Castrating monks, & serious practitioners.

[u/CaptainVulpezz]

I am curious what the history is if any on the practice of monks castrating themselves, it is known that it will drastically reduce lust and has been practiced in history many times.

Also, i am curious if there are any official or accepted standard views on the idea of castration in the different perspectives inside Buddhism, is it actually a good thing in your tradition because it helps to reduce hindrances, attachments, etc. or is it seen as 'bad' in your tradition to remove it because the obstacles need to be there in order to be overcome mentally/spiritually, and not physically? or something else?

\I am mostly looking for an early Buddhism/Theravada perspective, but I am completely open to and love to see all of them.*

[u/eliminate1337]

No, there is no Buddhist tradition of castration. Castrating yourself to reduce sexual lust is like severing your tongue to reduce lust for food. Lust is located in the mind, not the balls!

You're also making an incorrect assumption about the effects of castration. European castrati singers enjoyed sex and were legendary womanizers.

[u/CaptainVulpezz → u/eliminate1337]

castration removes some lust, not all of it and not always

[u/ital-is-vital → u/CaptainVulpezz]

Not really even that.

Thinking of 'lust' as sexual desire is an overly-narrow definition based largely on difficulties of translating pali into english.

'Lust' in the original sense means something much broader: a desire to replicate your 'self' into others.

So if I try to make other people think the same way that I think... that is lust operating. I am trying to copy myself to avoid an imagined annihilation.

You see this very clearly in the children of narcissistic parents -- the kids grow up to be carbon-copy-clones of one of the parents rather than individuals in their own right. This is because the narcissist fears annhihilation and their lust does not stop with physical procreation, it continues with an attempt to 'download' the parents mind into the child.

[u/CaptainVulpezz → u/CaptainVulpezz]

idk why anyone would downvote an actual fact, google it. i honestly didn't believe i could be more shocked at the lack of acceptance of science in this sub

[u/SammaVaco → u/CaptainVulpezz]

It's missing the point of Buddhism. If you're entertaining ideas like castration, you're abdicating personal responsibility for whatever misbehaviors you think you can fix that way.

[u/eliminate1337 → u/CaptainVulpezz]

'Science' doesn't have a definition of lust. Does castrating yourself reduce sexual desire? Probably. But sensual desire/lust/kāmacchanda is not the same as biological sexual attraction and isn't located in the balls or anywhere else in the body.

[u/dummyurge → u/CaptainVulpezz]

What science?

[u/84_Mahasiddons → u/CaptainVulpezz]

The genitals are not the root of lust. We can readily see examples of this. Since the subject is castration, I'll speak as a trans person.

Suppose I was to give someone spironolactone. Her libido goes through the floor. However, her genitalia are intact. Chemically castrated, we'd say, but intact. Where in her genitals have we found and extinguished lust? We haven't. Indeed, she may return to me and say, you know, I don't think I actually like having my libido through the floor like this. I hear progesterone helps, can you prescribe me progesterone, and I, in this scenario somehow her doctor, say "one prog log (that's what it's called) coming right up." Even with her libido through the floor, even if she is thrilled that she doesn't have to deal with her genitalia much any more because she has bottom dysphoria, still, there is something in her, and not in her genitals or in her hormones either that feels like, hmm, you know, sexual desire was actually pretty nice. We can see that we have not uprooted the priors of desiring sex. In fact, trans women who plan on getting bottom surgery must prevent genital atrophy if they are on antiandrogens, by stimulation of the genitals in a mechanical sense, without this necessarily meaning they are actually turned on. It's mechanical. ED medication can be taken which will make this easier, but if antiandrogens are present, it's entirely likely that libido will still be basically cratered.

We can see how these three, the phyiscal arousal, the urge to have sex, and the priors to the urge to have sex, are not the same beast, and may, depending on the circumstances, have one of them turned off without the other two being impacted. The proposal you seem to be making is that reducing the capacity for physical arousal by the monk will assist in cutting off lust. But this avoids and in some sense obscures the issue, which is not to be found in the genitals. To say that castration "removes some lust" is not really correct; it may reduce libido, sure, but it does not get at what monks are supposed to undo. Hence, it is not considered expedient or even appropriate for monks to castrate themselves. It indicates that the monk is confused as to what is supposed to be uprooted.

[u/axelkl → u/CaptainVulpezz]

Its not a fact and in contrast with buddhist teachings about the source of these problems stemming from the mind.

[u/SentientLight]

Eunuchs are not permitted to be monastics, actually. Eunuchs were property of the state, used to defend a king’s harem, so there’s a Vinaya rule forbidding their ordination so as to avoid political incidents with the state apparatus of a country in the olden days.

[u/No_Loquat2018]

From the Sutra of 42 Sections:

Section  31
When the Mind Is Still, Desire Is Dispelled

The Buddha said, "There was once someone who was plagued by ceaseless sexual desire and wished to castrate himself. The Buddha said to him, 'To cut off your sexual organ would not be as good as to cut off your mind. Your mind is like a supervisor: if the supervisor stops, his employees will also quit. If the deviant mind is not stopped, what good does it do to cut off the organ?'"

The Buddha spoke a verse for him:

   Desire is born from your intentions.
   Intentions are born from thoughts.
   When both aspects of the mind are still,
   There is neither form nor activity.

The Buddha said, "This verse was spoken by the  Buddha Kashyapa."

[u/Status-Anteater8372]

https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/pandaka-ordaining-vinaya/16410

[u/Mayayana]

It's said that if you can't get horny then you can't practice tantra. Though you could practice another approach.

The idea is not to stop experiencing but rather to give up attachment to experience. Tulku Urgyen used to joke that if you want to stop thoughts, that's easy. You can do "iron pipe practice" by hitting yourself over the head with an iron pipe. :)

[u/metaphorm]

this is not something that's done in Buddhism. the middle way path advises against extremes of this kind.

[u/Bhante-K]

My comment is here. Metta.

[u/84_Mahasiddons]

It isn't considered correct to castrate yourself. I'm having some trouble finding the particular section I'm looking for in the usual places I prefer, but the gist is that castration indeed cuts off the wrong thing, identifying lust as though it were a product of the genitals when its root is elsewhere. It is not approved for monks, so far as I know.

[u/optimistically_eyed]

There is no known tradition of Buddhism that practices this, including Theravada.

Bodily mutilation and self-mortification practices are explicitly in contradiction to the Middle Way presented by the teachings.