I don’t know how I missed this article in the NYTimes when it came out a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully, a writer at Slate cited the article and how, with his wife tied to his hip, they duplicated this couple’s lifestyle for a single day. First, an excerpt from the original article:
TEN years ago, Michael Roach and Christie McNally, Buddhist teachers with a growing following in the United States and abroad, took vows never to separate, night or day.
By “never part,” they did not mean only their hearts or spirits. They meant their bodies as well. And they gave themselves a range of about 15 feet.
If they cannot be seated near each other on a plane, they do not get on. When she uses an airport restroom, he stands outside the door. And when they are here at home in their yurt in the Arizona desert, which has neither running water nor electricity, and he is inspired by an idea in the middle of the night, she rises from their bed and follows him to their office 100 yards down the road, so he can work.
Their partnership, they say, is celibate. [Link]
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p>Admitedly I am terrified by the institution of marriage, even though I do hope to be married some day. I have Siddhartha-esque anxieties about the possibility that I may want to walk off into the woods some day. I emailed this story to four of my married-couple friends and three of the four responded with mild revulsion. “No freakin’ way,” to paraphrase. One of my friends responded that she had, due to circumstances, simulated this type of experience for stretches of days at a time, more than once since she’s been married (they travel a lot together). She also described it as soul-sucking to some degree. Even the Dalai Lama is a bit turned-off by the idea and wouldn’t allow it to be promoted in India:
… their practice — which even they admit is radical by the standards of the religious community whose ideas they aim to further — has sent shock waves through the Tibetan Buddhist community as far as the Dalai Lama himself, whose office indicated its disapproval of the living arrangement by rebuffing Mr. Roach’s attempt to teach at Dharamsala, India, in 2006. (In a letter, the office said his “unconventional behavior does not accord with His Holiness’s teachings and practices.”)… [Link]
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p>The couple in the original article lived a mostly ascetic lifestyle in a yurt in Arizona. The couple in the Slate experiment provide an unintentionally humorous play-by-play of a day in which they lived like Roach and McNally but under circumstances that we are all more familiar with:
David: First thing in the morning, Hanna gets up and goes to the bathroom. As couples go, we’re not big on privacy, but there are limits. You’ll be relieved to hear there is no Love Toilet action at the Rosinplotzes. The rope is plenty long. I pace impatiently outside the door…Hanna: I never thought of myself as a “private” person or someone who keeps secrets from her husband. I do, however, want to put on makeup and fix my hair without David standing outside the bathroom tapping his foot and glaring. I have never much valued my two and a half minutes of morning mirror time. Now I feel like an angry grad student, defending sacred female space from the overbearing male gaze. [Link]
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p>I think the Roach/McNally Arrangement (as I will call it) is an interesting dynamic. If the significantly older Roach was hitting it with her I’d think this was all a dirty ploy on his part. However, they do point out he is celibate. Most people can easily agree that this arrangement would take a supreme amount of patience and self-control to pull off, as well as a partial destruction of the self. These are very much in line with Buddhism and Hinduism and in keeping with the “traditional” path to Nirvana. Then I wondered, would governments work more efficiently if opposition leaders had to simulate this experience for a week? Would Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann put down their swords? Would two democratic nominees grow closer if tied together by a fifteen foot rope for seven days? The possibilities for achieveing world peace are endless if we can just apply the Roach/McNally Agreement to the right pairs.
The experiment was not nearly as disturbing as I expected it to be. I hope that’s partly a tribute to the strength of our marriage–we find it easy to keep company with each other, thank God. I’m sure it’s partly a tribute to the routinized banality of our lives, which ensured no melodrama. On the other hand, I don’t think I could have made it another 24 hours. The next morning, as soon as I woke up, I grabbed the sports section, fled to the downstairs bathroom–one flight of stairs, 50 feet, and a psychological mile from Hanna–and locked myself in. [Link]
I think that married couple SM readers should try this out for one day this weekend and then tell us what happened 
Abhi–some versions of Hinduism, yes, OK, but, really–your lived experience or that of your family? Not if they’re anything like me or mine!! LOL–maybe my family is off the norm, but, really. . . . people make fun of that sort of stuff, they don’t celebrate it. . . .
