Celibacy.
“In winter, animals do not mate. Preserve your Tao by preserving your essence.”
We follow the Tao of the universe with great effort, but Tao is within us too. It is not something abstract, not something conceptual. Our personal Tao is our very life force. This energy begins with the physical and extends into the spiritual.
The source of this energy is partly chemical: our hormones, nutrition from food, and genetics. Followers of Tao call this the essence. Preservation of this essence through sexual conservation is crucial. This doesn’t mean suppression of sexuality, for the impulse to make love is natural and irrepressible; it means to harmonize sexuality with spirituality.
The follower of Tao makes love according to the seasons. In winter, it should be less or not at all; in spring, it may be at its most frequent. The young should restrict themselves to about once every three days, while the middle-aged should reduce to once a week, and the elderly even less than that. The secret is not to indulge too much, without killing one’s sexuality altogether. Overindulgence is to waste one’s resources. Suppression kills the body at its most basic level. Find the proper balance, and you will have a happy life AND full spirituality.
Source: 365 Tao, by Den-Ming Dao.
