....chastity is a pretty scary word for most, but you can think about it in practical terms, like washing your feet after workouts on communal mats i.e. many theater students had to be barefoot on shared unclean mats...to make it through, without losing the use of both feet to some disease ...if you are forever chaste, your "feet do not touch the ground."

Contrary to the Hollywood versions, the roots of the Geisha system are in monastic life

...we can still learn from this way:

MONKS ARE CALLED TO THE “contemplative” life. The word means to cut out a space for perception by intuition. The monk creates an inner temple, a space in mind, imagination, and heart where he can observe the signs of divine providence.

The work of the spiritual life includes the building of these inner temples and the creation of temenos—space set apart for sacred use. As this work progresses, everything acquires its temenos. As Emerson said, everything becomes a sign.

Contemplation, the primary work of the monk, achieves the necessary emptiness in everything, every moment, and every event. These empty spaces, simply marked out as sacred, invite the soul to participate and provide places for its dwelling.

Pg. 76

IMPORTANT PART OF THE LIFE OF many monks is study. In a stereotypical image, the monk is reading in silence in a library. Historians associate monasticism with reading, writing, and publishing. Like everything else in modem life, learning is generally considered a secular pursuit, but the monks show us that study can be a spiritual practice.

We study to get diplomas and degrees and certifications, but imagine a life devoted to study for no other purpose than to be educated. Being educated is not the same as being informed or trained. Education is an “eduction,” a drawing out of one’s own genius, nature, and heart. The manifestation of one’s essence, the unfolding of one’s capacities, the revelation of one’s heretofore hidden possibilities—these are the goals of study from the point of view of the person. From another side, study amplifies the speech and song of the world so that it’s more palpably present.

Education in soul leads to the enchantment of the world and the attunement of self.

Pg. 59

THE MONK’S LIFE OF CHASTITY IS LIVED to a full degree as a life station, but chastity is available to us all, single or married, as one positive element among many. Being chaste, we need not give all our thoughts and time to the pursuit of sex, which is not fulfilled in such single minded devotion anyway. In chastity we reserve a good part of ourselves for relation to others—to people, places, and things, and we have the conviction to be individual, solitary, and self-contained.

The soul enjoys sensations of purity, as long as they are not bought at the price of impurity’s delights.

The monk has to find his lay soul, just as the layperson searches for the monk soul.

Purity, sometimes achieved by the ritual washing of hands, has long been celebrated as a needed preparation for the incursion of spirit. Such chastity may last no longer than a fleeting moment and yet satisfies the requirements for a spiritual grace.

Pg. 46 From Meditations - On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life By Thomas Moore