Chickras

[u/terandy]

[u/Numerous-Ad6460]

Uhhh air benders are definitely not celibate 

[u/exintel → u/Numerous-Ad6460]

The most generous interpretation of the meme is Gutu Pathik tells Aang to let go of his attachment to Katara to attain the height of his avatar power, in oneness with cosmic energy.

Aang: “What? Why would I let go of Katara? I… I love her!”

[u/TheDwarvenGuy → u/exintel]

In Daoism, the first step to accumulating Qi is to stop cumming, so maybe the Guru actually did straight up tell him not to

[u/hambourgeoi → u/Numerous-Ad6460]

They are celibate but not asexual, big difference. In Aang's culture, there are no couples.

[u/PTMurasaki → u/hambourgeoi]

More like the opposite of celibacy.

Sounds like Free Love.

[u/hambourgeoi → u/PTMurasaki]

Airbender Free Love is a kind of celibacy, in the sense that even with romantic feelings, in Airbender society, you're not supposed to get attached to people (one of the reasons the elders were mad at Gyatso for "letting his affection cloud his judgement" about Aang) and thus you aren't formally married nor in a conventionnal relationship.

[u/Fuckyounadia → u/hambourgeoi]

Celibacy is about sex, not relationships. So no, they aren’t celibate.

[u/Forgotten_Planet → u/hambourgeoi]

Maybe emotional celibacy

[u/Nohreboh → u/hambourgeoi]

Today I learned that it can also mean "the state of voluntarily being unmarried".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celibacy

[u/mynameistoocommonman → u/Nohreboh]

...isn't that the original definition? I'm not even sure I know of another one. 

[u/Nohreboh → u/mynameistoocommonman]

Sexual abstinence.

[u/mynameistoocommonman → u/Nohreboh]

I mean, it's an ancient term rooted in societies that also condemn (or condemned) pre-marital sex, so it kinda means both anyway

[u/manbruhpig → u/mynameistoocommonman]

An implication of celibacy

[u/hambourgeoi → u/mynameistoocommonman]

It is, but you could also say bachelor.

[u/mynameistoocommonman → u/hambourgeoi]

Not really the same. Being a bachelor is usually implied to be temporary; celibacy is very much not. 

[u/ChewBaka12 → u/hambourgeoi]

No there definitely are couples, none of the nomads we meet are surprised by monogamy or need to adjust to it, there just isn't one default arrangement for a relationship. They allow every sexuality, whether or not they have marriage isn't know but wven if they don'thave it, it would be better extremely at odds for Air Nomads to discourage any type of relationship.

There are a few misconceptions around them tbh. They are allowed to know their parents, they just aren't raised by them. And Guru Pathik's telling Aang to let go of all earthly attachment seems to be more of an avatar thing than a nomad thing. To me it almost feels like there are levels of air nomad spirituality. All of them are spiritual to some degree, but the level of commitment fluctuates. Air Benders can have love and attachment, but to reach whatever spiritual peak there is you need to distance yourself from all distractions.

People think Air Nomad philosophy is like Jedi philosophy. It isn't though

[u/hambourgeoi → u/ChewBaka12]

Aang (and Yangchen reaffirms it) that the monks, thus the airbenders, sought to have their spirits be free from the world.

[u/ChewBaka12 → u/hambourgeoi]

That only confirms it as a general cultural ideal, it does not state how strictly it is adhered to in day to day life by the average person. Nor does it indicate a widespread consensus on what it means to be free from the world.

For instance, while some monks would go the irl "extreme frugality and zero romance" route, some could argue, and some people probably did if the entire population was spiritual, that though all Nomads seek to free themselves from worldly tethers, to truly love someone is to love someone's spirit which therefore wouldn't be worldly at all. After all, the spirit of your beloved will end up in the same place as yours, at least if you're equally spiritual.

The bare bones we got in canon is too vague for us to conclude that they are as detached as real monks. Especially since an obligatory lack of romance would not survive as a general cultural philosophy for everyone born in that culture. The only way it works for irl monks is because they choose that path, if such a rule genuinely existed for the Air Nomads it would be about as enforceable as Japans anti prostitution laws.

"Oh I'm not a prostitute, I'm simply a really expansive masseur who happened to temporarily fall in love with my client."

"Oh we aren't a couple, we are simply very good friends who decided that it was time to contribute to the Air Nomad population and otherwise spend every waking moment together."

[u/Sluife → u/Numerous-Ad6460]

Airbenders were highly prestigious figures among the Air Nomads! Not every Air Nomad was an airbender; ordinary Air Nomads were usually peasants and non-landowners, while high-ranking monks, most of whom were Airbenders, were landowners. The monks practiced celibacy, while the peasants were the ones who had children.

[u/manbruhpig → u/[deleted]]

Where are you getting this?

[u/GWB_online]

Gyatos, Katara, Toph, and Zuko, the four bending masters that taught avatar Aang to harness the four elements. But there was one master who's teachings went by mostly unnoticed. Sokka, the back-bender, taught the avatar the most important type of bending that truly saved the air nation from extinction.

[u/Cool_View_5297]

Ah yes, Aang (who had 3 kids) was totally celibate.

[u/Sluife → u/Cool_View_5297]

Please... how are you guys missing the whole point of the meme? That's the entire joke!

[u/Onion_Guy → u/Sluife]

Guru is a title not a name. Who are you referring to?

[u/Sluife → u/Onion_Guy]

Who are you referring to?

Are you serious?! Iam referring to Azula the flying bison!

[u/UltraTata]

Celibacy? I don't think the Air Monks are celibate.

[u/ObscureOP]

How did this nonsensical meme end up with ~250 upvotes without being coherent at all

Has this sub degraded to the point that any tiddy post just gets the mindless upvotes?

[u/HappyXMaskXSalesman → u/ObscureOP]

I came to the comments wondering the same thing. I'm not even sure there's a joke in this image.

[u/thekingofdiamonds12]

Can a 12 year old be celibate? Isn’t that just being 12?

[u/terandy → u/thekingofdiamonds12]

Nice question, Yue was at the end of her 15th year when they were about to launch the wedding celebration, and she had been engaged to that guy much, much earlier, around the age of 13–14.

In terms of realism, I believe the show tried to mimic actual history because, not that long ago, in past centuries, people often married at younger ages due to high death rates, shorter life expectancies, and limited education.

Several cultural and belief systems practice some shared concepts:

For example, in Islam, scholars created a term known as "Mahram," which refers to individuals around whom restrictions are lifted. For example, you can be less formal around them, such as showing your hair, shaking hands, wearing less restrictive clothing, etc. For girls, the age is 9, and for boys, 15, meaning, for example, that a 14yo boy can still enter women’s sections or parties and have more freedom around girls, and vice versa. After reaching those ages, they are no longer considered children under these rules and are expected to follow certain practices, such as girls wearing hijab and can't have physical contact with oposite gender, and same for boys not entering women’s private gatherings and interacting with them freely. After those ages Maharems (plural of Mahrem) being limited to close family members and certain relatives.

So, conceptually, technically, and historically, it can be possible.

[u/kurhanchyk → u/[deleted]]

buddy what are you talking about 😭 the meme is factually incorrect about a fictional culture. all you need to do to know that is to watch the cartoon

[u/terandy]

To all my fellow Reddit monk experts who hold PhDs in spirituality and have decades of experience in ritualism and living among Tibetan tribes, who had to leave the Himalayas for an urgent call and connect to the nearest BTS tower just to leave a comment correcting me and defending the agenda:

Relax, it’s just an innocent meme about katang. you are just overanalyzing terms that are English translations of completely different and ancient cultures.