BM,
Celibacy is the decision to be detached from sex and all the trappings of the feminine.
If that is your belief, then you should act on it. The problem is asserting that everyone should be governed by your belief. It is also your belief that detachment is represented by a certain kind of action. It isn't. You can be just as attached to sex through celibacy as you can through indulgence.
Clearly you're arbitrarily assigning my judgments to the moral category, when I consider them utilitarian towards the purpose of enlightenment and wisdom.
Sorry but I can recognize a moral judgment when I hear it. Holding the ego in contempt isn't a moral judgment? The ego is what it is. When you hold it in contempt that in itself indicates a lack of detachment which you have already said is your goal.
See, you're somehow imagining that these are moral judgments I'm making, and unless you define moral judgments as those judgments that are utilized for the purposes of furthering enlightenment and wisdom then I disagree.
I'm not questioning your individual path to enlightenment. I am questioning the judgments you put on to others by insisting your path should be their path.
You have an attachment to sex, you feel my statements threaten your attachment and so you brand them "moral judgments" for the purposes of castigating me as some sort of doom and gloom proselytizer when that is clearly not the case.
You are the one insisting on no sex so you would be the one demonstrating an attachment to it, in this case, a negative one. My path is about neither indulgence nor abstention. The Buddha taught the middle way, remember?
It has been my experience that the attachment to sex brings about unending misery, and further in order to remove that attachment it is necessary for some people to take a different view of the body from the conventional. Yet because of your attachment you must immediately brand me a moralizer and hide behind your straw men.
You
are moralizing! You are telling me your beliefs take precedence and that a negative attachment to sex is what is important, both involve moral judgments. I don't need to brand you when you demonstrate the behavior for all to see.
BM: Tell me, sam, if I were in a burning house would you tell me to take it easy and just let go, or would you direct me out?
sam: Again, you confuse utilitarian with moral judgment. It isn't.
BM: You're drawing a line in the sand of an hourglass.
Sorry but it doesn't take a moral judgment to leave a burning house.
sam: why not explain the injurious nature of the conduct, skip the moral condemnation, and let the one doing it decide whether they wish to continue or not? Instead, your condemnation only invites a vigorous defense which fuels hostility and inflames the situation. Your need to decide for others what is right and wrong is about control, it isn't about helping anyone. If you wanted to help, then provide information without condemning any choice and allow them to have and act on the consequences of their decision as they see fit. After all, you expect that for yourself, don't you?
BM: Wow, you are way off. I provide examples for people to see the ugly side of themselves, as surely as it is a temple. It is your need to control my words, and to imagine some sort of "vigorous defense" and "fueled hostility inflaming the situation," because those who act unconsciously like yourself cannot but react to any encroachment on your attachments. But I am the controlling one...?
Control your words? Please, don't play the victim here. You get to say what you want without any interference from me. And what is ugly to you may not be ugly to others, have you ever considered that? Taking a certain care with one's appearance is not antithethical with enlightenment either. Even if someone is attached to their grooming, are your moral judgments anything other than the mere opposite kind of attachment?
sam: How does one "stave off" an emotion? Why not allow what arises to arise without the need to act on it before due consideration is given? Then there is no guilt for feeling what you feel and no harm created through involuntary action.
BM: One staves off emotion by realizing their own nature, and that of things in themselves about him. To carry this all the way would be to die the Great Death, and become fully enlightened.
All you are saying is one "staves off" emotion by being enlightened which is a fatuous prescription.
So if someone has a fit of road rage and runs someone off the road, then no bother! It was involuntary after all.
This is Cory and Ryan's argument, not mine!
You commit the sin, or miss the mark when it comes to consequences. You do not seem to realize action needs to be taken, preventative measures in some instances, in order to thwart the repetition of unconscious behaviors.
By all means, become conscious. But then don't turn around and put yourself in an unconscious straitjacket through moral judgments.
sam: How do you treat others? Who taught you that? How did they teach you?
BM: If I did not act a certain way I would be punished. I disliked punishment, and so in order to avoid punishment and to receive the reward of social graces I acted accordingly. Before the age of reason that punishment needs to be enforced as children at that age are as animals when it comes to consciousness, they do not maintain the continuity of consciousness to learn from their mistakes unless it is on the physical level. But, are we children?
Did your parents treat you like the family pet? I hope not, that would be pretty sad. In fact, I bet they taught you quite a bit and most of it, I would venture to say, wasn't about reasoning.
