Amanda Jones

Meditation: just think about it..

albj — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:24:09 +0000

Meditation is proven to help with stress, insomnia, pain management, mood disorders, energy levels, blood pressure and immune response. It causes physical changes in the brain including increasing gyrification of the cortex (allowing you to process information faster) and long-term increases in activity in the left prefrontal cortex (associated with calm and happy emotions). It is free, can be done by anyone, anywhere, anytime, and doesn’t require you to believe anything more than meditation is to the brain (just a muscle) as push-ups are to your biceps.

Seriously, what’s your excuse?

I’ve written before about Meditation as a tool for pragmatists and I’d hate to think that anyone felt there was something mystical or spiritual preventing them from sitting still and shutting up now and then. So I’ve come up with a few games which even the most logic-driven skeptic could concede to trying..

5 easy brain-changing things you owe it to yourself to try.

1) The Anti-Tweet
Next time you reach for your phone to send 140 needless characters out into the ether, stop. Instead of sending that tweet spend 3 mins, three, the length of a song on the office radio, counting breath. It’s very easy. Sit up straight in your chair with both feet flat on the floor and place your hands lightly on your knees/thighs at an angle that permits you to relax your shoulders. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath, filling your lungs completely, and paying attention to the way your chest rises, your shoulders separate, and your stomach expands. Hold this breath for a moment, before slowly releasing. Mentally count “One”. Repeat, and at the end of the second exhalation, count “Two”. Continue this until you have counted up to ten and back down to one. Every time you you catch yourself thinking about something other than breathing, notice the thing that distracted you, mentally acknowledge it as relevant and important, but leave it alone for now and go back to counting breath.
Try this with one unnecessary tweet a day, for a week.

2) The Sleepeasy
Ablutions done, you finally crawl into bed! But just before the sandman finds you, try this simple exercise: take 3 slow, counted, breaths (as above) then beginning with your hands create a fist and squeeze as hard as you can for around 5 seconds then relax, taking care to notice the heavy buzz left in the muscles. After about 20 seconds do the same tensing and relaxing the muscles in the upper arms. Continue moving up to the neck, face, back down the shoulders, stomach, buttocks, thighs, calves and finally the feet. Tense and relax all your muscles, not forgetting to breathe. (you don’t need to keep counting the breath, just maintain the rhythm)
Try this every night for a week.

3) Slow Food
Best start with something small for this one. A snack, an apple perhaps? Let’s look at it first. It’s pretty awesome, really, that it came from a tree! Notice colours, patterns and blemishes. How do you feel towards it – hungry, thankful, nauseous, miserable it’s not chocolate? Wonder how many people were involved in the events that lead to your holding this apple – farmers, truck drivers, factory workers, storekeepers.. and the conditions, the sun, rain and earth. Now take a bite and notice how it feels in your mouth. It might be crisp, sharp or juicy and then as you chew begin to notice the taste. Is it sweet, bitter? All too often we eat almost unconsciously. That thing where you’re looking for the other half of a chocolate bar and realise you don’t even remember eating it? Yeah. Not good.
Try this with a different snack each day, for a week.

4) Name That Emotion!
We all have an emotional Achilles heel; anger, jealousy, guilt, blame.. Most of us switch between focusing on it too much (letting it define us as a ‘bad person’) or too little (excusing and avoiding it). The aim of this game is to notice and neutrally acknowledge all our emotions, not just the ones we like. When we “catch ourselves” doing something; refreshing Facebook, writing a text, contemplating a quick look round the shops at lunchtime, we acknowledge the task but not the driving emotion. Over the course of a day try taking regular pauses to consider yourself and mentally state “I am experiencing x”. Excitement, boredom, anger, insecurity, joy.. whatever it is, by naming our emotions and not just our actions we give due attention to our biochemical state and illuminate possible causes of certain behaviours.
Try once a week for a month, (Mondays might be a good idea!)

