Encyclopedia of Buddhism Volume One A -L Robert E. Buswell

S EXUALITY
Japan, most Buddhist monks (often called priests in
English to distinguish them from celibates) are married.
In the VAJRAYANA or tantric contexts of Nepal and
Tibet, there has long existed a special class of married
clergy. While to some, both within and outside the
Buddhist community, this may seem like a violation
of the rule of the saṅgha, by many it is understood as
much more than a mere concession to human nature.
For Shinran, the attempt to live a life unsullied by sex
marked a kind of striving that smacked of hubris. For
others, particularly within the Vajrayana, sexuality is a
powerful force for transformation, an aspect of the
path of purification, an aid to enlightenment.
Sexuality as obstacle, sexuality as opportunity
While sexuality was often understood as a negative
force associated with desire, some attempted to harness
its power as a tool. As a fundamental drive numbered
among the kleśa (afflictions, passions), sexuality
was regarded with much disdain and suspicion, but
there were those who felt that sensual desire was a door
to liberation. Others used the senses to distance themselves
from sexual instincts. One MEDITATION practice
that spread, in one form or another, across Buddhist
Asia, sought to cut off sexual desire at its root. Here,
in typically androcentric fashion, sexual desire figured
as the desire of a man for a woman.
In these graveyard meditations, the monk would
observe the fresh corpse of a young woman, a potential
object of lust, as it proceeded through the stages of
decomposition. As the body would begin to bloat, the
skin to discolor, as maggots and wild animals hastened
the process of the dissolution of the corpse, the monk
was invited to reflect upon the true nature of the body.
What had been so bewitching became an object of repulsion.
A strain of misogyny that locates the origins
of male desire in the female body is common to monastic
legal codes and didactic literature. Thus, men’s lust
for sexual gratification is blamed on the women who
are the objects of their attraction. Behind this is the insistence
in orthodox or mainstream Buddhism that
sexual desire must be suppressed in order to attain the
goal of awakening. A common description of the body
is that it is a bag of skin filled with blood and pus, urine
and excrement.
Some Buddhists, primarily those of the Mahayana
schools, have taken a different tack, at least rhetorically.
While actual sexual activity was always the
exception within the monastic community, the nondualist
doctrines of the Mahayana called the traditional
preoccupation with purity into question. In the tantric
conception of the Vajrayana and the transcendentalist
philosophy of immanence advocated by some in the
CHAN SCHOOL, the afflictions (kleśa) themselves are
equivalent to BODHI (AWAKENING), the realm of suffering
(sam sara) in which one lives is no different than
the goal of enlightenment (nirvana). The phenomenal
world is, just as it is, ŚU NYATA (EMPTINESS). In such a
philosophical context, it is impossible to define sex as
“dirty,” or as somehow able to impede enlightenment,
which is understood to be an indwelling and immanent
quality of mind. Awakening has nothing to do
with stifling urges like sexuality; what is essential is to
transform one’s outlook on the world. Correct understanding
is, therefore, more important than what one
does with one’s body. To the person who has deeply
understood emptiness, no act creates attachment, no
act is defiling. In fact, when used properly, sex can
teach the practitioner about nondualism and the eradication
of the sense of an independent self.
In some traditions sex has been understood as a liberative
technique, numbered among the UPAYA (skillful
means) of the bodhisattva. In tantric Tibetan
Buddhism in particular, there is an elaborate system of
sexual yoga. Whether the sexual encounter between the
male practitioner and the D AKIN I is properly meant to
be understood as taking place in the physical world or
in the mind of the devotee or in some other realm is
a matter subject to much debate, but the literature outlining
these practices is rich in sensual imagery and detailed
in its description of the male and female body.
Considerable attention is focused on sexual techniques
and postures. Also remarkable is the iconography associated
with this practice of union. While most often
associated with the Tibetan cultural region, ideas of the
religious benefits of conscious and controlled sexual
union also appear in other contexts, for instance, the
TACHIKAWARYU school of Japanese tantra, which was
persecuted as heretical.
Buddhist views of homosexuality
The question of Buddhist views toward homosexuality
is a complex one. One might want to argue that
homosexuality is for the Buddhist problematic in precisely
the same way that heterosexuality is; desire is,
ipso facto, nonconducive to liberation and contributes
to a false notion of the independence and permanence
of the self. In the monastic codes there are sanctions
against almost any imaginable kind of sexual activity,
and homosexual acts are by no means exempt. However,
male homosexuality is given special attention.
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