Romancing 'The Monk'
I was the woman who ended his celibacy. But could I give him the peace he once had?
Soon after I started working with him at a small-town radio station, The Monk cooked me dinner. He wasn't actually a monk anymore, but I was intrigued that he had been one, in Ananda Marga, an India-based spiritual organization I'd never heard of before. I was a lapsed Jew, practically an atheist, and I found this rather exotic. I was drawn to his air of calm authority, unusual for his 31 years, and the simple way he lived.
We sat in his living room, talking as the light faded from the summer sky, not bothering to turn on a lamp. He told me about his monk years in Japan and South Korea. He taught yoga and meditation and led poverty-relief efforts. The job, he explained, also required him to be celibate.
"For how long?" I asked.
"More than seven years, willingly." He smiled. "In the couple of years since I left, not so willingly."
"That's a long time," I said. "Why did you do it?"
He explained that monks had to devote their energies to being spiritual leaders, without the distractions of intimate relationships.
"But how could you just shut down something so essential?"
"I couldn't really shut it down," he said. "I just couldn't act on it. I actually have quite a strong sex drive."
"Oh," I said. The room was dark by then. I was glad he couldn't see my face flush with the prospect of so much banked passion.
We became lovers. The sex, at first, was awkward, far from the graceful bloom of pent-up desire I'd imagined. But I consoled myself with the honor of my new position: the woman who had ended his celibacy. We were approaching each other from the distant lands of the flesh and the spirit and had a lot to learn.
In the mornings, he meditated in front of a photograph of his guru. Meditation and yoga helped him let go of his struggles and ward off negative emotions, he explained. The idea had its appeal, as I'd long struggled with anxiety attacks. After a few months of dating, I decided to try meditation. At the height of our love, we meditated together daily, and I managed to keep my anxiety attacks at bay.
But after about a year of this, my discipline lagged. I violated the prescribed diet, which forbade garlic and onions. Once, I vamped in front of his guru photo, pulling down the shoulder of my sweater and blinking in mock flirtation.
"Don't," he pleaded.
When our sex life slowed, he said, "Guru says once a week is best."
He took me to the airport one morning for a trip to San Francisco. I missed the flight, which inexplicably left early. Ragged from little sleep, I yelled at the counter attendant.
"I don't understand why you did that," he said later. "What good does it do?"
He wanted his old life, I thought. A few days before, he'd shown me his monk's garb, holding the saffron robes with such reverence that I dared not touch them. I could never give him the peace he had then. Or was it repression?
I caught the next flight. I looked up an old male friend. We drank wine, ate garlic, and went dancing. When we fell into bed together, I felt as if I were waking up from a two-year trance.
I went back home. After I told The Monk, as I'd begun to think of him again, what had happened, he came back with a confession of his own. He had met someone else, too.
He wasn't torn between me and his old life. He was torn between me and another woman. When we broke up, it was not because we were destined to return to separate lands of the flesh and the spirit. Those places didn't exist for us anymore, if they ever had. He was no longer celibate, yet still needed his spirituality. I was no longer a quasi-atheist. My relationship with The Monk began my own spiritual search, an undisciplined, erratic quest that continues to this day.
As for our relationship, it ended for the most mundane of reasons: It wasn't working anymore, and there was nothing sex or spirituality could do to save us.
Lisa A. Phillips is the author of Public Radio: Behind the Voices. Send comments to magazine@globe.com. 