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Sex and Celibacy in Buddhism
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Relationships and Families in Buddhism
In this course, Professor Alice Collett (University of St. Andrew’s) explores relationships and families in Buddhism. In the first lecture, we explore questions of sex and celibacy in Buddhist tradition and practice. In the second module we are married in Buddhism. In the third module, we discuss the role of family and children, before turning to the issue of gender in the fourth module. In the fifth and final module, we consider the theme of sexuality in Buddhism.
Sex and Celibacy in Buddhism
In this lecture, we explore sex and celibacy in Buddhist tradition, focusing on: (i) the monastic-lay divide, where monks and nuns take vows of celibacy, unlike lay practitioners; (ii) renunciation of sensual pleasures, including sex, as essential for attaining Nirvana; (iii) exceptions, such as married monastics in some traditions, particularly in Japan; (iv) the use of sex in Buddhist Tantra for energy transformation, but only by highly advanced practitioners; (v) Buddhist sexual ethics, based on the principle of non-harm (Ahimsa), which condemns actions causing harm, like sharing intimate images without consent.
I'm Professor Alice Collett from the University of St
00:00:06Andrews and the first part of the
00:00:09lecture is on sex and celibacy in Buddhist tradition.
00:00:11So Buddhist tradition, as with many other religious
00:00:18traditions, generally has a monastic and lay split.
00:00:21So there are different members of Buddhist communities,
00:00:26different practitioners.
00:00:29There are monastic practitioners, there are monks
00:00:30and nuns, and there are laity.
00:00:33With regard to the question of sex and celibacy,
00:00:36as with a lot of Buddhist traditions,
00:00:39this is different whether you are a lay practitioner or a
00:00:41monastic practitioner generally speaking.
00:00:44So monks and nuns, as part of their ordination,
00:00:49usually take vows of celibacy.
00:00:52So monks and nuns usually don't engage in sexual activity.
00:00:55Now the reason behind this in Buddhism
00:01:00is because Buddhism focuses on renunciation
00:01:04And the general idea is that on the Buddhist path if
00:01:09one seeks to attain Nirvana,
00:01:13realize Nirvana and attain awakening,
00:01:16the way to do that is to give up family ties,
00:01:20worldly responsibilities and to move beyond a desire for
00:01:24sensual pleasure.
00:01:29So these sensual pleasures can be a range of different sensual
00:01:30pleasures from things like sex to anything like cakes
00:01:34or sweets or anything like that.
00:01:39And the way that I like to describe it is that we've all
00:01:41had an experience of walking past a cake shop or a sweet
00:01:45shop and we see the things in the window that we like the
00:01:48look of, we're drawn to them, we think, oh,
00:01:52I want to buy one of those',
00:01:54it will be a pleasurable experience to eat that, it looks nice.
00:01:56So it's those kind of desires when we're drawn towards having
00:02:00an experience of sensual pleasure that Buddhism says are
00:02:04the kinds of things we need not to indulge and we need to leave
00:02:08behind if we want to realize Nirvana and attain awakening.
00:02:12So there are rules then in the monastic code that one should
00:02:18not engage in sex because of,
00:02:23this being one aspect of sensual pleasure that will pull
00:02:27you back from the path.
00:02:30So these desires that we have for sensual pleasures,
00:02:32according to British tradition,
00:02:35will pull us back and if we engage in them, if we go in,
00:02:37we buy the cake, we buy the sweet, we eat it,
00:02:41then next time we want another one.
00:02:44Whereas if we say no I'm not going to indulge in that desire'
00:02:46then we get used to not indulging and we can focus more
00:02:51on our Buddhist practice and our paths.
00:02:54So in the monastic code there are many rules against sex
00:02:59and the monastic code goes into great detail about different
00:03:04sorts of sex acts that monks and nuns should not engage
00:03:07in and I will come back to looking at those in more detail
00:03:11in another of the sections a bit later.
00:03:15One other thing I will say about sex and celibacy is that
00:03:19there's not more judgment here on sex.
00:03:23It says that sex isn't thought to be
00:03:26a bad thing in and of itself.
00:03:30It's simply that indulging in sex is a pleasurable experience
00:03:33and it's part of this central world that Buddhist
00:03:37practitioners seek to transcend,
00:03:41move away from so that they can realize their goals.
00:03:44There are some exceptions to this in that there are some
00:03:49Buddhist monastics,
00:03:53and have been both throughout history and are today, who do
00:03:55get married and continue to have a sex life after they've been ordained.
00:04:01So we find in early Buddhist texts there are some examples
00:04:06of monastics taking their families into the monasteries with them.
00:04:10So in those instances, it seems that there's non adherence to
00:04:17rules, so non adherence to the monastic code in some instances.
00:04:21There are other situations in other countries and other
00:04:26communities where the decision is made that it is okay
00:04:30if someone who ordains as a monk or nun wants to be married.
00:04:35They can be married and they can have a family so they can
00:04:40continue to have a sex life,
00:04:43particularly in Japanese Buddhism we find this.
00:04:46And the reason behind this is that there's not,
00:04:50in these traditions, so much focus on renunciation
00:04:53and the idea that a monk or nun can be seen to
00:04:57be of worse for reasons other than their
00:05:01abilities to renounce.
00:05:05So, the way that monks and nuns are
00:05:07valued and held in esteem is because of their level of insight,
00:05:10their ability to teach and understand the Buddha's
00:05:14teachings, for example.
