Miriam says, I've heard of married monks.
Do you think people should listen to the talks these monks give?
I don't mean married monks, do you?
What Tarindu was telling me earlier that he thinks the monks at Sri Mahabodhi are married.
No, I think at Sri Mahabodhi it's those rishis, the guys that look like monks but have this thing on their Hindu or something.
I saw some of those in Amarada Purva.
And they might very well be married.
In Zen, you are allowed to marry.
I know Japanese monks, and they're married.
They're very good monks, so you can't generalize.
So there are traditions in Buddhism where they are allowed to marry.
But there is some, I mean, the fact that they're married does give, I would say does kind of take away from the whole leaving samsara behind thing.
Well, then you have to question Zen as such.
Yeah, but Zen, do they really, sometimes they want to become Buddhas, I don't know.
And then they have to go through everything again.
Oh, yeah, so it's a whole different... I mean, what route are they going?
What are they on?
What are they doing that they have become married?
But it seems that it would dilute the teachings to have a wife.
I mean, there's this dating service that they have in Japan for monks.
But it seems like it's just because they need more monks.
So they have babies, and the babies become monks.
That's what the article said.
But okay, if you want to go with it.
I mean, I know even in our tradition there are people who are married.
S. N. Goenka is married.
And he's a very well respected person.
So yeah, I guess the marriage itself doesn't mean much.
But the whole concept of marrying as a part of Buddhism, I think I would
question as diluting the teaching.
Because what is it to marry someone?
Is there a function to it?
I mean, is there a dharmic benefit to marrying?
besides seeing the suffering of life.
We don't want to go into that.
Right.
We don't want to go into that example.
We have a meditator here right now who's... We don't want to go into that.
Well, she's thinking of letting go and giving up the whole idea of getting married.
So we were just talking about...
about marriage.
Yeah, let's stop there.