Part One

'I love women, I think they're great/ They're a solace to the world in a terrible state/ They're a blessing to the eyes, a balm to the soul/ What a nightmare to have no women in the world.' 'Women' by Lou Reed.

It's from 'The Blue Mask', an album whose sweetest songs are enough to dissolve the listener into a sugary paradise; while the vicious numbers are as stark and brutal as anything you'll find in the catalogue of rock.

I've never been able to make out whether Reed's being serious in this song or taking the piss. Maybe both. Lou Reed of the ambiguous and ambivalent sexuality. Yet when he penned 'Women' he was in the early stages of being wed to Sylvia Morales, a marriage birthed in heaven but eventually washed up on the rocks of a stormy hell. 

I'm a bit like Lou on this one. I've always felt that women are great. OK, I've had my share of rejections and manipulations; heartbreaks and miscellaneous other sufferings and being messed about. But this has failed to affect my overall feeling.

This personal inclination is actually very simple and straightforward. Once I got over the 'from another planet' scenario which came with spending too much time in male-only institutions, I generally got on well with females. My issue would be almost that I got on too well: my difficulty would be in translating a good friendly relationship into something more carnal. I'd leave it too long. And by the time I got round to trying, the woman would have opted for the 'friends for life' slot for our communication.

When I immersed myself in Buddhist activities towards the end of 1976, the thing was 'single sex'. Separate living and working situations for the males and the females. Single-sex study groups, meditation retreats, and so on. 

I had no problem with this, and embraced the set-up with some enthusiasm. My consent was based on pragmatic considerations rather than anything ideological. Above all else, I needed to calm down, 'get my head together', nurture my visions and inspirations in a steady and balanced way. Simplicity was the key. It was difficult to focus on the breath in meditation when the musky scent, whether real or imagined, of the girl sitting on the meditation cushion next to you was giving you a hard-on. No. Single-sex made for easy living, for the time being at least.    

Not everybody shared this fairly uncomplicated perspective. Talk was of 'leaving mother' as a requisite for being initiated into being a true man. The implication was clear: no girlies in your life if you want to get on, especially if you want to get on in the spiritual life.

In some respects I couldn't argue. Dharma was not an easy way, and needed all your energies. You couldn't be wholehearted about it if you were giving half your emotional energy away to some female or other. Nevertheless, it didn't feel right. The idea seemed to be based on a  bastardisation of something from Freud or wherever, equating all boy-girl relationships with that with mummy; they comprised nothing more than holding on to her apron strings. All manifested neurotic attachment and dependency - good no-no buzz words in the Buddhist community. It was a reductionist psychology. 

The consequence personally was that I didn't take very much notice, and just got on with my meditation practice. But these ideas affected communication between some of the Buddhists deeply. There were young men who would avoid the women, and speak in short, sharp tones when confrontation was unavoidable. For their part, some of the women took on a streak of strident feminism, and adopted a 'fuck you' attitude to the males. Mutual suspicion became an everyday phenomenon.

As a way out of the trap of heterosexual neurotic dependency, some of the men and the women took to same-sex relationships. Ha Ha! What a laugh! No neurosis there.....

You know what happens when somebody says to you: 'Whatever you do, don't think about carrots!' It was the same with some of the guys and not thinking about sex.

And all of this took place within a wider context of Buddhist practice, where metta, or loving-kindness, was supposed to be the order of the day. Hmmmmm.... 

Part Two

For most of the 1980s I lived and worked full-time as a Buddhist. For the majority of this time I was chairman of the local centre in West London.

For much of the 1980s I also had a girlfriend. The relationship was predominantly fun, sexy and sexual, sometimes adventurous, and included some great travelling, notably two art, sex, and sun trips to the then land of all my dreams, Italy.

On the second of these adventures, we touched down in the little airport of Bologna. My girlfriend had recently had her hair cut pretty short and dyed it pink. Punky. The dude at airport 'security' spied a likely victim, and ordered her to empty her luggage. There, at the bottom of the suitcase, our little representative of officialdom found what he wanted. Almost hidden away was a closed bag. Gleefully he put his hand inside that bag, only to pull it out completely covered in staining pink dye. That was a good moment.

Two days after our first ever night together, I had an important meeting with a bank manager, with the aim of securing a sizeable loan for our new Buddhist venture - either a new centre or the whole food shop, I don't remember which. It was vital to be on top of my game for this. However, I attended the meeting with a large blue-black love bite on my neck, which added to my credibility no end. My new-found girlfriend found this very funny; I didn't. Needless to say, we got the dosh....

The thing is this. I was Buddhist. A full-timer. My girlfriend was also Buddhist. Full time. And that's the story. 

Word got round of this sexual relationship - with all the neurotic attachments inevitably following in its wake. I went to a weekend gathering of male members of the Buddhist Order and got a surprise. A number of prominent individuals treated me in a new and different way. I once was an ideal kind of Buddhist; everybody wanted to know what I had to say, to go for a walk with me on Saturday afternoon, to bask in mutual friendship. No more. I could see the distance, the look of suspicion when I walked into the room.

