CELIBACY

“When one is familiar with jhana, and realises the origin of the bliss therein, one will come to see for oneself that all worldly pleasures of the five external senses (which includes sexuality) are merely dukkha -(suffering).”

Ajhan Brahm

The word ‘celibacy’ derives from the Latin caelebs, meaning unmarried or single. The word brahmacharya means ‘conduct that leads to the realization of Brahman or God.’ However, brahmacharya is more than just being unmarried or single; it is about purity in thought, word, and deed.

Most traditions teach Brahmacharya of some kind, and it is a very important factor if you want to access jhana (deep states of samadhi meditation). It is one of the fundamental practices in Theravada Buddhism, Yoga, and Taoism; reason being, if you can temporarily transcend sexual desire and know how to sublimate this energy, it will greatly improve your meditation practice and may even result in samadhi/jhana. If you don’t practice along with the other steps of the Noble Eightfold Path, the chances of attaining jhana will be very slim, because you will not be able to get past or at least be able to temporarily suppress or let go of the five hindrances mentioned previously. However, some people with powerful concentration but unwholesome conduct have been able to attain samadhi and wrongfully equate this with enlightenment, which it is not.

Many schools of Taoism and yoga say the practice of celibacy will conserve and channel the life force energy through the various energy centers. It will not only help you along your spiritual path, but it will also prolong your life and both your physical and mental health. It is known that whenever the life force is conserved and reabsorbed into the system, that energy goes towards enriching the blood and, by doing so, strengthening the brain and the rest of the organs.

The way that one practices Brahmacharya is to first know or to become mindful as to how the mind/body operates. For example, when a thought first arises, it might cause a pleasant feeling in the body, but then this feeling often leads to craving and eventually to acting out on the craving. One has to know how to interrupt this process by using ‘mindfulness’—right effort and willpower—and also how to direct one’s energy through one-pointed concentration. Other attributes of mindfulness are knowing how to replace one thought with another or how to nip thoughts in the bud and not allow them to flower to the point of losing control.

One can begin by practicing abstaining from any impulses. An effective way to do this is by guarding the ‘sensory doors’; meaning, all sensory contact with sights, sounds, touch, taste, and smell, and additionally, knowing clearly the patterns of your mind/body complex and then avoiding these triggers. One has to know how the mind and body react to various stimuli and that one can simply observe what is happening in the body while abandoning the impulses or instincts to react.

Gurdjieff, a mystic and meditation teacher who was heavily influenced by Theravada Buddhism, used to teach an exercise of stopping oneself from sneezing just before doing so. This method of abstaining can be effectively applied to all sorts of behaviors and appetites. We are programmed to eat only what we like or at certain times of the day, and going without sex is much easier in comparison. We can live without having sex, but not without food.

Much of the sexual stimuli are automatic and outside one’s awareness, through the olfactory glands and the sense of smell, as well as the sex pheromones produced by both males and females. When women ovulate, they produce a pheromone called ‘copulance,’ which will not only change their behavior, their body language becoming more flirtatious through facial expressions, walk, swagger, voice, and so on, and it will also increase the libido and testosterone levels in men and make it more difficult for them to control their sexual urges.

Scientific tests have been done on primates such as chimpanzees and apes that prove that when the female chimpanzee is past her reproductive period but smeared with sex pheromone, the male monkeys will not be able to control themselves. Since we share 99 percent of their DNA, the same applies to humans.

Certain foods will temporarily affect sexual desire, as well as will lack of food, extensive fasting, and dieting. Fasting can actually bring gonadal hormone levels to more of a prepubescent level and dramatically reduce one’s libido. Reason being is that the body will do anything to conserve energy at that point because it fears it’s going into death mode and loses all interest in sex. Similar to when one is physically ill, the thought of sex can become repulsive.

Abstaining from energetic impulses takes tremendous self-awareness, discipline, and willpower at first, but with time and practice it becomes easier. After not acting on these impulses a few times one realizes that they can be temporarily conquered, in order to attain deep states of meditation.

Abstinence falls under the ‘right effort’ category of the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism. By guarding the gates and senses of what you allow into your mind-stream, and being careful not to pollute it, you will avoid the triggers. So one needs to be aware of what one looks at until one gets more skillful at knowing how to overcome the obscurations of thoughts, feelings, or sensations when they do arise. You will begin to notice how primitive and animalistic the instincts can be and how this society thrives on the bombardment of imagery, urging one to crave after objects, to consume, to procreate. If one is not aware, then one can easily be thrown off track and seduced by it all.

At some point one is able to view these things and see through the ‘maya/mara’ of it, the illusion or appearance. This is why it’s best to find the right sort of environment to practice celibacy, ideally in seclusion, without other people around. Group retreats or group energy are not good for various reasons, such as interacting with the opposite sex, the emotional baggage of others, negative energy, and so on. Practicing in a secluded environment out in nature is probably the most conducive.

There are powerful meditations or ‘reflections on repulsiveness’ that one can do with the different 32 body parts. This can enable one to see through the illusion of the body and know reality as it truly is. One way is to meditate on one segment at a time as follows: head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bone, marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, membranes, spleen, lungs, bowels, intestines, gorge, excrement, brain, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, grease, snot, spittle, oil of the joints, and urine. This practice will completely change the way you look at any organism ever again, human, animal, or otherwise.

For example, you could look at a so-called ‘beautiful’ woman or man or any other object and see bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, grease, snot, spittle, oil of the joints, or urine. Or you could view these objects in terms of the elements only: earth, wind, fire, and water, or carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, or CHONPS for short, the six most abundant elements of life. These exact same molecular elements, along with some other trace minerals make up all biological forms on earth and the cycle of the biosphere. In deep meditation, if we look at the human being on a subatomic level, we are no different from any other object out there, and our atoms are mostly made up of empty space. When we do this, we also transform our ordinary perception and energy and convert it into something much more conducive.

At the same time, trying to suppress one’s sexuality and urges through force of will can cause a backlash of neurotic and energetic problems, so it’s a very delicate matter. Practicing celibacy can be extremely challenging and revealing of where one is at on the path.

In any case, it will clearly expose how much you crave and desire the flesh. If the cravings get too intense, other methods could involve reading scripture or meditating, working out, running, or some other form of exercise like yoga that will help to regulate the energy flow.

If you are able to abstain from acting out on a particular craving and attachment, even temporarily, you will gain tremendous spiritual power. This energy can be used in all sorts of creative ways. Your mind will be bright and clear, and you will gain concentration like a laser beam. Your thinking and memory will also become very lucid, and your energy level will skyrocket. This is the reason why professional and Olympic athletes conserve their sexual energy prior to major competitions. This reserved energy will boost creativity, insight, and intuition many times over, because when the mind/body complex is not indulging in these passions, it becomes still. One will also begin to look and feel younger.

NEO ADVAITA

Some non-dualists today say that one can enjoy sensual pleasure without sensual desire or becoming attached by being non-identified, aware, and separate from the lower animal instincts.

The problem with this view of course, (even with some very advanced practitioners as with the Tibetan, Taoist and Mahasiddha traditions) that if they  were so pure, or aware, this sensual craving would not arise in the first place, and even if it did, they would not act out on it, but what many contemporary non dualists teach is a form of hedonistic non-dual sex which is very different from some of the earlier teachings of Advaita Vedanta.

Traditional Vedanta also saw the benefit of curbing sensual gratification through requiring the early rishis to be married and only practice sex for no other reason than procreation. Even in this case why the need for procreation at all?

Continue to Part 18