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Becoming a Monk or Nun? I got answers for you.
thenovicemonk41
Explorer
Hey, everyone! My name is novicemonk41. Some are wondering, "are you a Buddhist monk?". My answer is not anymore. I have held ordination at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia for a year before my grandfather past. But, I will be becoming a Monk again starting in July.
Intrested in the monastic life? Answer questions and I'll reply, asap.
3
Comments
As a monk how much time did you have to read on a daily basis?
And what tradition are you going to ordain in?
With metta chris
( @thenovicemonk41) are you under some impression that none of us know anything about anything?
)
I think you may be here under some misapprehension.......
So do we!
What questions don't you have answers to? Why should you have all the fun ...
These renunciates ... really ... all me, me me. Seems to have a touch of the Hinyanas.
Sorry to be so blunt, but it's highlighted in a dragon's job-description:
SEX...
How can you live without sex?????
Easily! It's a lot of fuss about nothing.
Say that to a desperate housewife...
The only things needed to sustain life are food, water, optimum temperature and breathable air.
My experience is that often the answering of others' questions is a virtuous camouflage for not addressing my own.
You obviously haven't read my book "Confessions of a builder"...
@DhammaDragon
Everybody lives with sex.
Most encourage it, some reject it and fewer yet treat it as they would any phenomena in meditation.
Easy to do....Noooo.... but neither is allowing any other phenomena to arise, live and depart without us habitually manipulating it.
It is really just a question of what your priorities are.
I think almost everyone can live without sex, tbh. Just takes pratice.
I can't see how you could lose your sex drive by mouthing some words even if you believe every one deeply. Seems unlikely to work for 99.9 percent of the population. Thankfully for the human race it isn't that easy.
Isn't that why monks contemplate the unpleasant aspects of the body in order to suppress desire?
It takes work. Or age. Or a combination of the two.
Of course it too many people took up the practice, there wouldn't be anyone left to construct or praise or frolic with their "Buddhism."
We like to think that the feelings of a sex drive are more forceful and difficult to address than the thoughts of our own mentality but it just isn't true.
Both are equally difficult to truly face with equanimity. Both are just phenomena.
A meditation practice is really only a field of practice where we learn how to allow their arrivals, life expression and departures, to be potentially free of our ego's editing's.
Neither the existence of a sexual drive or a thought drive is the problem.
The problem is about how our identity/ego/or selfish self is actually maintained through our habituated directions of either, just as their
solution in regard to suffering's cause lies in our willingness to stop needing to direct either.
How can I possibly know if others can refrain from sex? I can only know myself.
I make a monthly donation to them.
I would love to visit there one day!
Yeah - one day I will I reckon.
Living in Australia makes it a tad difficult :
LOL.
Nice theory. Not borne out by my experience living and working amongst real renunciates who have put their sexual energies elsewhere for a while, whether or not they are present. How successfully is a personal unfoldment. @DhammaDragon practices yoga which I feel from my experience and many others, often increases the sexual drive and improves its enjoyment.
Monks and nuns are not living in a sexualised society or environment and large amounts of meditation can sublimate a healthy sex drive. Many traditions, including some Buddhist are quite balanced in allowing married monks, clerics or spiritual practitioners, where that is their need.
Again from experience, high amounts of meditation (@thenovicemonk41 mentions doing three hours per day) do change the nature of the relationship to physical needs such as sex, food, comfort etc. High amounts of meditation can create a refined high that is just as satisfying as sex, food or hiking.
The point of balance for each individual varies, changes and is dependent on their approach and capacities.
http://www.thenakedmonk.com/2013/03/10/why-celibacy-is-perverse/
... and now back to the holy fantasists
Yeah, sure....
Sorry, I have no nun vocation. Definitely. Never.
Pah! Shilly-shallying part-timers!
So now I know that in order to stop drooling over gardeners and builders and become a perfect nun, all I have to do is stop doing yoga and give that second chakra a rest....
Hatha and similar postural yoga are sometimes thought as part of Hindu/Buddhist tantric yoga. If the energies are sublimated by celibates then we may become an ultra spiritual with supernatural siddhis. If involved in lay life with a partner, we may have our cake and eat it. Yab-Yum!
http://www.lionsroar.com/buddhism-and-yoga-where-the-paths-cross/
...and now back to those drooling over the unordained ...
You could take up dogging or pretend to be interested in astronomy.
My response was to the point, 'how can one live without sex' and in doing so was intended to highlight that it is possible to continue living without sex whereas it would be much more challenging without breathable air for example.
My intention was to highlight that something that may seem from one perspective to be one way is also from another perspective another way.
Any particular telescope you recommend? I am just enquiring for a friend ...
The bigger the better, size matters with telescopes.
Oh children......? shush.
I think at this point I could go without sex forever, lol. But having 3 kids pretty much is natural birth control, kind of "been there, done that would rather just go to sleep!" Thankfully, my husband isn't a high libido person either, so when it happens it happens, but neither of us terribly craves it. Ordination appeals to me, but it won't likely happen in this life, which is fine. Perhaps if I had figured that out 20 years ago...
If I had to give sex up for some reason, I wouldn't mind much. But it's easy to say that when I have the choice, perhaps I would feel different if it wasn't an option anymore. When you can have it whenever you want, you don't crave it as much I suppose.
In the last 5 years?
3 times.
And that is all I am prepared to say on the matter.
Oh i'm wetting myself here... thanks for the laughs guys!
@lobster, when did you last have a touch of the hinayanas?
Only asking...
...\lol/...
@thenovicemonk41 - apologies if this is crass but I am interested to know if it's ok for Tibetan monks to.........you know.......relieve themselves?
That's as nice as I can put it!
I think that's none of our business, frankly, and does nothing to increase the intention of our own path.
What difference does that make to one's own practice, one way or the other...?
@federica - I'm curious is all.
I think it's unhealthy if they're not allowed to but have never been game to ask.
@thenovicemonk41 has openly come on here and said I could ask questions about being a monastic so that's what i'm doing.
Just because you're not interested doesn't mean other people aren't.
And why does everything have to relate to my journey on the path? Sheesh.........
yech... fancy wanting to know if monks masturbate.
I really can't see why that would be a factor for curiosity.
And I'm as entitled to my rationale as you deem you are.
You English are so repressed!!!!
In all honesty though, males should ejaculate relatively regularly for health reasons.
Any kind of practice that suppresses that is unhealthy IMO.
Apologies if it offends anybody's sensibilities.......
So you're saying that if monks abstain they're in for health problems? If that were true, there would be millions of health-scare stories circulating, wouldn't there?
Sexual abstention is about as harmful to health as giving up licking your lips.
There is absolutely NO evidence whatsoever, that voluntary sexual abstention is detrimental to personal health.
You are quite right to state that it's your opinon, and I respect that, but I hate to tell you this - you're wrong.
Those who are obliged by circumstance to give up on sex, might suffer from psychological issues, but nothing physical.
Oh and just for the record: I'm half Italian.
No. I'm not saying that at all.
In order to keep sperm healthy men should ejaculate reasonably regularly. That's the point I'm trying to make.
But a monk who has taken voluntary vows of celibacy has absolutely no need to keep his sperm healthy. So the need to ejaculate is academic.
THAT'S the point I'M trying to make.
(Really, we should either take this to PM, or leave it. It's steering the thread off-topic....)
(And I'm not sure why you lol'd at this....?
)
PM me if you want.