Today I went and saw Vega, a String Quartet, perfrom Beethoven at the Carlos Museum as a part of Friday noon time concerts. Opus No 135 was a brain fuck.

To qoute Vikram Seth from Equal Music, "the heart can't bear too much of this music, except from time to time". That's all I have to say about that.

Inspired by John Folwes’s “Aristos”, I penned some quick thoughts:

1. Sex leads to collapse of ego because of the nakedness it requires.

2. Orgasm is the point of annihilation of the self leading to freedom from the tensional states of living.

3. Sex in itself is neither good nor bad. It is energy. It is force.

4. The quality of a sexual act is determined by the framework that surrounds it. The framework consists of the decisions or impulses before and the consequences (net good or net bad) after. Few questions to ask: a. Was it engendered by a life affirming impulse vs. passivity or death? b. Are the consequences creative or joyful vs. chaotic or dissipative? c. Is the framework “transactional” (exchange of sexual favors towards some end, “using” of the other person) vs. “meditative” (a pathway to further familiarity and deeper meaning)

5. The quality of the framework also determines the “rasa” (Sanskrit: aesthetic pleasure) of the sexual act. It determines if it is a repetitive monotonous act or a “spiritual” process.

6. The framework can be thought of as the body of an engine where forces come together. Fuel and air mix and are sparked. If the engine is well designed, the energy is converted into something of utility, as an example, a driver to one’s creative effort. If the engine is shoddy or non existent, while it surely leads to wastage of energy, can also leave “scars”.

7. Sex cannot create the framework anymore more than a force can create the engine! To make the engine is the job of a craftsman.

8. Wide sexual experience has to be recognized as a double edged sword. The utility of it lies in the fact that it enables one to “taste” Life’s fundamental mystery in a multiplicity of modes (multiple partners, places, styles and times). However such multiple “tasting” doesn’t subsume “experiencing”. It might even act as a hindrance toward that deep “experiencing” by destroying the “freshness” (Zen equivalent: empty mind) that is required. Such “grease” can clog up the engine and require an extensive “overhaul”.

9. Marriage (the culmination of a relationship?) or any other “relationship” does not simply imply a license to have “lict” or “moral” (guilt free?) sex. They however do imply an opportunity and a commitment to love or at the very least (given how most of us don’t know a jack about love or how to be loving) an opportunity to learn how to love.

10. Man is always torn between giving and receiving. And this can be extended to sexual pleasure. All wisdom however points to the advantages of giving. First it provides “closet space” to put what one might then receive. Second it always involves expansion, which also happens to be the sign of Life. Third the only “control” one can exert on is on “giving”.

11. Human neuroses, which may affect sex, cannot be addressed or cured by having more sex.

12. Sexual revolution can only follow “spiritual” revolution.