Swamis and Sex

on March 11, 2010

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Kartikey Sehgal

Rated Mature.
Swami: A title given to a monk or a spiritual master

It may be an uncomfortable truth but swamis have hair on their body. When they recline on their bed and if the robe around their body is loosely tied, then it will pull up, exposing to anybody interested, hairy thighs. Sometimes they may even scratch those thighs.

Yet when they sit in their robes and talk about spirituality and science, many listeners don’t imagine such basic truths about the swami. They think about and talk of his mind and his spirituality, with their fulcrum in the brain that they describe as holy or brilliant.

Since sex has been relegated to a secondary or tertiary position by the society, they don’t imagine that the swami must be indulging in something so trite and lowly. This is true especially for women; consciously, many of them imagine that the swami sees them ‘purely’ i.e. without sexual thoughts. Perhaps that’s what draws them to the swamis in the first place, that he would be able to help and explain without the entrapments of a sexual brain.

They expect him to talk of worldly matters and of matters pertaining to beauty but without a direct involvement or any experience. The experience is supposed to be spiritual, which for them means that the swami should be guided by ‘pure’ thoughts and observances on matters relating to sexuality. Since he is enlightened, they imagine, he is supposed to have successfully parried the lesser affairs of life that include sex and money.

Why would you listen to a swami who talks solely out of observance and not a psychologist who has experienced stress and health and sexual issues.

The fact of the matter is that swamis are supposed to have experienced life before guiding others about its nuances. They may remain celibate and successfully preach about a better life but nothing stops them from marrying, which would include, obviously, partaking in sexual pleasures.

This shouldn’t be a surprise if you consider the fact that a swami is not like the priests of other religions. He is supposed to be guided by his own sense of propriety. He should be a thinker. This is substantiated further if you consider that the Indian scriptures are reference books and not the absolute law. To regard them would be to hold their contents in high esteem and to draw lessons or ideas from them. They were not written so that the followers could be punished for their deviance from the book.

Evidently, if the swamis are defined by their thoughts and subsequently their work, and if the thoughts and work are not binding to the book, then any common man or woman can assume the prestige associated with the title of ‘swami’. Or if not the title, then they could attain every prestige that comes with the title solely through their work. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was not a swami and he was given the title of ‘Mahatma’ because of the density of his work and ideas. But his admirers give him the respect reserved for swamis and saints. And while Mohandas gave up sex after consultation with his wife, he did mention to his associates about his failed attempts at curbing sexual thoughts and penile erections. No respect for the man was lost among his followers because of this failure. It was not considered a failure in the broader spectrum; it was an issue between a man and his beliefs.

So unless a swami announces his celibacy he should not be considered as sexually inactive. The rule shouldn’t hold the swami as sex-free, and for that to happen, the societal perception to the place of sex in life must change. Sex should be considered as a part of man and not distinct from him.

Women, especially, should not expect the swamis to not see them in the idiom of beauty and desire, for there’s nothing wrong in admitting the natural dynamics of man-woman relationship. The society that holds sexual pleasure as inferior is corrupted in it’s thoughts owing to misplaced conceptions about Indian scriptures and general miseducation.

And though they are not forceful to existing societal mores, the Indian scriptures contain insights to the nature of humans and their various relations; they are not averse to sex. The society must recognise this truth and recognise the nature of their being. And who better than the swamis to promote this thought.


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