Chinese Mind versus Indian Mind

A Facebook friend recently asked me a good question: Why does the Indian mind want to transcend nature while the Chinese mind doesn’t?

This is just my theory. Nature is closely related to women, pleasure and sex. Certainly, women are much closer to nature than men. They bleed every month according to the cycle of the moon. Women are much more directly involved with the creation and nurturing of new life. At the same time, there is a basic wildness about nature. The forces of nature are very powerful, yet nature defies control. Something that is powerful yet uncontrollable is fearsome.

Women, just like nature, are powerful, due to their beauty and sex appeal. When patriarchy arose in the Neolithic Age, there was a strong tendency for men to dominate women. Yet, many men felt totally powerless when encountering a beautiful woman. Women made them lose their sense of control. The temptations were just too strong. Consequently, men turned against women and sex, as a way to regain self-control. The attempt to dominate women is therefore due to men’s sense of insecurity. This, I believe is the origin of the tradition of celibacy in various religions.

In Buddhism, particularly the Theravada tradition, monks avoid coming in contact with women, due to the fear of temptations. In the Pali Canon, the Buddha taught that one should guard oneself…