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Making Their Own Limits in a Spiritual Partnership

Thu, 2008-05-15 02:20 — Robyn

May 15, 2008
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

TEN years ago, Michael Roach and Christie McNally, Buddhist teachers with a growing following in the United States and abroad, took vows never to separate, night or day.

By “never part,” they did not mean only their hearts or spirits. They meant their bodies as well. And they gave themselves a range of about 15 feet.

...their practice — which even they admit is radical by the standards of the religious community whose ideas they aim to further — has sent shock waves through the Tibetan Buddhist community as far as the Dalai Lama himself, whose office indicated its disapproval of the living arrangement by rebuffing Mr. Roach’s attempt to teach at Dharamsala, India, in 2006. (In a letter, the office said his “unconventional behavior does not accord with His Holiness’s teachings and practices.”)

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Comments

Thu, 2008-05-15 03:17 — Araceli

celibacy

In this article, a critic says: “He is a good guy and learned person, but the Bill Clinton question lingers over him...He is with a much younger blond bombshell. What is a deep relationship that is not sexual? It is hard to understand.”

I can understand some trepidation before allowing this kind of practice to go mainstream. Traditions shouldn't change too fast.

But I think it's certainly possible that Roach's and McNally's "spiritual relationship" is non-carnal, just as they say it is.

Sex is kind of like junk food. Stop eating it and it starts to look much less appealing.

Once it seemed filling, satisfying, fun, and quite necessary...you couldn't imagine life without it.

But now you have a taste only for wholesome, nourishing foods. The bag of Cheetos no longer beckons you from the supermarket shelf. You no longer desire to set off the same old cheap firecrackers in your pleasure centers.

You're not resisting temptation, you feel no temptation.

This goes for men too. They are not all the horndogs this culture makes them out to be.