5) Walk the Walk
Pay attention to the sensations in your body as you walk. No, really. Notice how the soles of your feet feel, the contact they make with your socks or shoes, the textures of the fabrics touching them. Be aware as the heel is placed first on the ground and rolls towards the ball of the foot and toes. Notice how it feels as the foot lifts and moves forward. Focus on the shift in balance as your weight changes from one foot to the other. Walking is amazing! It’s worth learning to occasionally appreciate the myriad of complex systems your body has evolved to undertake a movement we take for granted hundreds of times every day.
Try walking mindfully to the train/bus station each morning for a week.

Comments are open – what are you waiting for, who’s going to try what? :)

Boundaries and Rules

albj — Mon, 07 May 2012 00:03:29 +0000

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers ALBJ, An Open
Book, More Than Nuclear, One Sub’s Mission, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick will write about their views on one of them.

Let’s get one thing clear from the outset – rules and boundaries are works of utter fiction. More so, they’re hypothetical fiction. Since no two people, situations or events can ever truly be the same, our “rules” (set up to protect our “boundaries”) are little more than imagined guidelines for conditions we can only speculate about arising and reacting to.
They are also indispensable.

I said recently on Radio 4′s “Woman’s Hour”* that for me, poly was about a “commitment to flexible boundaries rather than rigid rules” and I very much believe this is the case for all relationships and interactions, whatever their nature, for exactly the reasons above.

One might even argue that this attitude is particularly important in the case of being a non-primary / secondary partner. Particularly if you’re in my position, where I have several relationships in which I am not ‘primary’. In any case it’s true that you cannot enter in to a relationship with a shopping list of uncompromisable demands because, frankly, the odds of your rules slotting perfectly into another person’s life and expectations are virtually zero. And, as a non-monogamous non-primary, you have to consider the odds of your rules slotting perfectly into another person’s relationship where not only your partner, but your metamour’s rules and boundaries (particularly at the outset) set the precedent.

Being ‘flexible’ with your boundaries doesn’t mean turning yourself into a doormat however, and there’s an inherent risk of over-relaxing your sense of self preservation here. Above all this is a case for knowing yourself and, in particular, knowing what your bottom line is. If you’re going to haggle, you must start by knowing what’s a “fair” price to you. You must also know what you’d be willing to pay; a decision which factors in both what’s on offer and your current financial position. These are different sums and your outlay must lie between them, or it’s “no deal”.
(I do hate to bring relationships back to a transaction, but the metaphor works and there’s a good argument for that anyway ;)

Long story short, boundaries and the rules that protect them are the borders and rights of your own imaginary country. They exist in your head to protect your heart as the laws of a land protect its citizens. But laws change and borders, little more than lines drawn onto maps, shrink and grow like any other geography. Even those on the coast gain and lose with the tides, and to deny this will only put you at war with your neighbours or nature herself.

So draw your boundaries, make clear your rules, and head with a sense of security towards those imagined scenarios. Then, if and when they arise, do yourself a favour and make sure that your actual feelings take precedence over loyalty to the hypothetic feelings that drew up the original rules.
You never know, you may just surprise yourself..

“Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers.” – Someone once said. (probably)

*Shameless self-promotion, sorry!

Woman’s Hour Follow Up

albj — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:14:17 +0000

I would like to begin by thanking all my partners.. ;)
Just kidding. It’s not an Oscar acceptance speech but it is fair to say that without their support and blessing I, not only couldn’t have spoken so honestly on the show this morning, but wouldn’t have experience from which to speak.
Guys – you’re all ridiculously awesome for every reason imaginable.

So, as per my last post I spoke live this morning on Radio 4′s “Woman’s Hour”, about open relationships. You can listen to the short debate here:
Radio 4: Open Relationships

Frankly I think the arguments levelled against it were low hanging fruit, and I am kicking myself for not saying many of the things I now realise would have diffused the trajectories sooner, but for a short conservative piece I think it went okay.

It was, however, clear to me that I wasn’t what they were expecting. My favourite comment by Dr Pam highlights nicely my point (without me needing to divulge other reactions to my arrival at the green room):

“Amanda, you are the exception to the rule; you are articulate and on top of things”

I’m not saying it was a set up, it was a pleasingly balanced argument, but there was clearly an agenda and my refusal to play along was, I genuinely feel, of equal interest and annoyance.

