You may have read or heard about Buddhist monks in Cambodia being forbidden to watch the World Cup, or if they did, to maintain detachment and show no enthusiasm, on pain of expulsion from their monasteries; a somewhat more tolerant pronouncement was made in Thailand.
Well, gosh darn it if that didn’t get me to thinking, and what follows from thinking but a limerick, right? *clears throat*
Whether watching football like a stick
in the mud, or believing a dick,
if unused, is an odd
sort of pipeline to God,
I believe I would rather not pick.
Yeah, yeah, I know, celibacy is practiced and valued in both traditions, but I think it’s only in Roman Catholicism that male professional (if corrupt) celibacy is regarded as a prerequisite for passing on divinity to the unenlightened, not to mention dictating (of all things!) their sexual behavior.
By the way, recent attention on the part of Buddhist heirarchs to the behavior of their charges during the World Cup may have been prompted in part by the warm reception given Khyentse Norbu’s film The Cup.
