Breaking news: The Buddha had a Penis.

Holy Sex, Batman!, or, why elephant writes all those “Naked Sexy” blogs, and why we don’t think spirituality need be unsexy, holier-than-thou or serious. ~ed.

elephant and I get gently teased, and rightfully so, for occasionally indulging in the art of traffic. What’s that? You know: titles and images that involve the words “sex,” “sexy,” “naked,” “nude.” We’re perhaps best known for our “Naked Yoga” post, or our “Richard Branson Naked” blog…in any case, we always try and bring it back to Dharma, to path, to humor, and to inject a bunch of un-anticipated good content into the mix that might otherwise go ignored.

It’s like Sting said about an album, once: “I sing a hit song so that I can sing all the other 11 songs on the album that I actually care about but get ignored.” Paraphrasing.

Thing is, literally 98% of our posts are “Boring”—you know, about important things that matter. They might have some humor and fun to ’em—I would hope so—but many of the posts I write about, say, the Everglades or Health Care or bicycling get more or less ignored. And so the sexy, silly, and controversial posts bring in the masses, and trickle some attention down to the posts that might be a bit less click-happy.

Rationalization? It would be, if our sexy posts had nothing to do with our mission. Fact is, they do. Feminism vs. objectification, + humor is core to our mission. Sex and love and loneliness are all vital parts to a life well-lived. Passion and clinging, attachment and confusion, are all obstacles that we must “bring to the path.” We hope to address, from time to time, questions like

Does Meditation help Love-making?

Because elephant isn’t (unlike some spiritual blogs/magazines) about being holier-than-thou. We’re about living, and writing, and thinking, and arguing from time to time, right here in the thick of the “slime and muck of the dark ages.”

Perhaps it’s America’s Puritanical hangover, but whenever I post something “sexy,” it gets 1,000 titillated clicks before you can say ifyoudon’twantuswritingaboutsexornuditydon’tclickthispostclicktheother15wewrotetodaythatareimportantbutgettingignored, and 1 or 2 righteous displays of anger. “WTF!”, a reader eloquently inevitably cries in a comment! And I comment, back, hey: I like sex, personally, it’s part of our lives, and therefore part of this blog’s mission. And stop calling me names, it hurts.

I mean, after all, even Mother Theresa probably had a few crushes in her time. And the Buddha had a wife, and a child, and he left them both. He wasn’t perfect. He lusted. And he came back to the present moment, again and again, until he was enlightened, and could serve others, and clarify confusion, and lust. And he died a good friend of his ex-wife, who had become his meditation student and lifelong friend.

Thus endeth the Holy Sex, Batman sermon from on high down low.