00:05:17We also find and, ethnographers have found,
00:05:20researchers have found that when they've researched modern
00:05:24Buddhist communities that sometimes
00:05:27it becomes standard practice for monks to all have,
00:05:30wives in a neighbouring village,
00:05:35so almost as if that's the secret
00:05:36but actually kind of open secret.
00:05:39So in those cases again we see in texts and we see in
00:05:42studies of modern communities that sometimes monastics do
00:05:46engage in sex life, which seems to be again simply
00:05:50non adherence to the rules and non adherence to the monastic code.
00:05:54The last thing that I want to say about sex
00:06:00as an exception is about Buddhist Tantra.
00:06:05Now Buddhist Tantra developed in India as one aspect of
00:06:09Buddhist tradition.
00:06:13Tantra developed in Hinduism first and then,
00:06:14Buddhists developed their own Tantric tradition.
00:06:19Now in Tantric tradition so Tantra is essentially about a
00:06:23transformation of energy and a transformation of negative
00:06:28energy to positive energy.
00:06:32So again Buddhist Tantric practitioners,
00:06:34like Buddhist practitioners in general,
00:06:37are aiming for a realisation of Nirvana and attainment of awakening.
00:06:39But in their path to doing that,
00:06:44what they focus on is transforming any negative
00:06:47energy they might have into positive energy that can propel
00:06:50them forward on the path as soon as possible and as
00:06:54effectively as possible so they can realize Nirvana as quickly as possible.
00:06:58Now in some tantric traditions it's understood that sex can
00:07:04be a religious practice.
00:07:09Now the idea behind this is something that you may well
00:07:13have heard of which is the idea of us,
00:07:16human being having chakras within their body and
00:07:19the idea here is that those chakras are centers of energy
00:07:25and the energy in the chakras can be released through
00:07:29tantric sex, which again then is this transformation of
00:07:33energy or this release of energy that will help
00:07:38the practitioner to move forward on the path.
00:07:41Some of you might have seen or heard of the idea of tantric
00:07:44sex weekends because this is an aspect of Buddhism that has
00:07:48been, commercialized actually in
00:07:51modern societies.
00:07:54And
00:07:58the way in which it exists as a Buddhist practice has been
00:08:00really taken out of the Buddhist context.
00:08:04There's a mirroring of some aspects of Buddhism
00:08:06in the way that it's been commercialized and it's used by
00:08:10modern Western spiritual,
00:08:14practitioners and and believers.
00:08:17So that the idea of going on the Tantric Sex Weekend will be
00:08:19that a couple will go there actually to enhance their sex life to,
00:08:22unleash some energy and improve their sex life.
00:08:28So outside of this Buddhist context,
00:08:32it's done purely for the reasons of increasing pleasure,
00:08:35which as I hope you can see from from the way I was talking
00:08:39about Buddhism,
00:08:42this is very different to how it's understood in the Buddhist context.
00:08:43So,
00:08:48sex as a religious practice in a Buddhist context should only
00:08:50be engaged in by very,
00:08:54very advanced Buddhist practitioners.
00:08:57One text for instance says that one should only engage in
00:09:00tantric Buddhist sex if you can close your eyes and
00:09:04visualize seventy thousand Buddhas in
00:09:08front of you and you can see the whites of their eyes.
00:09:11So obviously that sounds like an impossible thing to do,
00:09:15but what's being communicated here is you have to be a very,
00:09:18very advanced practitioner in order to engage in sex as a
00:09:21religious practice because only then will you be
00:09:26able to engage with it such that it is a release of energy
00:09:31rather than engage with it when it is something that
00:09:35is pleasurable to you.
00:09:39The last thing that I want to talk about with regard to sex
00:09:41is sexual ethics.
00:09:44So as you will probably have studied some Buddhism already,
00:09:47you might well know about Buddhist ethical precepts and
00:09:52principles and the main Buddhist ethical principle
00:09:55which is 'Ahimsa' or 'non harm'.
00:09:59So as we know today in schools and in society there are a
00:10:02lot of issues and questions around sexual ethics with the
00:10:07advent of social media and everyone having a smart a a
00:10:11phone and usually a smartphone whereby they can share intimate
00:10:15images of, themselves with others if they choose to.
00:10:19And questions of sexual ethics arrive when these images are
00:10:24shared inappropriately.
00:10:29So from a Buddhist point of view and from a point of view
00:10:31of Buddhist ethics,
00:10:34which as I say concentrates on this principle of non harm,
00:10:35to do so, to share an intimate image of somebody else
00:10:40when they have not consented to it and when you know that this
00:10:44will cause them harm will always be unethical according
00:10:49to Buddhism.
00:10:53The only real exception to that is if someone has, for instance,
00:10:56severe learning difficulties or psychiatric problems where they
00:11:00would not know the difference between what's morally right
00:11:04and what's morally wrong and in this case they wouldn't understand
00:11:08that their actions would cause harm.
00:11:14Anyone who understands that their action causes harm and
00:11:16does something like that anyway is being unethical according to
00:11:20a Buddhist viewpoint relating to sexual ethics.
00:11:25
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Collett, A. (2024, October 21). Relationships and Families in Buddhism - Sex and Celibacy in Buddhism [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/relationships-and-families-in-buddhism
MLA style
Collett, A. "Relationships and Families in Buddhism – Sex and Celibacy in Buddhism." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 21 Oct 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/relationships-and-families-in-buddhism