Dispassionate sex sounds like an oxymoron.
Maybe that's why when people grow older, the interest in sex wanes over time. Because the time for procreation is past maybe? But I know one time when I asked my priest a question along these lines years ago, he said that a married couple grows over time to where sex (well, actually it was a type of sex, but in any case, it's true for regular intercourse as well) isn't as important in their relationship. Sorry if I'm being too forward.indeed it does, but I would say that the foolishness of God is wiser than men. if you read the lives of married saints, according to Fr Hopko, the sexual part of their relationship almost becomes nonexistant, and yet their intimacy always deepens. so for the parents of the Theotokos, it's not a stretch to say that they concieved Mary passionlessly.
Maybe that's why when people grow older, the interest in sex wanes over time. Because the time for procreation is past maybe? But I know one time when I asked my priest a question along these lines years ago, he said that a married couple grows over time to where sex (well, actually it was a type of sex, but in any case, it's true for regular intercourse as well) isn't as important in their relationship. Sorry if I'm being too forward.
That's beautiful, and I can see how he would think and say that.that seems to be the case. Dr Al Rossi of St Vladimir's Seminary says that the parts where he felt closest with his wife were sitting in the quiet over a cup of tea, not speaking, but just being together.
indeed it does, but I would say that the foolishness of God is wiser than men.
the Fall introduced both blameworthy and blameless passions. the blameless passions are guiltless. heck, even the need to eat to survive is a blameless passion. it's not a sin but it is certainly fallen.
In practice this whole mindset sounds decidedly gnostic- more like Buddhism than Judaism, if true life is living without bodily "passions".
The Buddha compared his body to an old shambles of a house that needed to be wrecked once and for all, never to be rebuilt again, and he told his followers to meditate on their bodies as rotten, oozing masses of flesh to drive that point home. He and his later followers also viewed sexuality as completely negative, at best a condescension to living a "householder" life (the sorts of people that won't reach the higher levels of enlightenment). Because the enlightened mind in the end was complete detachment from embodied existence. The Orthodox mindset doesn't sound far from that.
I'm not saying it's wrong... it's just very different from what I'd hear in a Protestant church, and perhaps it's so severe that if this mindset were embraced by everyone, it would destroy civilization and lead to a quietistic acceptance of injustice (something Buddhism has been frequently criticized for doing).
"For St. Maximus, "pleasure" in its fallen context is a combination of sensual feeling and a passionate desire for a sensible object:
'Every forbidden pleasure has come to be through passion aroused through the senses by some object of sense ... For desire added to sensual feeling changes into pleasure, giving it a shape, and sensual feeling moved by desire produces pleasure when it is applied to some object of sense.' (Ambiguum 10)
... from Fr. Damascene's "reated in Incorruption" printed in the Orthodox Word journal and the second edition of Genesis, Creation, and Early Man
Does the Orthodox Church consider eros evil? I'm confused by the implications that an idealized sexuality is dispassionate.
The Buddha compared his body to an old shambles of a house that needed to be wrecked once and for all, never to be rebuilt again, and he told his followers to meditate on their bodies as rotten, oozing masses of flesh to drive that point home.
This is fine, but to me it just looks like there are lawful pleasures as well as forbidden ones.
All of that seems coherent with the idea of all things being made good. If Adam and Eve could eat of the fruit of the garden with the one infamous exception, it looks to me like they would have enjoyed the lawful experiences and found the innate pleasure that God instilled in doing what was lawful.
So I'm still left thinking that there are good pleasures, which in a perfected form will somehow be part of the experience of eternity.
Wow.. that does sound like certain forms of Buddhism.
There are forms of Buddhism (such as Tantra, or esoteric Buddhism), however, that do see desire as a "fuel" to spiritual attainment... so desire is "redeemed", or rather in Buddhist language, a poison is transmuted into a medicine, as it is thought that careful observation of desire leads to enlightenment: the problem isn't so much that we desire, as that we go through life unconsciously desiring and experiencing things that should not be taken for granted.
Wow.. that does sound like certain forms of Buddhism.
There are forms of Buddhism (such as Tantra, or esoteric Buddhism), however, that do see desire as a "fuel" to spiritual attainment... so desire is "redeemed", or rather in Buddhist language, a poison is transmuted into a medicine, as it is thought that careful observation of desire leads to enlightenment: the problem isn't so much that we desire, as that we go through life unconsciously desiring and experiencing things that should not be taken for granted.
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