leyline

yes opera called the birth of her daughter a cosmic experience.

Carol Massey

I would be more like your sister, while my husband, who is very male, is more like you, emotional. Just as he and I talk and work through life's challenges, there is a nonverbal communication that goes on in each of our minds, that draws on the energy of both the masculine and feminine. I invite this activity consciously, but for many, there is no awareness of it; therefore, it is not of much benefit.

I don't associate masculine/feminine with gender exclusively either, rather as leyline as said, "more as forces present within us all, regardless of sex.

I sort of see it this way: The feminine aspect is the inspiration, the intuition, the nurturer, the dark, warm soil in which the seed (perhaps of a new thought, or idea,) germinates, and the masculine is the rational, the 'nuts and bolts', the 'doer' of creation, the scientist who once inspired, sets about to prove his theory. The poet, or composer, who hearing within the words and music, sets them to paper. Or as my grandmother taught me long ago, plan your work, then work your plan. Masculine/feminine energies working cooperatively.

This can be within the mind and body of one person, between two people, a family, or within an entire culture, or society. Another way may be the feminine is inspiration and the masculine is action.

Hope that wasn't too muddled.

leyline

yeh its very difficult to get a handle on it.

i suppose one of the most difficult areas where spirituality and physicality meet/clash is beauty.

The beautiful does feel very special and when we come across something or someone that is very beautiful it can stop us in our tracks. The feminine is a beautiful force for me. But then beauty is often only skin deep and the spiritual person often shows that. Kindness.

Still a world without physical beauty would be a terrible loss even if it was full of wonderful spirit. All the images of heaven and angels are of beautiful beings and places.

The more i think about it the more beauty seems to challenge the spiritual....... and does so successfully. It seduces us. How many times have artists brought tears and wonder to our eyes, only to be found out as some of the most profane and selfish people. Its very strange.

But getting back to gender if i imagine an angel to be male and compare to an angel being female, there is a difference in the way i relate to them. The male feels like a physical and authoritative power standing before me, while the female is emanates gentleness and nurturing in and around me.

When it comes to the gender of god ........ i get the feeling that i shouldn't even ask myself the question. It feels like a kind of irreverence and a monumental lack of respect to question such things.

andy_d

I tend to find that considering things dualistically obscures their true nature. You can seperate day from night in your mind, but they are really part of the same thing. It's an arbitrary distinction.

Opposites are really just the same thing seen from different angles. The moon looks different every night, but in reality it always stays the same.

leyline

hi andy

i would point out that there are various ways of looking at dualism that have been written about in this thread. Yes there is the 'opposites' way of looking at duality

so light is seen as opposite to dark.

or there is a 'lack of' dualism, where dark is seen as a lack of light, and therefore not really a dualism?

then there is contrastive dualism as emotional puts it, where two contrastive forces are not opposites but nevertheless stand in complementary relationship to each other, like say emotion and reason could be seen that way

and probably other ways of looking at dualism too....

But i take it you are referring to the great spiritual truth of Buddhism where everything is all one?

Impermanence giving the illusion of 'this' is other than 'that'. Personally, though i feel that Buddhism is a great teaching that enables us to experience the end of inner and outer, such a state is impermanent. We return constantly to the myths of permanence and though the memory of enlightenment is profound it doesn't solve the problem of having to cope with the challenges of life. What it does is inform that challenge profoundly.

andy_d

Well, i'm capable of thinking about things in a broader fashion than simply the Buddhist perspective, you know.

(That's the trouble with labels...)

Yes, Buddhism does acknowledge the idea, but Taoism makes a much bigger deal of it. That's the meaning behind the Taoist ying/yang symbol.

I think it's a fairly basic truth which is quite universal. Even in the West we have the concept, as typified by the phrase "two sides of the same coin"

The fact that opposites are fundamentally connected isn't unique to one tradition.

leyline

i think i might be being a bit slow here.

I am not sure what you are driving at. If a dualistic relationship is not seen as opposition, then in what sense does "two sides of the same coin" relate to "The fact that opposites are fundamentally connected isn't unique to one tradition."?

leyline

Hmmm…


What I mean is that if we consider say male/female, and for a moment place different emphasis like emotion, rationality, feminine, masculine, whatever in the background ….. and concentrate instead on the physical differences. Then to me a woman is not the opposite of a man because she has an extra hole and men have an extra stick!!!

But that does not mean that men and women do not form a physical dualism. They quite obviously do in my opinion.

I am really against the idea that men and women are the same, full stop. Of course there are contexts in which we are the same , such as physical life forms, spiritual beings, aspects of human genetic code and so on, but to just think of them as the same I believe is as much a radical obscuring of reality as to forget there is a universal oneness. I am quite happy with the contradiction because I don’t think rational either/or consistency is capable of revealing and expressing all the wonderful and complex natures of the universe. But nevertheless it is capable of a revealing a great many.

The spiritual difference between men and women would thus be a general thing, and like all general statements makes no accurate prediction or statement about an individual instance. A coin landing on heads is close to 50/50 but any one flip is completely unpredictable WRT one or the other side. For a hundred flips however ‘100 heads’ would be remarkable. To see them as the same would not be able to see this truth. Ie. ‘100 flips of a coin’ is not remarkable.

We would lose the concept of a miracle for example if all events are seen as just events and nothing else. I strongly reject the extreme philosophy of oneness as much as I reject the extremism of either/or. I value both.

In fact to accept both feels like accepting both masculinity and femininity to me. Ie the feminine emphasises oneness and the masculine connection. The feminine is in the now, is simultaneous, lateral and spatial……while the masculine distinguishes and connects everything sequentially in causal time. We need both and I do not see them as opposites. They can run together by being different and the same and the same time.

Carol Massey

Very nice explanation leyline. Thank you.

I think there may have been a little confusion in the topic regarding the usage of terms.

I was not so much focusing on the physical characteristics of masculine, feminine, but rather the psychological usage of the terms which is slightly different.

Example: Females may spear-head the 'feminist' movement, but like the current society in which we live...most of the time it is done from a male/patriarchal position. In psychological terms, many of the pro-activists feminists, are still functioning from an animus-ridden anima.

I won't go into this any further unless there is some interest on the part of others participating in the topic...

andy_d

I was simply illustrating the point that I wasn't speaking from a purely Buddhist viewpoint. The fact that we have a common saying in English for this idea proves that it's not an exclusively Eastern concept

My point exactly.

The only difference is in how you think about it. Most people overlook the connected nature of dualities, and focus on the contrast, which I believe is a barrier to understanding.