The question I asked, was perfectly serious, albeit slipped between the cracks of forum posting.
Is there much to put up with celibacy? Anything more to put up with in celibacy than in non-celibacy? It seems both could be stressful for their opposite reasons...
What strikes me most in what Ven. Huifeng writes and what Individual's replying with is that it is the actions that come out of our urges which are not to be confused with the urges themselves... But this does not address the question about whether sexual activity in itself is unwholesome because it emerges from craving?
Does it? Does all sexual desire emerge from craving? Does all sex emerge from sexual desire? Maybe they seem like obvious questions, but they're not obvious to me.
So it seems from what I'm reading here that the innate issue taken with celibacy for monks is to attempt to separate the action from the urge, thereby (I would think) making the urge (sexual desire) easier to look at and through for the monk. By imposing a restriction on sexual activity, one is freed from the responsibilities of sexual response, that is, one can look at through one's own sexual desire with a clearer mind... I'm broadstroking here, I know, not as refined in my understanding as you, but bear with me.
In the tradition I have the most exposure to, there are both monastic and non-monastic masters, the Ngakpa. For example, HHDL is a monk, monastic with vows and all. However, Padmasambhava was a Ngakpa and a Buddha. These spiritual masters can take a consort, though I'm sure they do not do so lightly. They bridge the lay and monastic life, while adhering to monastic standards in their discipline, they also can have children, and sexual life, though I'm not certain how sexual life is viewed by those masters+consorts. But of what I know, they practice moderation, mindfulness, just as the monastic community does.
So this confuses (in my mind at least) where the celibacy factor becomes the difference between awakening and not awakening... and I don't understand how one or the other leads to better transcendence of of craving as a whole. Is it a matter of what one stimulates the mind with?
Any explanation on the matter would really help clear some of the fog...
Ogyen