More than an elaborate masturbation

My Leather is more than an elaborate masturbation. It is the heart of who I am.

Recently I came face to face with my Buddhist spiritual practice and Leather. As I struggled to explain to my Zen teachers regarding the responsibilities I felt as a Sir relative to my boys, I felt compelled to walk away. After fifteen years in the sangha, I left.

I anticipated that leaving the sangha would also be a struggle but I found just the opposite. As I sit in mediation in the morning, I feel freed from the constraints of Zen. The idea that one sits in meditation to know oneself is wonderful. In Leather, we play to know ourselves. In play, the social masks are dropped. Too much energy to maintain them when play becomes heavy and all one can do is hold on to a thread of awareness to make it through the scene.

I am a Sir 24/7. My boys understand this. As they sit beside me in meditation, they know that I will continue to watch out for them. They do not drop their collars at he door of the Dharma Hall.

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.