The Red Thread of Passion; Spirituality and the Paradox of Sex by David Guy

"It is one of those rules that must be broken to be maintained," says David Guy in his description of the lax attitude of Zen monks towards novices who sneak out to visit brothels. I picked this book up because of my interest in paradox and because there really does seem to be a communality between sexual and spiritual passion -- a transcendence of the day-to-day babble of our human minds. With, perhaps, more emphasis on sex than on spirituality Guy examines the lives of Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, philosopher Alan Watts and pornographer Marco Vassi. Then he delves into the beliefs and practices of lesser known contemporaries who have become sex therapists. Along the way there is much support for Buddhist approaches to life. "In the West," he writes, "God is the architect of the universe and has a plan, but in the East the universe is a spontaneous process of growth." In the end, the author seems to meld spirit and sex as simply forms of universal energy. He quotes William Blake as saying "Energy is eternal delight."