Thursday, July 3, 2014

Guidelines for Dating in Buddhism




            After a conversation we had in class about Buddhist’s views on marriage and love I decided to write a blog post about it. I think the idea of not getting attached/dependent to/on someone would be difficult. I think that is part of a good marriage, being able to rely on someone else. As I am googling “Marriage in Buddhism” I see a link for “Buddhist Dating.” I clicked on it and realized that there is a Buddhist dating site, just like Christian-mingle or match.com. For some reason this lead to wondering if as a true Buddhist would dating have different “rules” or “expectations”? I came across this website (link below) called If the Buddha Gave Dating Tips. This website gives “Buddha advice” and explains them in what the author calls modern terms. It lists things like “do whatever it takes to leave on good terms”, “Equality is based on shared values, shard communication, and shared self-respect”, “in equal relationships both people are challenged to grow and evolve together”, “The only constant is change”,  “We must be know and accept who we are fully before we enter a relationship, lest we end up in co-dependency. When two whole people join in a supportive relationship, the results can be magical”, and “If we believe and live as already-full beings, we don’t look to others to fulfill us.” Through this research I have realized that there are dating sites for everything. A lot of the websites I found were trying to be comical about Buddhist dating and the rules that Buddha might have. The third link listed below was by far my favorite and probably the most helpful link. It was more on a serious note and was actually talking about things that applied to the rules that might go along with Buddhism in a dating situation. Things like: “Do not indulge in sexual misconduct”, “living the precepts”, and specific sexual issues (Marriage, homosexuality, and desire).




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