Skip to main content

How often do monks get nocturnal emissions?


https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/38984/how-often-do-monks-get-nocturnal-emissions/38993#38993

How often do monks get nocturnal emissions?

I am practicing celibacy from last 6 months. I cannot control my nocturnal emissions. I have some control but not complete control. In the beginning I used to get wet dreams every 10-12 days and now I get them every 45-50 days. I have extremely pure thoughts all day long. I don't think that I'll ever get sexual thought again. I believe that I have trained my mind very well. One the nights when the emission happens I don't have any erotic dreams, it happens without any sexual thought or an erotic dream.

I practise Halassana & Balasana every day without fail. I also do physical activity running mainly. Why am I still not able to control wet dreams? I want to get rid of them completely.

I researched a lot on the web but couldn't find any satisfactory answer for the following questions:

Do all monks get nocturnal emissions? How often does it happen to them especially young monks age around 24-25? If it happens to them, what do they do about it? If it doesn't then, how does they train themselves to reach that level?


For young monks nocturnal emissions could be quite frequent, maybe even more than once a week. For young people, I'm not sure it's possible to completely stop that.

Some of the things Buddhist monks and taoist immortals practice that help reduce emissions. - sleeping in lions posture (easier to stay conscious and alert), don't oversleep (if you dream a lot you may be oversleeping) - adjust your diet (the more meat, salty, spicy and tasty, pungent roots like garlic, onion family tends to stimulate sexual fluid production). - doing the right kinds of exercise, sufficient cardio, right kind of qigong and yoga, will help open up energy channels and reduce stress and potential for emissions.

The most important part, for both Buddhist and Taoist, is keeping the mind pure. You say your thoughts are pure all day, are you sure? When you have your nocturnal emission, what happened at that moment and before?

If you're mind is pure, then the emission happens without erotic imagery or thoughts, and it's just an orgasm with emission. This is blameless, and the best you can do. Don't beat yourself up and obsess over it. Each cell in the body has at most a lifespan of 7 years before it dies, is eliminated and replaced. The biological imperative to continue the species demands that fresh quality semen is always on tap and ready to produce healthy offspring. So in theory, even monks who attained arahantship who were young, probably still had nocturnal emissions, but without lust of course. They also had to eat and shit, bleed, and get ill from viruses, why would they not have emissions?

Adjusting diet, not overeating, eating more vegetarian diet will reduce production of sexual fluid. One monk I spoke to, in his 30's, was averaging he said about 1 nocturnal emission a year. But he's also vegetarian, eating one meal a day.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Advice to younger meditators on jhāna, sex, porn, masturbation

Someone asked: Is porn considered harmful sexual.activity? I don't have a sex life because I don't have a partner and I don't wish to engage in casual sex so I use porn to quench the biological urge to orgasm. I can't see that's it's harmful because nobody is being forced into it. The actors are all paid well and claim to enjoy it etc. The only harm I can see is that it's so accessible these days on smart devices and so children may access it but I believe that this is the parents responsibility to not allow unsupervised use of devices etc. Views? Frankk response: In another thread, you asked about pleasant sensations and jhāna.  I'm guessing you're young, so here's some important advice you won't get from suttas   if you're serious about jhāna.  (since monastics are already celibate by rule)   If you want to attain stable and higher jhānas,   celibacy and noble silence to the best of your ability are the feedstock and prerequiste to tha

SN 48.40 Ven. Thanissaro comments on Ven. Sunyo's analysis

This was Ven. Sunyo's analysis of SN 48.40: https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2024/05/exciting-news-honest-ebt-scholars-like.html And here is Ven. Thanissaro's response to that analysis: I think there’s a better way to tackle the issue of SN 48:40 than by appealing to the oldest layers of commentarial literature. That way is to point out that SN 48:40, as we have it, doesn’t pass the test in DN 16 for determining what’s genuine Dhamma and what’s not. There the standard is, not the authority of the person who’s claiming to report the Buddha’s teachings, but whether the teachings he’s reporting are actually in accordance with the principles of the Dhamma that you know. So the simple fact that those who have passed the Buddha’s teachings down to us say that a particular passage is what the Buddha actually taught is not sufficient grounds for accepting it. In the case of the jhānas—the point at issue here— we have to take as our guide the standard formula for the jhānas, a

1min. video: Dalai Lama kissing boy and asking him to suck his tongue

To give more context, this is a public event,  * everyone knows cameras are rolling  *  it's a room full of children * the boy's mom is standing off camera a few feet away watching all of this * the boy initiated contact, he had already had a hug with Dalai Lama earlier and then asked Dalai Lama for another hug which triggered this segment  17 min. video showing what happened before that 1 min. clip and after, with some explanation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT0qey5Ts78 16min talk from Ajahn Acalo with his thoughts on Dalai Lama kissing boy, relevance to Bhikkhu monastic code, sexual predators in religion in general, and how celibate monastics deal with sexual energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK2m0TcUib0 The child's comments about the incident in a filmed interview later https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/world-news/2023/04/18/643eba5d46163ffc078b457c.html The child: It's a great experience It was amazing to meet His Holiness and I think it's a great ex