The Male Animal Libido and ExLibido
There it is, in us always, though it may be asleep. The male animal. The mate____All the male animals fight for the female, from the land crab to the bird of paradise. They don't just sit and talk. They act.
James Thurber (1894-1961) and Elliot Nugent (1900-1980), The Male Animal1
Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Libido
There it is: that insatiable lusting to act. The instinctual drive to caress, to couple, to overcome any competition. Libido is not a male preserve. Readers of both sexes can recall how gonadal hormones took over, reshaped their anatomy, and still sponsor libidinous imperatives to satisfy ''skin hunger.''
An intricate web of mechanisms generates adult psychosexual behavior. Though the origins of this web are hard to untangle, many receptors for testosterone and estrogen swarm over the nerve cells in the medial hypothalamus and pre-optic area. And pathways leading on from here release many neural and endocrine messengers, engaging both our body and brain in multiple dynamic interactions.
Beyond that, several deep medial and neighboring brain regions also employ a special enzyme. To endocrinologists, the enzyme presents a yin/yang paradox. Called aromatase, it converts testosterone molecules to estradiol. Estradiol does go on to activate estrogen receptors in such key regions as the medial pre-optic area, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and the anterior hypothalamic area. But this estradiol still promotes male sexual activity when it acts on these local nerve cells, even though it is still an estrogen derived from that earlier testosterone molecule.2
Opposites attract. Once their olfactory systems detect the faint signals of pherohormones, men and women go on to activate their hypothalamus differently. PET and fMRI scans have monitored these responses. They show that estrogen-like molecules (extracted from female urine) tend to activate the male hypothalamus. In contrast, testosterone-like molecules (extracted from male sweat) activate the female hypothalamus.3 What will happen in the hypothalamus and related regions of meditators? Will carefully controlled studies show that their responses wane to such pherohormones over the course of several decades? Might some retreats even give rise to enhanced responses? The pherohormone research model could provide interesting data.
Hormones and Development
The first newborn son is always a surprise. His libido might seem poised for an early start. Why does that baby boy have such a large penis and scrotum? Because while he was still in utero, his mother's placenta secreted a stimulating hormone (chorionic gonadotropin). This gonadotropin drove her son's own gonads to produce temporarily high levels of testosterone.
A decade or so later, male and female bodies undergo further distinctive changes. Now, high levels of the gonadotropin hormone from the adolescents' own pituitary glands trigger their sexual maturation at puberty. Recent MRI studies reveal that women then go on to develop bigger frontal and medial paralimbic cortical regions in relation to the total size of the cerebrum. Men develop larger volumes of frontal-medial cortex, amygdala, and hypothalamus.4
Male and female brains also differ physiologically. The fact that Jack responds more than Jill does to erotic films occasions no surprise. During one recent fMRI study, the 20 men reported being more sexually aroused by the films than did the 20 women.5 In the process, both men and women developed increased fMRI signals in many limbic regions. For example, increased signals occurred not only in the cortex of the anterior cingulate, medial prefrontal, orbital prefrontal, insula, and occipito-temporal regions but also in the amygdala and ventral striatum.
However, only the men also developed significant activations in two other regions: the thalamus and hypothalamus. The hypothalamus was more activated in the men who reported higher levels of sexual arousal.
Directly Experiencing Contrasts
Men tend to equate many of their notions of selfhood with their libido. But not until you lose your sense of self, not until you lose your libido, can you appreciate their true nature. Only then—in retrospect—can you understand how deeply each had influenced who you are and how you act.
Did I ever truly appreciate my intrusive "self?" Not until my I-Me-Mine had first dissolved, and then returned. Back in 1982, it would require this particular sequence—presence, sudden absence, then presence again—to truly awaken me to selfhood's immensely powerful intrusive energies. Fifteen years later, could I truly appreciate the prepotency of my libido? Not until it dropped out and then returned. The two episodes illustrate a simple experiential principle: once you lose something vital, you will finally appreciate it more.
Perhaps you are wondering: Does this preamble on libido relate to Zen? Zen emphasizes the primacy of direct experience, not layers of theological, doctrinal, and metaphysical abstractions. So the reasons for including the following firstperson narrative are threefold. First, it represents an example of the basic Zen teaching: direct experience is crucial. Second, it illustrates the general principle: loss makes us more appreciative. Third, this story helps us focus on how our brain undergoes slow, deep, essential processes of change. Similar subtle mechanisms, operating during long-range meditative training, serve to transform a person's traits incrementally.
Ex-Libido
Seven years ago in 1997, having watched my prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels climb for several years, I was found at biopsy to be harboring a low-grade prostate cancer. Prior to radiation, my urologist prescribed a 3-month course of antiendocrine therapy. The technical term is ''combined androgen deprivation.''6 He said it was designed to shrink the prostate gland.
An understatement. The prostate was not the only thing that would shrink. Within 2 to 3 weeks, I learned firsthand how my brain and body felt when they were doubly deprived of both pituitary gonadotropin and testosterone. Another description of this treatment would be a course of ''prescribed celibacy.'' It would shrink, to zero, every libidinous impulse and behavior I had felt and known deeply since adolescence.
Months later, this drug combination finally wore off. Now I could witness a very reassuring feeling: my libido was returning slowly to its former levels. Once again, this particular sequence—presence, absence, then presence again—was teaching me directly, at visceral levels, how powerfully my deeper limbic nerve cell activity (and its inactivity) could shape my attitudes and behavior.
Steroid Hormones Influence Gene Transcription
We think, constantly, in flurries. Brisk transitory changes in ions and neural messengers drive the ''monkey mind.'' Their time course operates in milliseconds. Other mental processes evolve over seconds, hours, a few days. They are responding to slower metabolic cascades.
