Shakyamuni, as I have mentioned before, was pretty big on celibacy... maybe moreso than St. Paul.
Although the Buddha himself had been married and had a son, he described romantic love as a destructive emotion, akin to hate, jealousy and the like. My own life experience tends to confirm this, although I realize your mileage may vary.
We are also told that the Tao, the Way, is made up, in a sense, of the tension created by opposing, or at least contrasting, forces: yin and yang, good and evil, light and darkness, masculine and feminine.
Some of the Taoist masters also believed in celibacy (as illustrated in the Chinese folk novel Seven Taoist Masters), but it seems to me that something is lost when a person chooses to live a life completely apart from the opposite sex.
I don't think it's a matter of sexual relationships, necessarily, but rather a matter of having some degree of, for a man at least, 'female energy' in your life... some degree of input from the contrasting, or opposing or complementing force.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm just blathering, driven by boredom and the need to say something to simply verify to the rest of the world that I exist. Sometimes when I sit here alone I feel as if I don't exist, or might as well not exist (which may be true).
A person with my name and who is about my age died here last week. I didn't know him, or even know of him, but it turns out we had some mutual friends.
It's an odd feeling.
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