Sexual Love in Buddhism
QUESTION: Maybe when I've read Zen Therapy I will understand myself a little more: Right now I'm in a wave of emotion they call love, but I would liken it more to an addiction, with painful withdrawal symptoms... I've always felt that I was missing my other half, but despite that I'm still not convinced that it is an answer. I can't say I really understand how procreation/sexuality and love fit within the Buddhist model, at least the engaged Buddhist model, because I can't be intimate with someone without getting wrapped up in the emotion of it, it's the rapture that gives it intensity, but also anguish.
DHARMAVIDYA: Sexual love, as you say, has great power to create anguish, rapture and confusion. The Buddha gave it up completely, but that was after having explored it rather thoroughly. If people were more aware of the down side of it, there would be a lot less misery. People would enter into commitments less rashly and, having entered into them would be less easily tempted to break them. It isn't all its cracked up to be in the commercials. This, however, is principally because people tend to go into relationships in order to get their own narcissistic needs met rather than out of a real care for, or even sufficient knowledge of, the other person. Romance can seem almost a substitute religion, promising to bring a kind of salvation in which all our deficiencies will be healed as if by magic. The reality is different. When the glitter has worn off an intimate relationship challenges us to become more mature, or it becomes a spiritual trap in which we collude in co-dependency.
A good relationship can be a real spiritual path since it involves intensity of concern for an other and this can take us out of self in a not merely superficial way. A harmonious couple can bring great benefit not only to themselves, but to everybody they meet.
Reflecting this reality, within the Amida Order there is a place for both married and celibate persons. Celibate people can devote themselves wholeheartedly to the path without distraction. Married couples in which both partners are devotees can work as a team and advance together. Married couples in which only one partner is pursuing the spiritual life can present a more difficult situation, but it depends upon the attitudes of those involved. Within the Amida system it is possible for the Buddhist partner to be a lay member or even to ordain as a chaplain and eventually become a minister with a full role within the Order, so long as there is agreement from the other party. The really difficult situations are those where people are committed to a partner who actively opposes their faith. Here it is for the couple to work out themselves what the real meaning and importance of their relationship is and why they are set in such a conflict with one another if they really do care for one another. The Pureland forms of Buddhism, particularly, tend to value lay and family life as wholesome ways to express the Dharma.
DHARMAVIDYA: Sexual love, as you say, has great power to create anguish, rapture and confusion. The Buddha gave it up completely, but that was after having explored it rather thoroughly. If people were more aware of the down side of it, there would be a lot less misery. People would enter into commitments less rashly and, having entered into them would be less easily tempted to break them. It isn't all its cracked up to be in the commercials. This, however, is principally because people tend to go into relationships in order to get their own narcissistic needs met rather than out of a real care for, or even sufficient knowledge of, the other person. Romance can seem almost a substitute religion, promising to bring a kind of salvation in which all our deficiencies will be healed as if by magic. The reality is different. When the glitter has worn off an intimate relationship challenges us to become more mature, or it becomes a spiritual trap in which we collude in co-dependency.
A good relationship can be a real spiritual path since it involves intensity of concern for an other and this can take us out of self in a not merely superficial way. A harmonious couple can bring great benefit not only to themselves, but to everybody they meet.
Reflecting this reality, within the Amida Order there is a place for both married and celibate persons. Celibate people can devote themselves wholeheartedly to the path without distraction. Married couples in which both partners are devotees can work as a team and advance together. Married couples in which only one partner is pursuing the spiritual life can present a more difficult situation, but it depends upon the attitudes of those involved. Within the Amida system it is possible for the Buddhist partner to be a lay member or even to ordain as a chaplain and eventually become a minister with a full role within the Order, so long as there is agreement from the other party. The really difficult situations are those where people are committed to a partner who actively opposes their faith. Here it is for the couple to work out themselves what the real meaning and importance of their relationship is and why they are set in such a conflict with one another if they really do care for one another. The Pureland forms of Buddhism, particularly, tend to value lay and family life as wholesome ways to express the Dharma.
posted by Dharmavidya at 9:02 AM
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