I guess what I meant is that destruction of the self to merge with the universal soul is in line with Hinduism. This practice definitely accomplishes the first part. I’d never go there though 🙂
I don’t get why some Western Buddhists feel the need to jump the shark and pull this kind of wackiness. Buddhism is meant to be portable but here you have someone who finds it necessary to live in a yurt (who in the Buddhist world besides some Mongolians/Kalmyks does this anyway?). Would have much more respect for them if they lived in an adobe or something
i beg your pardon, old chapstick.
after all this? sigh.
what a waste of good resources.
Not as bad as a celibate rockstar. Buddhism is a funny thing.
well the rockstar married later… and I guess celibate did not mean the left/right hand? but this one, the ladki seems pretty good, maybe she is antartica personified.. oh well, to each his own. I guess.
Just another example of how whitey loves to flip the script.
They are a bit controversial: http://www.diamond-cutter.org/
Wait what? They are NEVER apart and they are celibate? What? I’m so confused. Why?
When you live in a tiny NYC apartment there are swaths of time when you are tied to the hip literally to your spouse and it’s not always fun. I suppose I’d be fine with spending time attached to the hip to my husband (mostly cause I never see him often enough) but the most time we spent together continuously without seperating at all was on our honeymoon and when I think back it didn’t bother us much because we weren’t always “mentally” together. We’d be in the same car for hours going from point A to point B and one person would read or sleep or watch a movie while the other person did something else. We did spend a lot of time together physically but didn’t always feel the need to speak to each other. We gave each other mental space.
So if that might be the case where I need mental and verbal space (not having to speak or communiate) I might be fine with it.
My husband and I have inadvertently spent 24 hours withing 15 ft of each other before, although not the point of accompanying each other to the restroom! It’s not so bad if it just happens that you spend that much time in such close proximity, but I think if we decided to force it on ourselves we’d both go crazy very quickly.
All that effort and they’re celibate?
Man, that dude needs to hit that a couple of times. Fifty bucks says that after a few rounds he’ll be gagging to get away from her for a while. Am I right, guys?
crickets
Yep, and that’s what I love about American culture – innovation. Out with the old, in with the new.
I think one reason this is working is precisely because the couple is NOT married. Much less in an arranged marriage.
They are two people who are equally passionate about their spirituality and growing in it together. Several years of self imposed discipline are probably what makes it possible for them to be celibate, although they do touch intimately, as stated in an article.
What I like about it is;
And;
The reason why he is considered persona non grata by traditionalists is because he is living with a woman while wearing his monk robes, though he (claims) has not broken celibacy vows. One would have to review the original rules laid down for monks if living with and touching a woman are included. There are hundreds of rules for bikhus in Buddhism but most of the are rules to avoid “gossip” and what constitutes gossip varies from culture to culture. For me, two unmarried spiritual practicioners living together is nothing to gossip about, but in Dharmasala, which is located in a very conservative culture where unmarried men and women living intimately together is a taboo, it is.
Therefore in the eyes of the Dalai Lama who is residing in India, and other residents therein, he is “controversial” and hence he has been issued a statement from the staff of the Dalai Lama’s that he is no longer welcome to teach in Dharmasala.
Over here in America though, we are not so hung up on such stuff. The culture is different.
In fact, a man and a woman in love with each other and in love with their spiritual work, living together and sharing sexual or non-sexual intimacy while growing spiritual at the same time, well, sh*t, that is IDEAL.
I like this couple.
“Jump the shark” is a more articulate way of expressing my initial reaction. I mean, I’m all for finding your own place and doing whatever floats your boat, so the story as a whole is very interesting, but it bugs me a bit that they don’t care they claim to do this within a tradition (thus pulling rank from a tradition) the community of which is very much in disagreement with them.
That aside–I thought that in some old Indian weddings the Bride and Groom WERE supposed to stay very close to each other for a couple days afterwards? The sari was supposed to stay tied to the dhoti after the fire, or something?
I assume they follow the prevalent definition of celibacy?
They are just being open about a relationship that many “celibates” have on the downlow because their cultures and communities would not approve.
I know from experience.
I have been recommending a book called “My Stroke of Insight – a Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey” by Jill Bolte Taylor and also a TEDTalk Dr. Taylor gave on the TED dot com site. And you don’t have to take my word for it – Dr. Taylor was named Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People, the New York Times wrote about her and her book is a NYTimes Bestseller), and Oprah did not 4 interviews with her.