(Very) Close together

 
I used to work side by side with my boyfriend. For more than one year, our tables were 30 cm apart. And not only we didn’t think it was a problem, but also enjoyed the fact that we were so close. But then I got another job proposal and moved away. And, all of a sudden, we rediscovered how good life was when we meet at the end of the day and have news to share.

Michael Roach and Christie McNally will not be able to find that out. At least, not without breaking their life vowel. 

Ten years ago, the two Buddhist teachers took a vowel that they will not be apart by more than 15 feet (a little more than 4,5 meters), so now when she goes to the toilet in an airport he waits by the door. Or when he wakes up in the middle of the night to work, she follows him to the office.

They say the recipe to cope with such an intense intimacy is celibate. (Yes, you read it right. They spend their days that close and, yet, there is no sex going on.) “From a Buddhist perspective, it purifies your own mind”, says Christie.

Their practice is radical even to Dalai Lama. In a letter, his office stated that this “unconventional behavior does not accord with His Holiness’s teachings and practices.”

Filed Under History & traditions, Modern Life