Tales of Abstinence

Thanks Lyle, for your comment on my post below. And yes, I know . . .

There is a Zen story about the artists who go to the temple every year for seven years. For seven years they aren’t allowed to paint. When they finally are allowed to use their paint brushes, they create the most beautiful art.

Seven years, eleven years, and more . . . the mythic way of saying—a very long time.

There are tales told of love/sex like this.

1. A Zen friend told me—how her lover said they must wait for seven years before having sex. He said in this way he would know she loved him for him, and not for what he delicately termed—his other self.

Did you wait? I asked.
Did I waste seven years of good sex? she answered.

2. There was another story I was told once by my Zen friend. It goes something like this.

Once a king had a beautiful daughter, and when she was of age, all the princes in all the lands came to see his princess. (Her name, which I forget because it’s in Japanese, was Flower of the Sky. Or was it Cloud Girl? ) Soon all the princes were asking for her hand in marriage. Ah, the father said, but which one of you loves my daughter, not for her looks, not for her wealth and power, but for her very soul?

Which one of you will wait for seven years?

Each prince said me, me, me. And each day the princes came to visit the beautiful girl. But after one year, one prince gave up hope, and after two, many more gave up hope. Soon there was only one prince who returned to see the lovely girl. The father wasn’t pleased by this prince because he was smaller than the rest, more reserved, though he had impeccable manners and taste.

(Impeccable taste is also something only the Japanese know, my Zen teacher said.)

And so, after seven years, the king relented to the wedding. By then there were no other men in sight, so what could he do? After all, it isn’t good for a woman to marry too late in her life . . .

By then the prince and princess had become good friends. They understood each other. They knew each others inner most secrets. The prince knew how the princess had never wanted to be either a princess or a bride. And the princess knew that the prince was gay, but he lived in a world where many men were gay but none admitted it, especially not princes. And so the two talked of their sufferings, of their mutual feeling of oppression—And so it was that the two married and lived happily ever after, each setting the other free to live his or her life, just as s/he pleased.

3. The third tale I remember is about a man, an artist, who is allowed to love a woman from afar but never really to possess her. At least not for seven years. How did this work? (I can't recall exactly. Neither can the man.) Except that she was nude. Why was she nude? I don't know. Maybe she was model in an art class. Maybe he was a painter. I don't know, but she was always there in some strange room, and in his mind, and in a picture . . . But he could never touch her. (At least not yet.) At first he feared he would turn leathery and old without ever knowing the feel of her skin. But then he began to fear -- if he actually touched her, what then? What if she wasn't the woman he imagined? Best not to try to love her, he then reasoned, lest he lose her. And be disappointed forever after, as he so often was. After all, he was an artist, a perfectionist, a man not easily pleased . . .