Ginger Banks

“Wonder enhances life; worry shortens it.”
― Rami M. Shapiro, Proverbs: Annotated & Explained

“Masturbation is the ongoing love affair that each of us has with ourselves throughout our lifetime.”
― Betty Dodson, Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving

“A woman once approached the Buddha in tears. She presented him with her dead child and said, “Lord Buddha, I have heard that you can bring the dead back to life. This is my son who died only this morning. I beg you, Lord Buddha, restore him to me.” The Buddha agreed, provided that the woman bring him a single mustard seed from a home in the village that had not experienced death. The woman ran to the village and went door to door to find even one household that had not been touched by death. She failed. When she returned to the Buddha, her grief was no less but her attitude toward it had changed. She knew the inevitability of suffering and the futility of seeking to make things other than they are. She could now mourn her child and move on.”
― Rami Shapiro, Recovery—The Sacred Art: The Twelve Steps as Spiritual Practice

“The way women are made to conform to this double standard is through the deprivation of sexual self knowledge. Deprived of their own bodies, they have no way of discovering or developing sexual responses. Had an early age, women are prohibited from touching their genitals with the threat of supernatural or real punishment. Information about the clitoris and life affirming orgasm is withheld, and women are installed with the idea that female genitals are inferior, that a woman’s main value lies in procreation and giving a man sexual pleasure. Without any sexual pleasure of her own, I woman may come to think of her genitals as being repulsive and a constant source of discomfort and shame. This kind of sexual repression is a vital aspect of keeping women in their ‘proper role’.”
― Betty Dodson, Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving