[Buddha-l] Another One Bites the Dust

[Jo]

Well put, Rhett (who valued logic above all values, except survival).
I'd agree that celibacy was de rigeur for beggars. Otherwise potential contributors might think they were, uh, Welfare Queens --another president?
Hadn't thought of that angle, since I’m a ditsy southern lady. 
As for the Amurrikans of our days: lots of them actually practice celibacy, since they are not partnered and choose to avoid STDs, among other klesas.  But boys will be boys—the power of celibate institutions has never been able to control the lower regions of the male mind, except perhaps Tibetan Buddhism, which figured out a way to deal with it…as Stephen Batchelor intimated. However, I bet that even they have had their fubars.

Joanna K.


-----Original Message-----
From: buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com [mailto:buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com] On Behalf Of Richard Hayes
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2013 12:37 PM
To: Buddhist discussion forum
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Another One Bites the Dust

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 
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