Download Clouds and Rain General

Clouds and Rain
Questions
• Are sexual relations and desire understood
as an obstacle or means to sagehood and
self-transformation in Late Imperial China?
Modern Common Sense
• Religious
– The delights of the flesh are:
• sinful at worst, an unavoidable necessity at best.
• detrimental to spiritual accomplishment
• the root of rebirth and suffering.
• Humanist Modernity
– Sex (leading to orgasm) is natural and healthy.
– Spontaneity in sexual relations is:
• possible
• a more sincere/honest expression of love than
“mere” technique
• Biology/Anthropology
– Sexual attraction and coitus in humans is a
natural mechanism for the reproduction of the
species.
• Post-Modern
– Sexual relations and gender are cultural
constructions tending to privilege particular
social factions (e.g. males) or individuals with
little or no material basis in the body.
• Pleasure?
Breathing and Eating
All else…
Common (Empirical) Sense
Late Imperial China
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Loss of semen (qiye), Energy (jingqi) is depleted
Activation positive
Aging results from potency (jingqi) depletion
Desire (yu) increases with emission frequency-addiction
Energy can be transferred between people
Birth to puberty: abundance of energy (yang)
Abstinence is harmful, physiologically and
psychologically
Full arousal to balance internal jing
9. Mingling essences (jing and blood) produce
life: external.
10. Conjugal harmony : sexual compatibility
Sexual Ethical Substance
• Essence (jing)
• urogenital (renal) system shen4 腎
– including brain, bones, marrow, teeth, hair,
saliva
– will zhi
• Medical and religious
Mode of Subjugation
• Natural law
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Interaction out of natural desire
Intentionality of Heaven and Earth
Primal vitalities of the Pre-natal Realm
Cf. orgasm
Uro-gental System
• Pre-natal: yang, fire agent, sexual energy,
• Post-natal: yin, water agent, semen
– “Ministerial Fire” 相火
• dysfunction: water-fire imbalance
– yang deficiency therapy: qi
– yin deficiency therapy: tone blood
“Battle of the sexes”
• Male disadvantage: easily overcome
• Female advantage:
– bring forth life
– undiminished
– unsatisfied
• Male coitus reservatus
– Anabolic advantage: relaxation, oxygenation,
circulation
• Orgasm
– Catabolic disadvantage: lactic buildup, oxygen debt,
sweat
Telos
• Confucian: restrained pleasure, social
economy, health
• Buddhist: attachment, karma
• Neidan: basis for elixir, health and nondeath as goals unethical
• Elite/gentry: pleasure, health