[Buddha-l] Another One Bites the Dust

[Richard Hayes]

On Mar 4, 2013, at 11:15 , Jo <ugg-5 at spro.net> wrote:

> Celibacy is also unnecessary because it began in antque and later ages to be instituted to prevent hanky panky and therefore loss of dana and reputation of an order. 

I think the most likely rationale for requiring celibacy in the early days was that followers of religious communities were beggars (bhikṣu), and the feeling was that people with dependents should not be claiming to be renunciants of the worldly life and therefore entitled to beg for a living. As George W. Bush and the Buddha agreed, the best way to avoid having dependent children was to abstain from sexual activity altogether. That is one consideration. The other, of course, is that breaking free of all desires was seen as necessary for liberation from saṃsāra. Since food and sex were seen as the strongest objects of desire, it made sense to limit food and eliminate sex from the lifestyles of those in earnest pursuit of nirvāṇa.

Americans nowadays don't much like celibacy, partly because they don't much like begging (because they read Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-reliance" at an impressionable age) and partly because frankly, Scarlett, they don't give a damn about nirvāṇa.

Richard