Karma Dorje wrote:
Wow, and you call my suggestion arrogant?
You said,
I am simply saying that when outward circumstance doesn't favour it, we need to look to the essence rather than the outward form.
... and meanwhile are justifying your family life and a lack of support for monasticism, moreover your own claims that sexual desire isn't really a problem:
The long and the short of it is that getting laid is no big deal, really. Craving sex is another matter altogether, like any other kind of craving. Tṛṣṇā is *not* equivalent with sexual desire, and one can crave it as surely by abstaining from it as indulging it. Let's leave aside using bliss as an upaya. A simple married life can be very conducive to Dzogchen practice. There is no need to run down the married life to speak of how wonderful ordination is.
This is contrary to what the Buddha himself taught. Married life is the bane of practice, which is why the Buddha, among many others, suggested that serious practitioners abandon the home life.
What you are advocating here sounds like self-justification for desire and married life. You are putting yourself on par with renunciates.
It is a very common quality to justify what we enjoy. It is like the addict who comes up with various reasons as to why their lifestyle is alright.
And these are the same people you want to sponsor your monastic lifestyle?
I've not asked for anything. I earn my money fair and square like any other working joe at the moment.
The reality is, many of us have been practicing along with raising families for nearly as long as you have been on the planet.
Chimpanzees can raise a family, too. Raising a family is nothing to be proud of really. Having children is a demonstration that one is bound by desire, and a lack of disgust for saṃsāra. These are qualities unbecoming of someone on the path. It might be bitter to swallow that, but nevertheless that's the nature of life and saṃsāra.
We are raising a generation of children with profound understanding of the importance of the teachings and the importance of acting with loving kindness.
I commend you for it, too. However, your dismissal of monasticism is still problematic. Having kids raised as Buddhist is one thing, but in secular societies with an increasing disdain for anything called religion, I imagine the efforts might only go so far.
The simple reality is that right now the lay traditions are more successful because they are more in tune with life in the West.
Yes and no. Part of the fact is that people are morbidly addicted to sex and relationships, and do not want to give any of it up. It is considered abnormal to even speak of curtailing such desires as a means towards liberation. Lay traditions as you call them are, as I would observe, often divorced from a lot of key teachings from the native Asian traditions from whence they stem from. It isn't so much of being in tune with prevailing conditions, but just a reflection of deep problems running through western cultures perhaps.
Look at the all of the great masters of the many traditions who were not celibate monks: the eighty-four mahasiddhas, Marpa, Milarepa, Khyungpo Naljor, the Sakya royal families, all of the many great married Nyingma masters, etc.
Right, but most of us are not like Milarepa. Most of us are pretty low level ordinary bodhisattvas at best.
I'm fine with lay practitioners as I am one. I'm simply saying that your dismissal of monasticism is part of the problem that Ven. Khedrup has lamented encountering all too often.
The knee-jerk reaction against celibate traditions in western culture is a serious concern because, after all, the Buddha did teach that liberation is
not possible unless one abandons sexual activities and desire.