Brahmacharya

Brahmacharya (Skt. brahmacarya; Tib. ཚངས་སྤྱོད་ ) is explained in some dictionaries as 'a state of an unmarried religious student', or 'chastity'. It is 'Brahmic behaviour', which means 'pure behaviour'. In India, in practice this often came down to celibacy. Because of this, in a Buddhist context, it can also mean an ordained person.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche explains:

The physical act of sex has often been described in scriptures and other teachings of Eastern spirituality as abrahmacharya, an act of noncompletion. Sex is seen as a clumsy way of releasing your bindu. Bindu in this case is the essence of the body; often it is equated with semen, but that is not necessarily a good definition. Both men and women possess bindu. Bindu is the essence of the mind and essence of the body. This is like describing the money system as the essence of society. Bindu is another type of currency in the context of human communication. The Indian teachings in both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions agree that abusing bindu is an act of abrahmacharya, of noncompletion. When the body contains the bindu essence, you are a completely healthy person. When you abuse that, when you throw that away, that becomes abrahmacharya, disrupting the completeness of Brahma, who is the complete one, the wholesome one. Brahma represents or contains the wholesome, healthy, unified situation of your life and body.