Bhutan Makes Condoms Available To Buddhist Monks To Stop Spread Of STDs

[Ensapa]

What? I thought they were supposed to be celibate. what's going on? Stressed out monks with STDs.....?

oh dear. what's happening to Bhutan?

Bhutan Makes Condoms Available To Buddhist Monks To Stop Spread Of STDs
By Vishal Arora, Religion News Service, March 29, 2013
Timphu, Bhutan -- Health officials in the tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan are making condoms available at all monastic schools in a bid to stem the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV among young monks who are supposed to be celibate.
"We are making condoms freely available everywhere, even in monastic schools and colleges," Bhutan's minister of health, Zangley Drukpa, said in a phone interview. The ministry, he added, has formed a special action group to deal with STDs in monasteries.

Warning signs of risky behavior among monks first appeared in 2009, when a report on risks and vulnerabilities of adolescents revealed that monks were engaging in "thigh sex" (in which a man uses another man's clenched thighs for intercourse), according to the state-owned Kuensel daily.

The health ministry got concerned when a dozen monks -- including a 12-year-old -- were diagnosed with sexual transmitted diseases a year later, Kuensel reports. At least five monks are known to be HIV-positive, the youngest being 19.


 The 2012 report of the U.N. agency focused on AIDS response and progress also noted cases of HIV among Bhutan's monks.
Bhutan's Commission for the Monastic Affairs says stricter discipline is a solution. While corporal punishment is banned, monks told Kuensel it is still practiced.

"It is believed the cane, the whip and the rosary represent the Bodhisattvas who personify wisdom, compassion and power, which are needed to discipline," the commission's health and religion coordinator, Tashi Galey, told the newspaper.

Psychiatrists suggest the spread of disease could be a result of mental stress. It is not uncommon for monks and nuns, mostly between the ages of 15 and 25, to visit psychiatrists. Even senior monks show symptoms of severe stress, especially when they are undergoing long periods of meditation, Dr. Damber Kumar Nirola told Kuensel.

"About 70 to 80 percent of (senior) monks are obese, hypertensive and also suffer from back ache because of their sitting posture and sedentary lifestyle," urologist Lotay Tshering told the paper.

Geography also plays a role. Most hilltop monastic schools lack recreational facilities. "Getting space for playgrounds is difficult, but we provide volley balls and badminton rackets," the commission's secretary, Karma Penjor, told Kuensel.

Bhutan, a landlocked nation of about 700,000 people sandwiched between India and China, is the world's only officially Buddhist country, and has about 388 monastic schools with 7,240 monks and 5,149 nuns.

[icy]

 Certainly extremely weird to make condoms available in Monasteries for Buddhist Monks.  What is happening in Bhutan and Buddhist Monks there?  Can some one enlightened me?

[Jessie Fong]

http://www.webmd.com/ says:

You don't have to have sex to get an STD. Skin-to-skin contact is enough to spread HPV, the virus family that causes genital warts. Some types cause warts and are usually harmless, but others may lead to cervical or anal cancer. Vaccines can protect against some of the most dangerous types.

Yes, Icy it is strange and weird to make condoms available in monasteries.  It is better to be safe than sorry, as there is no guarantee that the young monks will dedicate the rest of their lives to the monkhood and thus remain celibate.

[rossoneri]

Oh dear, this will tarnish the name of Buddhism. People around the world will definitely have negative impression in this matter. It might not be all of the monks in the monasteries were behaving in such a way but it very well created an bad impression for others, one rotten egg in the basket is enough to do so. They are not a bad monk or person but they had surrendered to the feeling of desire. I believed in time all those monk which were involved will be able to control or subdue their feeling of having sex much better, if they are taking the teachings of the Buddha and Dharma seriously. 

[bambi]

I think that those monks and nuns were very young when they joined the monastery and as they grow up, they began to discover certain parts of their body to be different and also pleasures that they never experience before. We were all teenagers once and I am sure that many of us too were confused and curious. And of coz as teenagers, some are wild and want to experience certain things. We cant force nor beat the crap out of them just to stop them but guide and talk to them instead. Providing condoms is not the solution, perhaps they should also have programs or education about sex and their curiosity.

[Ensapa]

If this is happening only in Bhutan but not in other Buddhist colleges or monasteries, something is wrong and the abbots should look into this seriously. I have also read elsewhere that many of the younger monks in the monastery were ordained against their will, mostly due to their family in poverty, so it is no surprise that this kind of problems crop up. It also means that the abbots are not doing their job well. Something needs to be done about this before Buddhism degenerates even more from here in Bhutan, and it is the teachers' duty to educate the monks on proper behavior.

[brian]

http://www.webmd.com/ says:

You don't have to have sex to get an STD. Skin-to-skin contact is enough to spread HPV, the virus family that causes genital warts. Some types cause warts and are usually harmless, but others may lead to cervical or anal cancer. Vaccines can protect against some of the most dangerous types.

Yes, Icy it is strange and weird to make condoms available in monasteries.  It is better to be safe than sorry, as there is no guarantee that the young monks will dedicate the rest of their lives to the monkhood and thus remain celibate.

I beg to differ here Jessie, hands up. It is very strange to supply condoms available in monasteries indeed but if we can only instill better discipline into younger monks then we will have zero problems. The monastery should find out whoever the culprits there and single each one of them out instead of making condoms available to everyone of them. This may even confuse the rest as they might get the wrong message that they are allowed to have sex in monasteries and celibate is no longer needed.