Regardless of any of this, in the last fortnight we’ve been in the Guardian and on Radio 4 and this says a great deal about the profile of alternative relatiionship structures. It may not be common, it may not even be accepted, but it is being discussed and for me that’s the biggest barrier.

Certainly the ripples of comments online seemed to indicate that the debate was heated, and frequently opposing, but not needlessly dismissive. There’s discussion to be had, traction to be gained, and I guess that’s something I’m becoming interested in. I never could resist a good debate, particularly one with an audience!

So, all in, I’m pleased. I hope it’s the start of something more – perhaps for me, likely for the wider community. I do, however, feel like we need to take ownership of the information that’s out there. The data is there to support this as a healthy and valid life choice. Let’s start using it. Vitally though, and as I said to so many people on Twitter today following the broadcast, I’m not anti monogamy in the slightest – it is just my sincere hope that people in monogamous relationships actively choose to be by rejecting known alternatives.

More soon, I suspect ..

Non-Monogamy – Your Views Needed.

albj — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:14:28 +0000

On the back of This Guardian Piece I will be speaking on BBC Radio 4′s Women’s Hour about “open relationships” this Monday 16th April. I gather the basic format is me and sex therapist / Sun Newspaper journalist Dr Pam taking opposing sides to discuss the issues surrounding non monogamy in a polite and adult manner*.

I am very, very, much hoping that, despite still feeling like an utter newbie, you’ll see me as a decent spokesperson for ethical non-monogamy on this occasion.

To help me you can comment below.. with pretty much anything.
Any points you’d like to hear made, any arguments against the obvious objections, any unusual objections you’ve heard, whether you’re in an open relationship or intentionally not, whether you’re a colleague, a family member, whether you agree or disagree with their existence.. &c

If you tell me your thoughts and reasoning, I’ll try to carry as much of this as possible across into the live interview on Monday.

Many thanks, and wish me luck :)
x

*Any resemblance to sarcasm, actual or implied, is purely coincidental.

The Skinny Conspiracy

albj — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:18:55 +0000

This is an admission and a revelation and I believe it deserves to be shared.
It isn’t tidy and it isn’t subtle, as neither am I, but it is true. Of that I promise you.

As long as I can remember I have believed it to be the case that thinner is better. Skinny is equal to pretty, and my idea of soft curves and feminine lines were the swell of a hipbone above a gently concave abdomen. I believed that thighs ought not to touch, tummies ought not to fold, that elasticated clothing should sit against muscle and bone and nowhere should soft flesh rise or pucker at the pressure.

I thought skin should look and act like carved marble; firm and sturdy, not to “wobble” or “squash” or other disgusting words like that. The sheer biology of it all repulsed me. Why could no one control themselves? Moreover, why couldn’t I? Surely these bodies of ours just needed a strong will and a bit of discipline, surely they could be ruled by the mind?

From pre-teen competitive dieting, binging and purging before I had the vocabulary, crash dieting, rebounding, over exercising, barely moving, self medicating – over a decade devoted to my sense of ‘self’ attempting to control a sprawling heap of inescapable flesh.

They called it bipolar disorder. I now call it biology. Of course my moods were on a pendulum swing; so was my eating. My beautiful emotions and my disgusting body were not id and super-ego to my reassuring logic. Unbeknownst to me, we were not separate or distinguishable at all.

But on it went, the war. We hit, cut, bruised, binged, starved, sedated, drugged and stimulated each other, this notion of “body” and this notion of “I”. Enthralled in the war, consumed and distracted by the tactics of it, oblivious (or perhaps just unwilling to recognise) that the victory I was after would be a kamikaze move.

I was large enough to have to mail order my clothes, thin enough to face hospital admission, and nowhere nowhere within that did I ever feel “beautiful”.

