By Thomas Moore
As I’ve been writing a book about sex in recent months, I’ve had the Kama Sutra , the Indian guide to personal sexual culture, spread out on my desk in front of me, and occasionally I’ve consulted the Internet to track down relevant books and articles. On the Internet, I’ve noticed, as soon as you venture in the direction of sex you quickly come upon graphic images showing crude, unadorned forms of stark sexual union. Apparently we have finally found a public place where we can show our private parts and secret fantasies, free of the repressive eyes of governmental agencies in service of the puritan philosophies that dominate our culture, but here there is no love, little sentimentality, and almost nothing that could be called foreplay in any innocent sense of the word.
In contrast, the Kama Sutra discusses a wide range of sexual matters, beginning with the general comportment of one’s life (dharma), establishing personal economic security (artha), and the arts of love (kama). I notice that the Kama Sutra, graphic and open-minded in its own way, places sex within the context of a refined humane life, while the Internet focuses on organs and acts.
I’m reminded of the beautiful erotic figures carved into the Indian temples of Khurajaho and Kanarak over one thousand years ago, images that depict every imaginable sex act within a context of worship and prayer, and I wonder why the Indians put their sexual fantasies on temples while we give ours over to pornography. This is one of those questions that I believe, if we could answer it, would pinpoint exactly what’s wrong with our culture.
Although I’m convinced we’re all moralists at heart, I’m not interested in making any judgments here about the ethics or appropriateness of the Kama Sutra, the temple sex couples, or the Internet, but I am interested in the sexual life of the community I live in. We seem to be both obsessed with sex and embarrassed by it. Sex sells, I’m told by almost everyone who hears I’m writing about the theme. Some insinuate that I must be writing about sex for the royalties alone, cashing in on our mass compulsion, but I wonder if I’ll lose readers, because one isn’t supposed to be interested in both spirituality and sex unless you’re writing about sacred sex, whatever that is, or offering suitably cantankerous health or moral cautions.