Buddhist
and Catholic Monks Talk About Celibacy -- Father
Thomas Ryan, CSP
The
electronic sign at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport was
flashing “Orange Alert” as a dozen Buddhist
monks arrived in their burnt orange robes from around
the country. They were on their way to Saint
John’s Abbey in Collegeville Minnesota for
three days of dialogue on celibacy with a similar number
of Catholic monastics.
As
he opened the October 26-29 meeting, Rev. William Skudlarek,
executive director of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue
(MID), said “You (Buddhists) have been at this
for some five-to-seven hundred years longer than we have.
We have something to learn.”
This
was the second Monks in the West interreligious dialogue;
the first took place in 2004 at the City
of Ten Thousand Buddhas in northern California. On
the Catholic side, the participants came from Saint John’s
Abbey, five other Benedictine monasteries and two Cistercian
monasteries. The 12 Buddhists represented the Theravada,
Mahayana, and Tibetan traditions.
The
first session dealt with Theory, the “why” of
celibacy. Buddhist participants explained that their
teachings focus on seeing how suffering is created and
cured. Attachments give rise to suffering, so advancement
in the spiritual life requires letting go of one’s
attachments. Attachment to desires, among which are sexual
desires, is a hindrance to spiritual progress.
“Raging desire takes away choice, freedom,” said Rev. Kusala Bhikshu
a Buddhist chaplain at UCLA in his opening presentation. “The senses must
be controlled in order to be free.”
Brother Gregory Perron from St. Procopius monastery in
Illinois spoke of how monastic life demands a profound
understanding and acceptance of solitude. “Celibacy
is a tool,” offered Perron, “a skillful means like intentional
simplicity of life, by which our heart is burrowed out and the core of our
being laid bare. By embracing it, the monk accepts the aloneness that characterizes
every human being.”
In
response to Buddhist reflections on the illusory nature
of the body, Catholic participants pointed out Christianity’s
remarkably positive evaluation of the body in the doctrines
of the Incarnation, bodily Resurrection and Ascension
of Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Both
sides acknowledged balancing points of reference as well,
such as, in Christianity, Paul’s “Who will
deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24);
and, in Buddhism, the teaching that humankind, while
eighth from the bottom in the 31 realms of its cosmology,
is the only one in which spiritual growth can happen.
Thus human form is in the end praised by the Buddha.
In
the second session the participants moved from Theory
to Practice. Rev. Jisho Perry from the Shasta Abbey Buddhist
Monastery in California said that “the whole thrust
of training is not to give in to desire that arises.” He
described the Buddhist method of accepting sexual feelings
without either acting on them or repressing them, but
just letting them pass through. “The right use
of will is willingness, not will power—the willingness
to sit there and let that feeling pass through,” he
said.
Fr.
Skudlarek expressed appreciation for the Buddhist approach
to transforming the sexual energy. “Our training
did not teach us to accept sexual feelings with awareness
and then let them pass without acting on them. You had
to fight them! And the more you resisted, the stronger
they got!”
Rev.
Heng Sure who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union
in Berkeley, presented celibacy as the first step in
a three step process that goes from celibacy to stillness
to insight. “It should not be seen just as a difficult
adjunct to the spiritual path, but as essential to it,” he
said.
The
practice of meditation calls for daily periods when the
senses are stilled and not allowed to pursue sense objects. “Something
happens to the energy in the stillness,” said Heng
Sure; “the pressure goes away.” In married
life, he explained, spiritual practice is “partial
and piecemeal,” making celibacy a more effective
means to move toward insight, and the peace and happiness
that flow from it.
In
the discussion, Fr. Mark Serna, president of MID, pointed
out that “in Christianity married people can be
holy, too; one doesn’t have to be celibate to go
to heaven.”
Catholic
monastics emphasized how, in Christian faith, motivation
for celibacy is strongly relational. “For me,” said
Fr. Terrance Kardong of Assumption Abbey in North Dakota, “it’s
the deep personal relationship with Jesus that enables
me to do something this hard.” Fr. Michael Peterson
from Blue Cloud Abbey in South Dakota drew a laugh when
he shared, “When some college kids asked me: ‘How
can you live without sex?’ an answer came that
wasn’t even planning on: ‘God’s a better
kisser.’ In celibacy I transfer my desire for fulfillment
to God.”
Heng
Sure said that the idea of embracing celibacy because
it leads to love is not a Buddhist approach. “A
Buddhist would say ‘It leads to liberation from
further suffering—both personal and, in the Bodhisattva
path, for everyone.”
Lama
Norbu added that the relational dimension, while not
highlighted in the Buddhist practice of celibacy, is
not absent either. “Monks choose to live in community,” he
said. “And the core of their spirituality is compassion
for others.”
The
third session focused on how the two traditions handle
transgressions and failure. Ajahn Punnadhammo from Ontario
delineated the “Four Defeats” in Buddhist
monasticism—sexual intercourse, stealing above
a trivial amount, killing a human being and falsely claiming
superior spiritual achievements—and explained how,
if a monk should do any of these four actions, he is
no longer a monk and is not allowed to be readmitted
into the community. Responses to lesser sexual infractions
are spelled out in detail in the monastic code.
Buddhists listened with keen interest to Abbot John Klassen
of Saint John’s
Abbey as he related how, in response to the exposure of sexual misconduct
by Catholic clergy and religious, the bishops ruled that transgressions against
minors would result in expulsion from the priesthood.
But,
said Klassen, “leaders of religious communities
took a fundamentally different stance. They had to agree
to remove any offender from ministry, but they were not
willing to throw them out of the community. They agreed
to do risk assessment and develop supervision for offenders.
Offenders have understood that because of recidivism
and lack of public trust, supervision plans are necessary.”
Klassen
described how, in the 1970s, “our awareness of
failures moved from the moral arena to the psychological
arena, and now to the awareness that the sexual abuse
of minors is a crime. New guidelines provide a level
of behavioral specificity that we’ve never seen
before.”
In
the closing session, the monks discussed both what contributes
and detracts from the development of friendship and healthy
intimacy in celibate communities.
Through
the event, participants began the day with an hour of
quiet sitting in meditation, and joined the monastic
community at Saint John’s for their rhythm of daily
prayer.
At
the end, Lama Norbu passed around Buddhist prayer flags
for all the participants to sign. “I will return
to Tibet next summer,” he said, “and erect
these flags on the highest mountain in the world where
the dedicated energies of those here and all the communities
they represent will fly up to heaven.”