But I knew, somewhere deeply certain, that beautiful was smaller. Everyone knew it. Sure, there were girls who pretended to be happy with their bodies but it was all a pretence. They were weak, they couldn’t get smaller so they pretended it was okay. It wasn’t okay. There were men, too, pretending to like a fuller figured girl because they couldn’t get a skinny girl – a girl like they lusted after in their magazines. It angered me, this conspiracy; these layers and layers of pretend. So many people pretending it was okay, pretending not to be disgusted when they leaned forward and the softness over their stomach creased and folded into a roll. I would sit there in the kitchen looking at the food, hungry but winning. When I sat, my stomach didn’t crease. I was strong. They were weak. I believed it even as I fainted each morning when I tried to stand. I believed it even when I lost my friends and family because I believed their attempt to feed me half an apple was sabotage. I believed it when they stopped letting me use the gym. Conspirators, all of them.

And now I’m scared. Now I begin to wonder. Now, as I sit and my stomach rolls softly over the top of my jeans a little and I can see the reverberations of my typing jostle the skin of my upper arms, now I wonder if they’ve gotten to me too, The Conspirators. As I am starting to believe it might be okay, to squash.. might be acceptable to wobble.. (just a little..) That it might not really be ‘losing’ if I eat or a ‘victory’ if I faint.

As I am starting to heal I find myself starting to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t a world-wide conspiracy at all. That maybe, they were right and I was wrong. Thinner doesn’t equal better; beauty doesn’t hide near the bones. We’re a far more complex equation that that.

Shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy!

albj — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 10:59:24 +0000

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers – An Open Book, One Sub’s Mission, Polyamorous Parenting, Post Modern Sleaze, Rarely Wears Lipstick and Amanda Jones – will write about their views on one of them.

This month: Jealousy

Without doubt, when explaining my relationship set-up to someone for the first time, common themes arise. Inevitably, the question of jealousy is one. Frequently the question is “Don’t you get jealous” and usually my answer is an incredulous look and the obvious answer “Yes! Don’t you?” :)

Almost everyone can think of times they believe they’ve been jealous. Whether it’s looking a pictures of a friend’s amazing tropical holiday from your grey office on a Monday morning, admiring the latest glorious Apple offering in the hands of a colleague while you restart (again) your busted up Dell, or a best friend finding that brilliant spark of possibility of an exciting new relationship while you’re still smarting from a rejection..
Mostly, though, we’re not actually jealous at all – we’re envious.

Envy says “Ooh, look at that thing s/he has! I want that thing! Can I have that thing too?” and, if it’s possessed by a sensible enough owner, it goes scurrying off to find out how to achieve that thing for itself.
Jealousy says “Ooh, look at that thing s/he has! I want that thing! Why don’t I have that thing? I’m better / more deserving / would appreciate it more.. She shouldn’t have this, *I* should have this!” and, if it’s possessed by an ignorant enough owner, heads off to grab and steal.

Fundamentally the difference between these two scenarios is “mine!” vs “me too!” and envy is more compatible with a polyamourous world view that rejects the notion of satisfaction (including love) as a finite resource. Envious of that holiday? Envious that your partner and metamour are getting a lie in this week? How can you change your life so that you can fulfil these wants too!. After all, stopping them having that cozy lie in together because your diary doesn’t allow for that this week doesn’t actually get you what you want. Stopping your partner having sex with another person doesn’t get you the emotional security you want, either. It just removes the obvious reminder of the thing you’re really afraid of. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the rub.
Turning off the fire alarm, does not extinguish the fire.

As I wrote in an earlier blog:
When the fire alarm goes off, it’s not pleasant. It’s a nasty sound. It needs to be – that’s it’s job. Still, if I just burnt toast and the fire alarm goes off, it doesn’t panic me. I know why it has been triggered and I know the situation is under control. (I just can’t cook!) Yes, the noise is still unpleasant, but that’s not a huge problem. If the fire alarm woke me in the middle of the night however, I’d panic. I’d have no information and could be in danger.

Insecurity, not having your needs met, not being heard – these are problems; fires. Jealousy is just a fire alarm. The way to live with it unexpectedly sounding (let’s face it, you’re probably not going to make it through without burning toast ever again..) is to have a good fire protocol.

