I see that no one has had the stones to talk about the issue raised in my earlier post about homosexuality among Maharishi pundits ( a pity, really, because "Gay Vedic Pundits Riot" makes a *much* better headline than "Vedic Pundits Riot. :-), so I'll switch over for this cafe rap to the issue of pundit sexuality of the straight kind.
When you think about it, even that might be a button-pusher for some here. They don't really think of Hindu monks chanting the Vedas as *having* a sex life. It just doesn't *compute* for them, or "go with" the descriptions of what such holy pundits are supposed to be like that were presented to them by Maharishi. So they ignore the fact that these are guys either in their teens or slightly older, many of them who have lived in cloistered environments containing only other men since they were eight years old. These guys may literally have never *seen* a woman in all that time, much less touched one. But once these boys reach puberty they're just like any other boys -- filled to the brim with out-of-control hormones, and able to spring a woodie in response to the slightest provocation, even a passing breeze. So when these boys *do* reach puberty, who gives them the "sex talk?" And what does this talk *sound* like? In my "mind's eye" version, the guy giving the talk is named Cheechananda. He's OLD, by pundit standards, almost in his thirties. He's been behind barbed wire in institutions like this since he was eight himself, and has never seen a woman since he waved goodbye to his mother as he was taken away to become a pundit. All he knows about women, sex, and sexuality is what he's read in the scriptures he chants and what he's been told by the Indian males who were his teachers. Now he has to pass down that priceless wisdom to Chongji, a new recruit who is starting to tentpole his dhoti at inappropriate times and thus clearly needs to hear the "sex talk." What's a bramacharya gonna do in a situation like this? Does the older, wiser monk go "soft core," and describe women and their mysteries the way that the Manusmriti does? "God for a woman is her husband and the only thing she can hope for is the privilege of being with her husband in her next life." and "Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure (elsewhere), or devoid of good qualities, (yet) a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife."? Or will he go "hard core" and invoke someone nearer to the present day in the TMO's claimed lineage, Shankara, as related in his classic work The Crest Jewel of Discrimination? "A wise man views women as corpses, bags of urine and feces." The mind boggles. But the heart chuckles. Oh, the pitfalls and traps silly human beings open up in front of them when they attempt to make the round pegs of adolescent boys fit into the square pegs of their beliefs and assumptions.
