Fifteen Weeks of Dharma Dating. Anne Cushman goes undercover within the Buddhist branch for the online dating world

The theory first pops up as bull crap between me personally and my Tricycle editor: as being a newly solitary Buddhist mother, why don’t we upload my profile on a few this new online “dharma dating” websites, and write on my experiences?

We discover the idea both intriguing how to meet asian girls and horrifying. The means you’d search for a novel on Amazon.com for years I’ve mocked the notion of searching for a mate (“Add This Man to My Cart!”). As soon as, while searching for an utilized sofa on Craigslist, we popped up to the Men Seeking Women area for a look, plus the advertisements all ran together during my head: 6-foot divorced sofa, 45, brown hair/blue eyes, overstuffed cushions, slightly cat-clawed, wants to spank you. . . .

But recently, many of my friends have met lovers online; several other people have experienced enjoyable simply venturing out for dinners, films, and hikes with people they’d not have met minus the online. In accordance with company Week on the web, nearly 5 per cent associated with the U.S. population happens to be noted on Match com. Organizing times through Buddhist web web sites guarantees something unique: a broad assortment of potential buddies, them all solitary and thinking about connection, and all sorts of sharing a primary desire for religious training. So when a mating strategy, it probably beats cruising a Vipassana retreat.

The only issue is, I’ve never truly dated.

Within my mid-thirties, We married my university sweetheart, with whom I’d been close friends and partners that are off-and-on I became seventeen. During my twenties and very early thirties, through the extended periods as he and I also weren’t a couple of, We had explored a few relationships with some beautifully offbeat males: A Brazilian massage therapist who was simply having to pay for their master’s in somatic therapy by programming computer systems for the 900-line in Las vegas, nevada. A zen that is french student baked a tarte aux pommes for my birthday celebration and offered me bouquets of homegrown chard. A yogi who invited us to a clothing-optional “love and closeness” workshop at their Santa Cruz house that culminated in a skill show where a seventy-three-year-old girl belly-danced putting on absolutely absolutely nothing however a denim apron.

None associated with the connections, nonetheless, included something that you might phone dating. We came across while adjusting one another in Downward puppy, or squabbling over unwashed dishes when you look at the kitchen area of the collective home. We migrated effortlessly forward and backward over the boundary between relationship and love. I’m friends that are still good virtually everybody I’ve paired up with into the previous 20 years.

After my wedding took place in flames, relationship was the very last thing on my brain.

(possibly this had one thing related to the truth that I became nevertheless wearing medical bras.) And also at this point, I’ve been around long sufficient to realize that a intimate partner just isn’t an assured admission up to a dukkha-free life. Love, it appears in my experience, is a mix of serendipity and work that is hard. Wouldn’t we be best off utilizing my energy and time rooting out of the reason for suffering—craving—at its source? In place of dating, shouldn’t I volunteer at a soup kitchen area? Shouldn’t I concentrate on considering emptiness and interdependence to the stage where I’d have in the same way joy that is much an evening alone sorting socks because from per night making passionate love in the front of a fire to Indian sitar music?

Oh, who have always been we joking? “Sure,” we tell my editor. “I’ll check it out.”

Week 1 I have paralyzed in huge, bargain-basement stores. Provided fifteen aisles of footwear to pick from, I’m expected to give up on the entire task and go homeward barefoot. Therefore I pass regarding the modern age megasites like eHarmony and sign up for just the 2 that noise clearly Buddhist: dharmaMatch.com and DharmaDate.com.

Despite its title, dharmaMatch actually is a fairly basic website, targeted at singles of all of the spiritual persuasions “who hold their values, values, and spirituality as an essential part of these life.” Its homepage features an attractive couple that is young in a embrace, enclosed by giant soap bubbles—as if to remind us associated with impermanent nature of intimate love, as we pursue it.

DharmaDate is more narrowly targeted toward Buddhists: “We want to buy to be an informal sangha conference spot where you are able to be your self. Or be your non-self.” The {sign-up procedure includes|process tha series of in-depth questions regarding practice and thinking being clearly built to monitor down non-Buddhists (whom, presumably, would otherwise be flocking here in droves, drawn because of the popular licentiousness and natural animal magnetism of dharma practitioners). The very first thing we should do, on both internet sites, is opt for a screen title. We decide to try for Yogini, however it had been taken. Dakini? Exact same deal. I eliminate Bikini as unwise, and settle instead on Tahini, that also is the title of my pet.

Although pictures are not essential, they’re strongly motivated, once the bait regarding the hook into the online ocean.

Therefore I scramble through my files, searching for a current image that doesn’t lop my head off to spotlight my five-year-old son. Sign-up questionnaires ask me personally to assess every aspect of myself: appearance, life style, character, nutritional preferences. And, needless to say, spirituality—to a level we imagine perhaps not typically addressed by the average dating internet site (“What takes place following the human body dies?” is a question I’ve never ever seen before in a multiple-choice structure).