My protocol for emotional fire alarms goes like this.
1) Bugger! The Fire alarm! Better go check if this really jealousy or if it’s envy.
2a) If envy – how can I change my situation to achieve this thing I want?
2b) If jealousy
- A) call fire brigade (i.e. communicate with partner)
- B) discover underlying cause of the fire
- C) fetch fire-appropriate extinguisher

Okay, I’m maybe being flippant now – but my point holds. You will not get everything you want all the time. Maybe that’s worth saying again: You will not get everything you want all the time! So it’s an omni-applicable life skill to be able to manage your emotions in such a way that you make the resulting (necessary and inevitable) compromises that are best for you.

My compromise is to battle with the green-eyed monster here and there in return for having additional love in my life. Google is not my friend today but I think it was a passing comment of Alain De Botton that when it comes to relationships you have two choices: be open and learn to control your jealousy, or be faithful and learn to control your lust.

You don’t get an easy ride either way, if you ask me. Personally, given a choice between lust and jealousy, there’s a clear preference for which I want to nurture and which I want to curb!

Protected: Vital

albj — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 23:45:16 +0000

Buddhism, Polyamory, and Love. [1/2]

albj — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:42:53 +0000

This is the second in a series of blog posts looking at Buddhism and Polyamory.
Groundwork covered, let’s look at love!

Depending on how (and if) you count it, some scholars suggest that Buddhism recognises over 500 different kinds of love. Personally, I think that’s a bit of a stretch! I mention it, though, so you may suspect* that Buddhism hasn’t got too big a chip on it’s shoulder about what shape love is allowed to take.

We’re going to look at four of the most fundamental of those shapes, what are known as the four “divine abodes”; literally four ideal ways of conducting oneself. It is not expected that these are innate, nor that they can be simply adopted, but rather that they require practise. As they are each a form of love, it’s suggested that we learn to practise them towards our loved ones first, (beginning with ourselves!) as this should be easiest. Then, once we get better at pinning down those feelings and responses, we practise these conducts towards our acquaintances, then towards strangers, then to our enemies, until finally these things will become our new defaults when interacting with anyone/thing.

The first and hardest to convey is loving kindness, (“metta”). Often described as ‘tender’ and ‘humane’; loving kindness is encapsulated by the mantra: “may you be well, may you be happy, may you be safe from inner and outer harm”. It’s a general acknowledgement that everyone, everyone, has the right to not only co-exist on this lump of rock with us, but to do so at the upper levels of Maslow’s hierarchy.

The second is compassion, (“karuna”), the embodiment of empathy. Simply, it is the ability to imagine ourselves in somone elses shoes and to realise that we are no different, and we are not exempt. Compassion is to see someone who is homeless, contemplate how excluded and painful that must feel, and to understand that these things could very well befall us too. The implication is our behavior will then be modified by this understanding and we will naturally “treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves”.

The third, (“mudita”), is usually translated as ‘sympathetic’ or ‘vicarious joy’, and is the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being rather than begrudging it. It is often defined as the opposite of jealousy.

The fourth and final quality is equanimity, (“apekkha”), an acceptance of being present in that moment and yet realising that that moment, and all things and feelings in it, will pass. It is a state in which we are not ‘grasping’ (wanting things we don’t have) and not ‘pushing’ (not wanting what we do have) because, even if we were able to get that perfect state with all the things we want and nothing we don’t want, that too would pass and we’d be struggling to get there again!

Buddhism is premised on the fact that every relationship (in the widest sense of the word) is a training ground for us to develop these qualities of kindness, empathy, sympathetic joy and acceptance. They may not all be exactly what we’d call ‘love’ but throughout them one thing is consistently true. Love is detached from ourselves and our selfish wants/needs and is unselfish and unconditional. It is the honest state of wanting everyone to be free and happy.

So it could be argued that, without realising, polyamourous folk cultivate these daily in a way that monogamous people don’t. And, if so, that a polyamourous set up is a far closer match to these “ideal ways of conducting oneself” than a monogamous relationship.

After all, one of the greatest enemies of loving kindness is judgement and as a general rule, those who have broken free of the norm are less inclined to be out throwing stones. Having to justify ourselves and our right to pursue this happiness is a great opportunity to remember how we are all entitled to these freedoms.
Sympathetic joy we may know better now as compersion. A skill so necessary in polyamorous relationships that we claimed and re-named it!
And equanimity is what we cultivate every time we take a step back when we’re insecure or jealous rather than acting out or seeking reassurance. It is the massive and courageous leap we took when we let go of the notion of monogamy and set ourselves at odds with our cultural and societal upbringing, and it is the “not grasping” we extend to our partners as we leave them free to explore other loves.

