Celibacy

Hey guys! Long time no see.

I popped in and I've been thinking a lot about renunciation practices lately, so I figured I'd contribute my two cents. In my experience, the value of celibacy, as with all renunciation practices, is well beside any concern with the conservation of energy or vitality, but rather in the weakening of the causal links in the chain of dependent co-arising, the process that leads from sense contact to desire to suffering and back again. By engaging a sort of kill switch or brake in the process of indulgence of sense desire, we dehabituate the mind from its comfortable routine of feel->judge->desire->act. And as we develop a sense of distance and mindfulness from that deeply ingrained mental process, and start to throw a monkey wrench or two in the normally smooth process of satisfaction of somatic markers—i am lonely, so i feel lousy, so i eat something junky (or masturbate, or grab a beer)—we weaken that sense of properness and justification that short-sighted, unskillful desires carry with them (that is, sex per se is not sinful, but sexual desire unmindfully kept tends to carry around the implication that its satisfaction is necessary and instrumental for the quenching of suffering at that very moment, and this is illusory and leads to suffering). So renunciation practices can be a strong tool to get to the point where Sumedho famously said, 'I like, but I do not want.' That is, he feels the vedana associated with sexuality and attraction, but he has developed a serenity and equanimity such that the paticcasamuppada is stopped at that point, and desire does not arise as a result.

Hope you're all well!

PS I also keep coming back, lately, to something a friend was told on a retreat; he was basically instructed not to look anybody in the eye, to keep his gaze focused on the ground, because he still was viewing all the women he saw in a sexual context. I can definitely relate to this condition. Some people will say that the abandonment of all sexual activity will lead to greater sexual desire and frustration. Some people say that it will allow that sexual, desire-oriented lens to be dissolved from one's experience. I think the answer is probably very individual.

I wondered where you had got to, Crux! Nice to have you back.