A
Ahimsa
Guest
By Father Thomas Ryan
11/3/2006
Catholic News Service
COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. (CNS) – A dozen Buddhist monks from around the country gathered with a similar number of Catholic monastics from various U.S. monasteries for dialogue on celibacy at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville…
In the second session on practice, Jisho Perry from the Shasta Buddhist Abbey in Mount Shasta, Calif., 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 one’s being.
Father Skudlarek expressed appreciation for the Buddhist approach to transforming sexual energy. “I never got a sense in our training of accepting the feeling with awareness and letting it pass without acting on it,” he said. “You had to fight it! And the more you resisted, the stronger it got!”
Heng Sure, a Buddhist monk who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., said celibacy is 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.
11/3/2006
Catholic News Service
COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. (CNS) – A dozen Buddhist monks from around the country gathered with a similar number of Catholic monastics from various U.S. monasteries for dialogue on celibacy at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville…
In the second session on practice, Jisho Perry from the Shasta Buddhist Abbey in Mount Shasta, Calif., 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 one’s being.
Father Skudlarek expressed appreciation for the Buddhist approach to transforming sexual energy. “I never got a sense in our training of accepting the feeling with awareness and letting it pass without acting on it,” he said. “You had to fight it! And the more you resisted, the stronger it got!”
Heng Sure, a Buddhist monk who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., said celibacy is 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.