But hold your horses, I’m not saying we’re all incidental Buddhists! This was the first of two posts on love. For balance, the other explores why polyamory may in fact be at odds with these qualities..

*(and you’d be largely, though not entirely, right)

To Tell Or Not To Tell?

albj — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:00:11 +0000

This month: “Explaining non-monogamy” My take: “Should we have to?”

Strictly speaking what you do with your private life should be, well, the clue’s in the name really! Whether you feel comfortable talking about sex and/or relationships is largely a function of your upbringing, your current environment, and the specific set of tacit rules you’ve agreed to follow with that group.

When it comes to non-standard relationship formats, this can become additionally tricky. Where you might happily mention in passing the mundane details of a monogamous relationship, mentioning similar with multiple partners or metamours, whilst possibly desirable, can sometimes seem more trouble than it’s worth.

There are a range of relationships which might not have easily expressible forms (let alone socially acceptable ones). It can feel difficult to casually mention a connection (“my boyfriend’s other girlfriend”, “my FWB”…) without feeling as if you should then launch into a long explanation of how it’s all okay and everyone knows, or that this is a long-term agreement – just a casual one. So, all too often, we don’t mention them at all.

Now, broadly speaking, I think it’s fair to divide up those interactions that are based on sex, and those that are based on love. Of course this isn’t to say that many wont have aspects of both, but most are clearly rooted in one or the other. And personally, I see no reason to tell you, my colleagues, or my family about my sex life; however exciting, interesting or unusual it may be! It can be tempting to drop salacious hints and almost brag about our uniqueness but frankly, if it wouldn’t be appropriate for a mono relationshipped person to mention a new sex position they’d tried that weekend, it’s also not appropriate for a poly person to mention a new sex partner they’d tried that weekend! It’s not complex here: sex is not family dinner conversation.

Love, though, is an entirely other matter. It is far more appropriate for me to mention my partner to my colleagues and my family, bordering on inappropriate if I don’t. It is a matter of public record what your relationship state is. I had to tell my mobile phone provider if I was single or not, my letting agent too… this stuff really is common knowledge.

Which is where this blog may get contentious…

Ethical non-monogamy is about open, honest relationships and I don’t believe that is restricted to one partner knowing about another. If you have two equal partners and you publicly acknowledge one and refer to the other as “your friend” or they go unmentioned, you’re still not being honest.

Sure there’s a difference between lying, lying by omission, and simply omitting. If you don’t want to talk about your relationships, don’t! Blanket omission is fine! Speaking about your girl/boyfriend as your ‘friend’, for any length of time or to anyone important, is a lie by omission and I feel is okay only in very certain circumstances. (Mainly only when, after informed discussion, it’s been mutually agreed as the least harmful course of action) If you’re telling outright lies, well, clearly I’d strongly counter the ethics of that.

Essentially you get to make a fundamental choice with regards to what you share about your life. You should never feel obliged to disclose the details of your sex / love life to anyone. However, if you’re going to speak about your relationship(s) you’re on dangerous moral ground if you start looking at that pair/group of people and revealing some and hiding others.

Mid-post disclaimer now, because clearly this is a far bigger topic than I, or a small group of bloggers, can ever tackle. I am not saying it’s simple or even that I am right. But I want to raise the question. As an ethical non-monogamist, is it still ethical and open to publically acknowledge one relationship but not another of equal value?

As a non-primary I can only imagine that being put in a position where you’d like to acknowledge your partner but their situation with their family, say, means you have to remain a secret; keep pictures off of facebook, be careful what you say in public etc, would feel an awful lot like the deceit of regular cheating.

Bottom line.
Talk about your life, or don’t, that’s your choice. But If you love someone and share your life with them lying about how much they mean to you, asking them to let that lie pervade and requiring other partners to be accessories to that is, in my likely-to-be-flamed opinion, not actually that open or ethical at all.

Discuss!