Steroid messengers act even more slowly. Once testosterone binds to its receptors on a target nerve cell, many days may pass before the results of the next metabolic cascades become obvious. First, the cascade of intracellular signals needs to reach the DNA deep inside this cell's nucleus. Only later do the next chemical reactions emerge to modify the rest of the nerve cell (see chapter 37).
These sentences describe the kind of slow delayed "genomic" change that would reshape my gene transcription, cause my libido to gradually disappear, and only later give rise to its subsequent recovery. These words describe the slowly evolving neurochemical reactions that would transform my psychophysi-ology, undercutting my impulsive thoughts and my deeper instincts. This cascade of metabolic steps would slowly reset one major category of my brain functions at a dramatically lower operating level: Ex libido.
Subjective Feelings and Reflections
Words help me speak from experience. I do not recommend the experience. Expe-rientially, this lost sexual drive affected me in two ways. It was both a deep vacancy of every sexual interest and desire plus a corresponding lack of all physical and behavioral manifestations. My urologist was considerate. Only when my libido returned did he comment that what he had prescribed during those months of androgen blockade was in fact, a "medical castration.''
Fortunately, this metabolic deprivation was short-lived. Even though it had cut off the roots of all sexual longing, it was brief enough to produce no other changes obvious to me either in physical or mental energy, or in many other different motivational drives.
But in the interim, did I miss the old feelings and habits of behaving sexually? Yes. This reflected primarily a conscious mixture of concern for my understanding wife plus a sense of private regret. On the other hand, in one's 70s there is also some room to experience a subtle sense of liberation. Furthermore, as this chapter illustrates, I could view this brief eunuchoid experience with more than simple professional curiosity. Why? Because it served to confirm an earlier observation: "subtractions" of the psychic self play a key role in the phenomena experienced during kensho [Z:614, 653-659, 688].
Once again, the facts of actual direct experience—a loss of libido in my case—suggested an important conclusion: Deep instinctual drives rise up from the depths of one's brain. Not until they become less excitable can one finally drop off greedy longings and attachments [Z:650-663].
Implications for Our Understanding of Sage Wisdom
This conclusion is relevant to the long-range results of Zen training. The genomic changes just discussed act slowly. Nevertheless, they still transform the way vital messenger systems drive our behavioral functions in key regions. Similar slow changes seem pertinent to the mechanisms causing other major changes in traits and behavior during decades-long meditative training.
In this chapter, the waning of libido served as a clinical example. But later, in part VIII, we address different incremental changes that can dissolve other aspects of selfhood permanently. These will become manifest during the late stage of ongoing enlightened traits [Z:691-695].
Certain personal attributes are implicit in such late ''sage wisdom.'' A genuine sage will live harmoniously, all unfruitful attachments having dropped off. Not the least of these is inappropriate sexual behavior. In this regard, the ethical restraints of shila remain the bedrock foundation for his or her daily-life practice, the guidelines so central to Buddhist and other religious disciplines [Z:73-74].
But the questions arise: What does enable sage monks and nuns to remain celibate? Is it accurate to think that it is only their strength of character? Does the red thread of sexuality still color their consciousness so much that they remain abstinent through willpower alone?
I doubt it. My ''prescribed celibacy'' taught me that celibacy need not depend on willed thought processes alone. It does not operate only at the level of imposed, top-down, psychological restraints. A more effective and spiritually authentic celibacy expresses a deep attitudinal change at one's physiological core. Former hard-edged drives soften, lose their urgent imperatives. Any earlier need to suppress obsessive behavior simply drops off. These deep psychophysiological reasons help explain why it is no longer necessary to impose higher-level cognitive restraints from above.
A narrative from the Theravada tradition illustrates how a young Buddhist monk's prior training in renunciation had influenced the way he behaved toward women.7 One day, a group of attractive nursing students visited his monastery for several hours. These students, wearing beautiful Thai turquoise-and-white uniforms, sat near this monk (Ajahn Sumedho) all during a lengthy teaching session. After they had left, the monk's revered master, who had led the discussion, spoke to him about these attractive young women, and asked: ''What did that do to your mind?''
The junior monk replied: ''I like, but I can't want.'' His master was pleased with this response. For weeks thereafter, he continued to point out the basic principle: a trained monk turns away from wanting to possess. It is a basic lack of wanting. Attachments have been tested, and found wanting (see chapter 58). This attitudinal transformation develops in the absence of any notions of fear, repression, or aversion.8 George Bernard Shaw, no angel, could see that a lack of desire was a crucial ingredient in such ''virtues.''
Subtractions of Wanting; Nonattachment
Thoughts are superficial. Zen aims deeper, at attitudes. How can long-term monastic training bring about the requisite psychophysiological subtractions at depth? One can envision processes at the neurochemical level that transform a nerve cell's excitability. These subtle changes start at the receptors out on the cell's surface, cascade down into the nucleus, then move back out again to change the way the cell fires (see chapter 33). In a similar manner can the kinds of slow changes that subtract a person's libidinous drives also dissolve, reshape, and redirect that person's various selfish impulses? Only deep subtractions can transform a person's traits of character.
The next chapter confronts the aberrant behavior of those few religious leaders who violate the centuries-old teachings of their traditions. At this distance, perhaps the most charitable way to view their failings is as immaturities. No matter how venerable such offenders may appear to be, they certainly lack the maturity of character expected of their station.
Did some other teachers in the older generations seem both wizened and more wise? Perhaps they benefited not only from the ways aging changes nerve cells but also (one may hope) from a more realistic, matter-of-fact approach. Perhaps they learned from hard experiences, and softer ones too, how libidinous impulses do tend to wane with each passing decade [Z:653-659, 660-663].
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