A touch of silk

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  • Published 20131203
  • ISBN: 9781922079992
  • Extent: 264 pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

DURING THE 1970s and ’80s I taught meditation in a dozen or so countries throughout East Asia and the Pacific on behalf of my guru. Although dressed in plain clothes, in most respects I lived and worked as a latter-day monk. After a three-year relationship with a brilliant young woman had failed to resolve my attraction to men, the option of celibacy required for this service was a welcome alternative; I was happy to lob sexuality into the too-hard basket.

With that issue on hiatus, I settled down to concentrate on something else; just as, in a scientific experiment, you attempt to eliminate as many variables as possible in order to focus on the element or process that you want to examine. Who or what is a ‘homosexual’ when he is not having sex? Is sexuality a sufficient basis on which to build an identity?

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