TL;DR: Your Mileage May Vary

albj — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:27:35 +0000

This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of blog posts looking at Buddhism and Polyamory.

It’s tempting to begin by going through the most common misconceptions and clearing the air of any false assumptions. I am going to resist. Suffice to say, there are as many kinds of Buddhists as there are Polyamorists. There’s as much in the way of cringe-inducingly inaccurate press, wanky in-group language, easily as many One True Way-ers (and probably as many vegetarians!) So all I ask is that you approach with your assumptions on your sleeve and please feel free to ask questions. I’m no great authority on either subject, but I can point us both in the direction of those who are if the need arises.

Final bit of preamble: Flame not. All views are my own :)

And the sentence above: “Flame not. All views are my own”, is incidentally very Buddhist indeed! As a doctrine, Buddhism is pleasingly ‘live and let live’ about life. That’s not to say there’s no right or wrong, there are very clear definitions of both. Simply that unlike many theistic religions Buddhism cares more about your motivations and the outcomes than the action in between. Which means it is very difficult to look at a situation from the outside and judge whether it is ‘moral’. (Buddhists would probably use the word “wholesome” here, as I might later on, feel free to substitute for a word that feels comfortable to you).

The root of this ‘live and let live’ attitude is two-fold. Firstly, Buddhists don’t much care about your personal choices (within reason!). Your own misconduct causes your own suffering, your own ‘right actions’ cause your own happiness. Karma is probably best translated simply as “consequences”. It is all just cause and effect, so you go ahead and suit yourself! Secondly the Buddha wasn’t, and never claimed to be, anything but another average human. He was just a guy who was unhappy and took action to become happier. He tried a heap of things that didn’t work and then found something that did. So when he finally gave into peer pressure and explained his theories, he’d absolutely no reason to know if they would work for anyone else.

Which is why the Kalama Sutra exists. (“Sutra” just means “thread” in Sanskrit and literally refers to a ‘thread’ of teaching”.) It was supposedly told to the people of Kalama before the Buddha explained his newfound realisations about happiness. It is effectively a speech detailing 10 reasons NOT to believe him. Obviously if you read the sutras now the language and examples are laughable, but the content is very easily modernised. I have barely altered the below.

Over 2,000 years ago the people of Kalama were cautioned not to believe:
- just because something has been passed along and retold through the years
- just because some practice has become traditional
- merely because of gossip and news no matter how widespread
- just because something is cited in the scriptures / authoritative texts
- just because something seems to fit with the reasoning of your logic (assume nothing!)
- nor because something is ‘correct’ on the grounds of philosophical dogmatism
- just because something appeals to one’s common sense, which is merely snap judgements based on one’s habits and tendencies of thought
- nor because something stands up to or agrees with one’s preconceived opinions and theories
- do not believe just because the speaker appears believable
- nor because the speaker is our teacher

Now if you look at these in terms of non-monogamy, you’ll immediately see that to be monogamous by default, i.e. without questioning or choosing, is a trapping of very many of the above; an often unexamined, originally religious tradition which we are brought up to have a positive prejudice for.

Always one for clarity, the Buddha went on to tell us when we should believe:

When you yourselves know: These things are unwholesome, these things are blameworthy; these things are censured by the wise; and when undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill, abandon them. But when you know for yourselves: These are wholesome; these things are not blameworthy; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness, having undertaken them, abide in them.

Which touches in on what is, for me, the most fundamental aspect of Buddhism. It isn’t about a judging/guiding interventionist God. This isn’t a “computer says no” moral philosophy. There’s no superhuman to ask. There’s no human to ask. Just ourselves. And we already know. We are amazingly complex, sensitive creatures. When we are doing something ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, on some level we always know. We can choose to ignore it, and it’ll come back to bite us in the butt, but that’s the thing – our morailty is our own responsibility.

That’s not to say there are no rules.. of course there are and we’ll get to those. It’s also not to say that Buddhism accepts polyamory as a moral or “wholesome practice” either, and we’ll get to that too..

But as a grounding, whatever we’re discussing, it will be within the framework of the Kalama Sutra that I speak. As the Buddha basically said, “YMMV”!