Clerical celibacy is an important trait of Buddhism, and celibacy has
             also been mandated for various periods in the lives of many followers of
             different Eastern religions. To the Western mind that associates clerical
             celibacy with conceptions of sex-as-original-sin or of the priest as wed to
             Christ, these trends may seem strange when divorced from a Christian
             setting. Our preoccupation with sex that exists in secular society may also
             make celibacy seem odd. However, it is important to approach Eastern
             conceptions of celibacy on their own terms, apart from Western traditions.
             In Eastern thought, celibacy can be seen as life affirming rather than life-
             denying, a way of preserving vital personal integrity and transcending
             physical needs to reach higher spiritual planes.
             According to the primary source presented, celibacy was also a
             difficult sell to the early Chinese Buddhist church. The earlier Chinese
             religion was based in ancestral worship. Ancestor worship implies a duty to
             continue the line of one's family and to create descendants in turn so that
             the cycle of life can remain unbroken. This puts primary religious focus on
             the community and the family, and in such a context lifelong celibacy would
             be a physical denial of the duties of the individual to procreate. While
             periodic celibacy (whether before marriage or for specified times within
             the marriage relationship) were probably practiced and taught, celibacy as
             a lifelong practice or virtue makes no sense within a communal religion
             that adheres to ancestor worship and the great cycle. To forsake the
             physical world, including reproduction, is for the animist in a way to
             forsake the very essence of God.
             The difference between this and Buddhism really lies in the
             perception of what constitutes ultimate Reality. Buddhism denies the idea
             that the family and the physical world are the living essence of deity, and
             rather shunts them aside as me...