A Religious Life vs. A Love Life
A Buddhist monk had messaged me this past week. He was in a tricky situation. He is not allowed to have a relationship with any women. If he starts a relationship with a woman, he must leave the monk life. There was a woman that had fallen in love with him. He didn’t know what to do. He was worried that if he rejected her love that she would experience pain. He didn’t know what the solution was. He also recognized that he was not a rich man and the Buddhist life is what he had known over the past 20 years.
He doesn’t want to cause this woman to be in any more pain than what she has already experienced in her life, but the Buddhist life is all that he knows and he doesn’t want to leave what feels natural to him. He feels extreme guilt over the thought of having to reject this woman’s love.
There are certain religious duties, practices, rules and obligations that this Buddhist monk has committed to. Would it really be worth it to leave all that he has committed his life to in pursuit of love in a relationship? It’s unknown. He does not have familiarity with the lifestyle of the common people (laypeople). There are many unknowns that make the outcome seem uncertain.
Desire is hard to escape. In my short time speaking with this monk, I felt that the desire here was to escape pain or to use love as a pacifier for pain. This woman that he…
