mentioned. Why it is that there has been a problem for human beings about pleasure. And we will take sexual activity as a supreme pleasure, as a supreme involvement of oneself with the body and with the physical world. Why should there be a problem here? Well, the point is simply, isn't it? [Music] That the physical world is transient. It's impermanent. It falls apart, and bodies that were once strong, smooth, and lovely in youth begin to wither and become corrupt and turn at last into skeletons. And if you cling on to one of those and it suddenly turns into a skeleton in your hand as it will if you speed up your sense of time a little, you feel cheated. And there has been for

centuries a lament about this that life is so short that all the beauties of this world fall apart. [Music] and therefore if you are wise you don't set your heart on mortal beauty but you set on heart your heart on spiritual values that are imperishable even that supposed tippler and rake omar khayyam says that the worldly hope men set their hearts upon turns ashes or it prospers and a non-like snow upon the desert's dusty face lighting a little hour or two is gone and so don't bet on that horse and read any kind of spiritual literature you want to christian buddhist hindu taoist all of them seem to emphasize the importance of detachment from the body from the physical world so that you won't be engulfed in the stream of impermanence the idea being you see that to the degree that you identify yourself with the body and with the pleasures of the body to that degree you are simply going to

be something that is sucked away in the course of transiency so therefore hold yourself aloof. [Music] As in, for example, the advice of many Hindus in the practice of yoga, you are advised to look upon all sensory experiences as something out there which you simply witness. [Music] You yourself identify yourself with the eternal spiritual unchanging self, the witness of all that goes on, but who is no more involved in it than, say, the smoothness or the color of a mirror is affected by the things which it reflects. Keep your mind like a mirror, pure and clean, free from dust, free from flaws, free from stain, and just reflect everything that goes on, but don't be attached. You will find this all over the place, but it has always seemed to me that that attitude of essential detachment from the physical universe has underlying it a very serious problem, the problem being why a physical universe at all. In that case, if God has, uh, in is in some way responsible for the existence of a creation, and if this creation is basically a

snare why did he do it? And of course, according to some theologies, the physical universe is looked upon as a mistake as they fall from the divine state as if something went wrong in the heavenly domain and causing spirits such as we are to fall from their highest state and to become involved with animal bodies. And so, there is an ancient analogy of man which runs right through to the present time that your relationship to your body is that of a rider to a horse. [Music] Saint Francis called his body brother ass, that you are irrational soul in charge of an animal body. And therefore, where if you belong to the old-fashioned school, you beat it into submission as said Paul said, I beat my body into submission. Or if you are a Freudian, you treat your horse not with a whip but with lumps of sugar, kindly but still it's your horse. Even in Freud, there is a very, very strong element of puritanism. Read Philip Rief's book and how he shows that Freud basically

thought that sex was degrading, but nevertheless something biologically unavoidable, something terribly necessary which couldn't just be swept aside. It had to be dealt with, but there is, you see, that heritage of thinking of ourselves as divided: the ego as the rational soul of spiritual origin, and the physical body as the animal component. [Music] And therefore, all success in life, spiritual success, requires the spiritualization of the animal component, the sublimation of its dirty and the strange urges, so that it's thoroughly cleaned up. I suppose the ideal sexual relationship of such persons would be held on an operating table under disinfectant sprays. [Music] Now, it is of course true that the physical world, its beauty and so on, is transient. We are all falling apart in some way or another, especially after you pass the peak of youth, but it's never struck me that that is something to gripe about. That the physical world is transient seems to me to be part of its splendor. I can imagine nothing more awful than, say, attaining to the age

of 30, and suddenly being frozen in that age for always and always, you would become a kind of. We would all be a sort of animated wax works. [Music]. And you would discover, as a matter of fact, that people who had that physical permanence would feel like plastic. And that is, as a matter of fact, what is going to be done about us by technology. In order to attain perpetual use, all the parts of us that decay and fold up are going to be replaced by very skillfully manufactured plastic parts. So that in the end, we will be entirely made of very, very sophisticated plastic. And everybody will feel like that, and everybody will be utterly bored with each other. Because the very fact, you see, that the world is always decaying and always falling away is the same thing as its vitality. Vitality is change. Life is death. [Music]. It is always falling apart. And so there are certain supreme moments, you see, at which in the body we attain superb vitality. And that's the time, make it then.

that's the moment just like when an orchestra is playing. The conductor wants to get a certain group of, say, violins to come in at a certain moment. And he's conducting, and he's got to now make it, and they all have to do it right now. See, of course, that's the whole art of like to do it at the right time, to do it in time like you dance or you play in time. And so, in the same way, when it comes to love, sexuality, or equally so in all the pleasures of gastronomy, timing is of the essence. [Music] And then it's happened, and you've had it. [Music] You

Peoples Addictions To Sexual Pleasures - Alan Watts

The I Behind The I - Meditation

서양 종교의 성에 대한 독특한 선입견

기독교와 유대교는 다른 종교에 비해 성에 대해 독특하고 극단적인 관점을 가지고 있습니다.

이들 종교에서 '죄악 속에 사는 것'과 부도덕의 개념은 거의 전적으로 성적 부조리를 중심으로 합니다.

서구 세계의 대부분의 교회는 주로 성 규율에 관심을 갖고 있으며 파문의 주요 원인으로 간주합니다.

성적 쾌락을 둘러싼 종교적 낙인

성적 쾌락은 종종 최고의 쾌락으로 꼽히며 많은 종교인들이 두려워하는데, 이는 육체적 세계에 대한 태도와 신체에 대한 집착의 가능성을 반영합니다.

또한 성은 피할 수 없는 것이며 영적이거나 신성한 어떤 것의 표현으로 볼 수 있다는 사실에서 딜레마가 발생합니다.

1850년 이전의 많은 기독교 저술은 성에 대한 억압을 강력하게 강조하며 출산을 목적으로만 성을 장려했습니다.

기독교 전통에서 성적 억압의 이중적 성격

기독교 전통에서는 섹스를 죄악스럽고 더러운 것으로 간주해 온 역사가 있지만, 섹스를 더 흥미롭게 만드는 방법으로 보는 또 다른 관점도 존재합니다.

성적 억압의 핵심에 있는 더 깊은 문제는 육체적 세계의 무상함에 대한 투쟁과 많은 영적 전통에서 육체적 쾌락으로부터의 분리를 강조하는 것입니다.

성적 억압의 이러한 이중적 성격은 육체적 욕망을 자극하고 초월하는 역할을 강조합니다.

물리적 우주로부터의 분리 개념

많은 힌두교의 가르침은 감각적 경험에서 벗어나 영원한 영적 자아와 동일시하라고 조언합니다.

이러한 태도는 물리적 우주가 일부 신학에서 올무나 실수로 간주된다면 왜 존재하는지에 대한 의문을 제기합니다.

이성적 영혼과 동물적 육체를 구분하는 많은 철학에는 성공을 위한 육체적 충동을 영화하고 승화시킬 필요성을 강조하는 오랜 믿음이 있습니다.

기술이 인간의 활력에 미치는 영향

기술이 썩어가는 인체 부위를 플라스틱으로 대체해 영원한 젊음을 얻을 수 있다는 기대는 인위적이고 지루한 느낌을 줍니다.

세상의 쇠퇴와 변화는 활력을 위해 필수적이며, 최고의 활력을 느끼는 순간은 인생의 즐거움에서 결정적인 역할을 합니다.

오케스트라에서 연주하듯 사랑, 성, 미식의 즐거움을 경험하는 데 있어 타이밍은 삶의 본질을 포착하는 데 매우 중요하다고 강조합니다.