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Celibacy
IS CHASTITY THE INVERSE OF LUST OR
JUST AN
ALTERNATIVE WAY OF EXPRESSING IT?
You can think of it as a devotional sacrifice, a way of conquering animal-like bodily urges, an expression of
obedience to some higher power, or simply a respite from the tyranny of the dating scene. To the most devout
practitioners, however, celibacy is much more complex an issue than just the absence of sex. Here are two very
different interpretations of lust and the role it plays — for better or worse — along two very
different spiritual paths.
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Jainism, today concentrated in western India, is one of the world's oldest surviving religions,
tracing back to circa 599 BCE. Its philosophy sees time as an infinity, everything as continuous — nothing is created or
destroyed. Through a practice of extreme
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asceticism followers, strive to merge with eternity, to free their souls from the cycle
of karma and become one with divinity. Women in Jainism who have taken diksha, renouncing the everyday world, are called sadhvis.
“If we give in to our desires in this lifetime, we will suffer for them in the next lifetime.
You learn control through denial. You learn to think about the repercussions across lifetimes. If you fulfill a desire once
it will only come up again. The body is like a child, always demanding something. You gently scold it and make it learn to
not have so many demands and desires.
We don't bathe. We only dab ourselves gently with a soft wet cloth.
Bathing is a form of pampering the body, beautifying it. Bathing is likely to bring about a flaw in abstinence;
it draws attention to the body, attracts the mind towards it. We are striving to leave behind attachment —
even to the body and
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its desires. This body is not us.
If sexual desire comes up, we talk to our guru. Then we make the body go through more hardship. By giving in to lust,
you ignite further lust, you give lust power. So we neglect it. We look at not what is happening to me and my body
and how I can fulfill this desire but on what we are doing, how we are reacting to the desire — whether sexual
or any other desire: this self-observation, this detachment from the desire gradually helps you to overcome the desire.
None of this feels like a sacrifice. It would feel like sacrifice if I had any attachment to the attractions of
the everyday world. If there is no attachment, there is instead a joy in everything that I do. For me, being a sadhvi is joy; it gives me
a happiness I cannot get anywhere else in the everyday world. This spiritual life shows me the way. I may not be able to walk on this way
yet
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but I feel joy that I have at last seen the way to moksha [the liberation of the soul from the cycle of lifetimes.”
—
Payal, 38, interviewed by Sharmila Joshi in Goregaon, north Mumbai.
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| “By giving in to lust, you ignite further lust, you give lust power. So we neglect it.” |
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“Lord give me chastity,” wrote Augustine of Hippo, a father of the Catholic Church, “but not yet.” Christian monastics,
like Sister Maria Rosa interviewed here, take vows of chastity when they enter religious life — marrying the Church and committing themselves foremost to worship.
“In any life choice there isn't a single life force that should be ignored or repressed. Passion is a gift of God, whether
it takes the form of expression or excess. Life is a continuous exploding of passion and desires and everyone is called to acknowledge them, experience them and manage them in a considered and healthy way. People communicate and express themselves through passion.
It's natural, for example, that every woman feels a maternal instinct or desires intimacy. These desires shouldn't be
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| “People communicate and express themselves through passion.” |
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castrated, but reconsidered in light of the choice of vocation to the Lord that we've made. Of course we feel the need
for tenderness or experience the desire to have children — but we express it differently, unconventionally — inventing for ourselves every time new ways to transform desire into gifts for others. For me, I work in a school and that way I can be a mother to many children in a different way.
Our sense of gratification isn't personalized the way it would be for a mother or wife — but that doesn't mean our experiences will be any less satisfying. Every choice is a renouncing that excludes other possibilities. But God never ever asks us to live in a situation that will make us sad or dissatisfied. For this reason, nuns never stop questioning their own choices.
A consecrated woman abstains from the exercise of her impulses not on principle but to be available to a God in
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whose
hands she has given herself and to be available to others who need her devotion, tenderness, her woman's heart.
We sisters open ourselves up to our neighbors, and yet we never give ourselves over entirely to another person.
None of this would be possible if we didn't have the conviction of God — who for us is a reality of concrete life,
not something off in some other dimension. Sincerity and honesty — with ourselves and with others — are the common denominator of our
life choices. You can't hold yourself back when it comes to God — ever.”
— Sister Maria Rosa, 68, Order of the Suore di Santa
Dorotea, interviewed by Leonora Sartori in Vicenza, Italy.
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