On November 28th, His Holiness the Dalai Lama* made news by saying celibacy is good. Must’ve been a slow news day.

What he actually said -- in English without a translator, hence the cutely weird grammar -- was, “Sexual pleasure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication. Naturally as a human being ... some kind of desire for sex comes, but then you use human intelligence to make comprehension that those couples always full of trouble. And in some cases there is suicide, murder cases." As for celibacy he said, "we miss something, but at the same time, compare whole life, it's better, more independence, more freedom. Too much attachment towards your children, towards your partner (is) one of the obstacle or hindrance of peace of mind."

He’s correct, of course. Sex is complicated. Abstaining from it relieves you of those complications. Since having sex isn’t strictly a necessity -- meaning you, as an individual, can live without it -- it makes perfect rational sense to simply drop it.

If only things were that easy! But sex is such a very knotty subject in so many ways. Religions always try to come up with a single formula for dealing with sex that will work for all people in all situations -- from holy matrimony to pious abstinence. The Hare Krishnas, to cite just one example, try to mix the two, allowing sex but only for procreation of Krishna conscious children and only after the couple chants for a few hours first to insure the dirty deed is sufficiently pure. I don’t see that ever becoming a widespread practice. In any case, no one will ever come up with a single formula for dealing with sex that will satisfy everybody.

I’ve written a lot in these pages about the Buddhist precept that says, “Do not misuse sexuality.” My teacher rephrases this one as, “Do not desire too much.” Bodhidharma, the fifth century Buddhist monk traditionally cited as the founder of the Zen school said, “There is nothing to grasp. Not giving rise to attachment is the precept of not misusing sexuality.”

The precept is deliberately vague. The people who created it had already seen the damage done by religious leaders who tried to create hard and fast** rules for sexual behavior that could be applied universally. So they simply acknowledged that sexuality could be misused, that its misuse leads to trouble and that Buddhist practitioners would be better off if they vowed not to misuse it. Just what that constituted misuse was left up to individual interpretation.

Or not. Even Buddhists sometimes aren’t as smart as they ought to be. There was an early school of Buddhism that tried to work out exactly what did and did not constitute misuse of sexuality. They made up a huge and detailed list of rules. My favorite one says that it’s not misuse of sexuality if a woman has sex with a monk while he’s sleeping and he doesn’t realize what’s going on. You just know there’s a story behind that one! I’m sure some douchebag priest used that as an excuse -- I was asleep the whole time! I swear! -- and it made its way into the books.

Celibacy would seem like the ultimate solution. You can’t possibly misuse sexuality if you never have sex. Or can you? My first Zen teacher once told me he thought that sometimes the best way to avoid misusing sexuality is to fuck. There may be occasions when a quick roll in the hay is the best and most expedient way to avoid causing bigger problems. I think about this every time I hear about yet another supposedly celibate religious figure getting caught diddling a choirboy. It seems pretty likely to me that if some of those guys just got it on with some willing lass of an appropriate age, or maybe one of their fellow clergymen if they were so inclined, one less child would be traumatized for life.

What about true celibacy, then? What about someone who doesn’t just say they don’t have sex but who really and truly does not have sex of any kind -- even masturbation was forbidden in those early Buddhist sects I mentioned. Good for them, I say. If they can manage it. I don’t think I could, personally. My head would get so filled up with thoughts of hot pink pussy I’d be a menace to society. If you get so sex obsessed you can’t think straight, what good are you to anyone? Still maybe there are people who aren’t like that, and if there are I say go for it. But I doubt anyone with that much self-control needs my permission or even cares about my opinion anyway.

On the other side of celibacy you’ve got stuff like polyamory. Polyamaory, to me, sounds like a recipe for a stressed out life -- and just because somebody represses their stress so well they’re unaware of it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Believe me, I personally would love it if this were not the case. Are you kidding? If I thought I could just boink whoever I wanted whenever I pleased and everybody would be cool about it I’d be out there by the Jacuzzi in a black latex Speedo and leather chaps right now.

Sadly I can’t accept such fantasies. To me, sex without entanglements is like the Loch Ness Monster. It would be really cool if it existed. And every once in a while you get tantalizing hints that it might. But whenever you examine the evidence objectively it falls to pieces.

Sex creates attachment. There’s no two ways about it. This doesn’t mean sex is bad. Attachments are just part of life. Just because some bearded doofus you saw walking around at Burning Man wearing a bathrobe said that Buddhism was all about getting rid of attachments doesn’t mean it’s true. Sure, the fewer strong attachments you have, the easier life is. But none of us can go through life without any attachments at all. In any case, you’re always going to form some level of attachment to anyone you share bodily fluids with. And just because you think you’re so cool that you won’t get any ideas of commitment or betrayal or jealousy or any of the rest of that stuff doesn’t mean your partner(s) won’t. Or even that you won’t. This stuff happens at a level far deeper than conscious thought can reach. It’s a very sticky proposition in more ways than one.

Still, I have no interest at all in trying to convince anyone to live the way I think is best. What you do is your own business. I’ve got no moral problems at all with what anyone does in their bedrooms -- or kitchens or back alleys or wherever.

Yet to some extent the way other people conduct their sex lives does affect me. It affects all of us. The fewer people there are running around all stressed out about their sex lives the better things are for everyone. They won’t be so busy figuring out their social calendar that they crash their cars into the guardrails and stop up traffic for hours. They won’t be so sexually repressed that they attack hotels in Mumbai. Stuff like that. So to that extent I’d like to see more people paying more attention to how they manage themselves sexually. Then when they interact with me they’ll be a little more chilled out.

I suspect this is at the root of all religious restrictions about sex all over the world. Ancient people were just looking for ways to manage this new thing they were developing called “society.” They knew sexual interaction created complications. The day after caveman Og did the nasty with caveman Ugum’s woman they started throwing rocks at each other and all hell broke lose in the village. Something needed to be done so the chief made a rule. All the moralizing and threats of burning in Hell just got tacked on later as extra incentive for the more suggestible to do what seemed more likely to keep things civilized.

The Dalai Lama admits that abstaining from sex means missing out on certain aspects of life. He seems content in the idea that these things aren’t really worth much anyway. You might feel differently. Maybe it’s not just wild nights of unbridled passion you’re after. Maybe you want marriage and family and all that nice stuff. That’s fine. I’m not so sure the Dalai Lama’s solution is quite as neat as he thinks it is anyway. I’ve hung around enough monks to know that there are plenty of cases where all the emotional and attachment-related bullshit they escape by not having families just ends up getting transferred on to the surrogate family of fellow monks they live with. Like I said, there’s no easy answer to any of this that’ll work out for everybody every time.

Anyhow, in the end it doesn’t matter what the Dalai Lama thinks and it certainly matters even less what I think. It comes down to what’s most important for you. I would only say that I’ve found that what’s truly most important to most people is to live as stable a life as possible. If you understand that you want that, then sex has to be handled carefully. It pushes a whole lot of buttons, whether you want to admit it or not. Pay attention and be willing to accept things you don’t really want to accept. This is the advise I give myself all the time.

FOOTNOTES:
* Just FYI, the Dalai Lama doesn’t speak for, or even claim to speak for, all Buddhists. He’s the leader of one very specific sect of Tibetan Buddhism. I’ve never studied or practiced in that sect and know precious little about it.

** Heh-heh, I said “hard and fast.”

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up! and the forthcoming Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff and a MySpace page too. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.

Buy the new CD by his band Zero Defex at CD Baby now!