Mon 15 Sep 2008
Sex and Buddhism
Posted by Stela under Sacred Sexuality , Buddhist Tantra , Tantric Buddhism , Tantric Sex1 Comment
What Buddhism Teaches About Sexual Morality
Most religions have rigid, elaborate rules about sexual conduct. Buddhists have the Third Precept - in Pali, Kamesu micchacara veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami - which is most commonly translated “Do not indulge in sexual misconduct.” However, for laypeople, the early scriptures are hazy about what constitutes “sexual misconduct.”
Monastic Rules
Monks and nuns, of course, follow the many rules of the Vinaya-pitaka section of the Pali Canon. For example, monks and nuns who engage in sexual intercourse are “defeated” and are expelled automatically from the order. If a monk makes sexually suggestive comments to a woman, the community of monks must meet and address the transgression. A monk should avoid even the appearance of impropriety by being alone with a woman. Nuns may not allow men to touch, rub or fondle them anywhere between the collar-bone and the knees.
Clerics of most schools of Buddhism in Asia continue to follow the Vinaya-pitaka, with the exception of Japan.
Shinran Shonin (1173-1262), founder of the Jodo Shinshu school of Japanese Pure Land, married, and he authorized Jodo Shinshu priests to marry. In the centuries that followed, the marriage of Japanese Buddhist monks may not have been the rule, but it was a not-infrequent exception.
In 1872, the Meiji government decreed that Buddhist monks and priests (but not nuns) should be free to marry if they chose to do so. Soon “temple families” became commonplace (they had existed before the decree, actually, but people pretended not to notice) and the administration of temples and monasteries often became family businesses, handed down from fathers to sons. In Japan today — and in schools of Buddhism imported to the West from Japan — the issue of monastic celibacy is decided differently from sect to sect and from monk to monk.
The Challenge for Lay Buddhists
Let’s go back to lay Buddhists and the vague precaution about “sexual misconduct.” People mostly take cues about what constitutes “misconduct” from their culture, and we see this in much of Asian Buddhism. However, Buddhism began to spread in western nations just as many of the old cultural rules were disappearing. So what’s “sexual misconduct”?
I hope we can all agree, without further discussion, that non-consensual or exploitative sex is “misconduct.” Beyond that, it seems to me that Buddhism challenges us to think about sexual ethics very differently from the way most of us have been taught to think about them.



Two 