If you meet the Buddha in the road, flog him!

As the Buddha lay down for the last time, he prepared for the end of his last cycle of life. Years before, his eyes had been opened upon seeing the morning star. He saw the true nature of all things. The sky is blue, the grass is green. The sun hides behind the clouds. The wind blows.

This heightened state, which actually is not a heightened state at all, is similar to what we discover often during play. Almost as if eyes were opened wider than they have ever been before we experience an arousal of all senses from their slumbering state. As if the blinders have been dropped from our eyes.

Yesterday, I surrendered myself to the clay once more. The question I held was suggested by my boy jay. "How does Leather meet Zen?"

In the late eighties and early nineties we often spoke about the state brought about by Leatherplay. Geoffrey Mains was perhaps one of the first to examine the topic in his seminal work, "Urban Aboriginals." Later, other authors embellished the topic, drawing on Leather to expound on their own spiritualities. New terms and the adoption of forms of Leatherplay into new communities.

While I find this all very interesting, I return to the spiritual tradition that I have practiced as long as I have been a Leatherman. In Zen, we know that one cannot try to reach enlightenment. The harder one tries, the more elusive it becomes. I would suggest that the desired state during play is very much the same. And, like Zen, I find this state to be a heightened awareness of my surroundings, as if I am experiencing my body for the very first time. It is not a feeling of being drugged or removed from one's surroundings. Rather, it is an arousal that one is very much part of things. As if one has felt his body for the very first time.

As I prepare myself to begin another Winter Kyol Che, I approach my Leather with new eyes and new questions. I look back on my Leather journey and ask myself how I arrived here. And, as I did last Winter, I turn back to the earth to help me answer my riddle. A true Virgo dirties his hands in clay.

The Dungeon Wild

When we enter a dungeon space, we voluntarily leave the rational mind at the door. We enter the Wild, a dark jungle where instinct and pack dynamics reign. When we retreat, we often can be left with fear and confusion.

"I looked at my back and I could not believe what I did last night," wrote my boy after an intense impact/flogging/single tail scene. In the dungeon space, he had given himself to me with abandon. "I want to do this for you," he said in deference to my Dominance. And baring his back in the bar hours later, he beamed with pride beside me. However, at home before the mirror before going to bed, he contemplated the welts on his back and his logical mind countered the remnants of our scene. His mind puzzled over the darkness of his instinctual self.

Understanding that logic does not exist in the dark wild, we try to balance the experience with a discourse of consensuality. We often reason why we do these activities using psychology or spirituality to validate our involvement. These are but feeble attempts to understand the animal inside, the instinct that encourages us over and over again to play in the dungeon.

In the last ten years we have witnessed the acknowledgment of puppy play, and of animal play in general. Using fetish, we conjure up the animal within to enact power dynamics that are as real as our cultural interactions from day to day. As Leathermen we revel in animal play, delving further and further into its depths. Rather than basing the success of our play on technical prowess, arguing kink into the cultural discourse, we continue to invent new forms of play that probe the instinctual depths.