What is it about?
What is the role of desire, and especially sexual desire, in our spiritual lives? It usually ignored, repressed, or considered as something to leave behind through philosophical or religious transcendence. A complete reversal of this attitude can be found in some Buddhist sources, however: in this paper we explore the fascinating unity of transgression and transcendence in the life and poetry of Ikkyu Sojun, "Crazy Cloud", one of the most relevant figures of Japanese Zen.
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Why is it important?
Sexual desire is both universal and evanescent, constantly framed through unique cultural and biographic contexts. It is fundamental for a scholarly, philosophical work on such a theme not to limit itself to Western or Western-centric paradigms, and to be able to address also the cruder elements of this field of experience. Buddhism considers desire not only as an ethical issue, but as the fundamental ontological condition of our lives, and in its huge internal variety, also hosts traditions willing to explore it affirmatively rather than deny it. The case of the Japanese Zen monk Ikkyu - artist, madman, and exceptional poet - offers unique insight on this topic.
Perspectives
Writing this article offered me a chance to return to the fascinating, complex poetry of Ikkyu, and introduce him to a public of readers not always exposed to non-Western authors. Playful, fiery, and often very crude, the Zen monk is facing the mystery of life and desire in an utterly direct way: trying to write a philosophical reflection on this material also meant exploring different ways of doing philosophy, engaging with bodily experience far the vantage point of a "pure" theory.
Lorenzo Marinucci
Tohoku Daigaku
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Zen, Wind and Sex: Ikkyū Sōjun’s Phenomenology of Desire, February 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004724310_027.
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