I sat down to meditate in my newfound status as second-class citizen. A fallen angel, wings clipped. It was bizarre. From my perspective, I was pretty much the same guy that I was three months beforehand. Apparently not.

The basic idea as outlined by the founder of the Buddhist order was brilliant. We were, he proclaimed, neither monastic nor lay. This immediately cut through the dynamics of mutual dependency which characterised the traditional Buddhist world in the east. It also shifted the focus from 'social status' or 'lifestyle' onto the core values, your inner attitude: your focus, intent, or 'commitment' as it was often termed.

You couldn't knock it; but human life on planet Earth rarely comes in neat, problem-free packages. We weren't monks - I would never have been a monk anyway, I found the notion rather repulsive. But stray outside a set of unwritten and unspoken codes of behaviour and you would likely meet disapproval, disapprobation. Become an also-ran.... 

Part Three

I lived in a men-only community. She lived in a women-only community. And therein lay a strategic problem.

In common with other couples in similar situations, we sometimes resorted to cheaper-priced hotels dotted around town. We might have occasional use of friends' flats while they were away for the weekend. Or we would go and stay with friends for the night. This was morally questionable, dishonest even. While ostensibly we were visiting buddies for their company, the truth was that they had a double bed in the spare room upstairs.

Looking back, it was bizarre, unhealthy, a bit smelly. Sex life was a furtive affair, something you sneaked off to do, hoping that no-one would notice. The line in the Buddhist community was that a sexual relationship should stay on the periphery of your life. This was a ludicrous proposition, as if energies, emotions, could be marshalled and pushed around like that. It's not how life works.

There were genuine complications. I think that some people who attended the meditation classes, and more so some who I lived and worked with, felt let down, betrayed even. As chairman of the centre, I should have my energies fully available for all; but now I was draining large parts of it away in penis-meets-vagina activities. Could I be trusted? Could I be spoken to in confidence? Would I go talking to my girlfriend about things behind their back?

And there was the jealousy. Not necessarily of penis-meets-vagina literally, but of the time, the attention. And could I be trusted to make decisions objectively when there was an emotional attachment pulling me here, there, and everywhere? 

They had a point, no mistake. But who said that life as a human would be nice, neat, easy? It appears to consist largely of messy situations, which manifest as great learning opportunities if we realise that to be the case. And the 'point' was a point only within a particular perceptual - behavioural framework, one which we consented to share, but of which existence we were generally unaware.

Part Four

The writing was on the wall well before the final, and for me emotionally cataclysmic, demise of the relationship. It took me twenty years before I could begin to see this.

Around 1988 I stopped full-time Buddhist work, and I moved out of the residential community into a flat with a good Buddhist friend of mine. Among other improvements, this meant no more Hotel Strand above the India Club, thank you.

I disappeared for three months to support a Buddhist retreat in the mountains of southern Spain. When I returned to London I undertook an intensive course in English language teaching. This required total focus, I was informed, so no social life, no fun. There was, however, a girl on the course - younger than me, from South Wales - who I got to like. We had coffee together a couple of times, before she shoo-ed me away as she caught her bus home at the end of the course. 

I landed a teaching job. At the end of the day I was sometimes emotionally rung-out, and craved a quiet evening doing nothing. Then there would be a knock on the door, and my girlfriend, at a bit of a loose end, would announce her unannounced arrival. I tried to look pleased to see her, but the unconscious knows many things.... Penis continued to meet vagina, but the light had gone out somewhat.

Then I went off to New Zealand for almost a year. I was invited to help at the Buddhist centre in Wellington. About two months in, I received a phone call from my girlfriend in London. She spoke in strange strangled tones. She had gone out with another guy from the Buddhist centre. A few days later, another phone call. Another strange strangled voice. They had done it. And that was that.

I then fell apart, which is another story. But it was another bizarre thing. Life as a slightly important Buddhist had led me to feel a little bit special, a touch invincible. The ways of 'ordinary life' didn't really apply. I could gad around the world fulfilling my spiritual duties and the love of my life would just be waiting back home. Wrong. An inexplicable and naive aura of permanence enveloped my assumptions about that relationship. Funny, since one of Buddha's most basic teaching involves the impermanence of all phenomena.

And a footnote. As I was going through the long process of withdrawal from all aspects of organised Buddhism, I caught wind of a change. Many of those characters who had been so vocal about single-sex life and the perils of penis-meeting-vagina quietly nestled down into heterosexual couple bliss. That's fine. Except that, to my knowledge (and I may be mistaken) nothing was said about this sea change.

Given the primacy of single-sex, of the unfettered life, celibacy if possible, you might have expected a full and utterly convincing account of the newfound spiritual benefits of 'the relationship'. To repeat: I might have missed things, as my focus moved away from such matters. But it remains a disingenuous move as far as I can see. Goalposts silently moved. I prefer honesty, transparency. Still, it is, I suppose, none of my business anyway......             

Images: The Blue Mask album cover; Royo Dark Tarot cards - 2; yab-yum