Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-t9bwh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-08T03:11:02.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Sexuality in Buddhist Traditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Get access

Summary

This chapter provides an overview of Buddhist sexualities ranging from monastic celibacy in India, China and Japan, to Buddhist lay sexualities, to altruistic sexuality in Indian Mahayana Buddhism. It then examines religious sexuality in tantra in India and Tibet, including transgressive discourses in Indian Buddhist liturgies and sexual yoga techniques in Tibetan Buddhist literature. The chapter argues that these diverse and contradictory discourses all represent a shared concern with regulating sexuality and harnessing it for soteriological purposes. Both the renunciation of sensual experience in Indian monastic literature and the embrace of sensual experience in Tibetan sexual yoga have been framed as means for relieving suffering and attaining soteriological success. With examples from Vinaya literature, yogini tantras, premodern and contemporary literature, this chapter highlights the rich diversity of Buddhist sexualities and gender constructs.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

‘Ascertaining the Vinaya: Upāli’s Questions’ (Āryavinayaviniścayopāliparipṛcchānāmamahāyānasūtra). 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, fols. 115.a–131.a. https://read.84000.co/translation/toh68.html.Google Scholar
Cabezón, José Ignacio. Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism. Somerville, NJ: Wisdom, 2017.Google Scholar
Cape, Kali. ‘Anatomy of a Ḍākinī: Female Consort Discourse in a Case of Fourteenth-Century Tibetan Buddhist Literature’. Journal of Dharma Studies 3 (2020): 349–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Steven. ‘Remarks on the Third Precept: Adultery and Prostitution in Pāli Texts’. Journal of the Pali Text Society 29 (2007): 263–84.Google Scholar
Faure, Bernard. The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gayley, Holly. Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gayley, Holly. ‘Revisiting the “Secret Consort”(gsang yum) in Tibetan Buddhism’. Religions 9, no. 6 (2018), https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9060179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstein, Melvyn C.Bouddhisme tibétain et monachisme de masse’. In Des moines et des moniales dans le monde: La vie monastique dans le miroir de la parenté, ed. Herrou, Adeline and Krauskopff, Gisele, 409–24. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires de Toulouse le Mirail, 2010.Google Scholar
Gray, David B.Eating the Heart of the Brahmin: Representations of Alterity and the Formation of Identity in Tantric Buddhist Discourse’. History of Religions 45, no. 1 (2005): 4569.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gyatso, Janet. Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary; A Translation and Study of Jigme Lingpa’s Dancing Moon in the Water and Ḍākki’s Grand Secret Talk. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Gyatso, Janet. ‘Sex’. In Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, ed. Lopez, Donald, 271–90. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Horner, I. B. The Book of the Discipline: Vinaya-Piṭaka. Vol. 1: Sutta Vibhaṅga. London: Pali Text Society, 1949.Google Scholar
Jacoby, Sarah H. Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of Tibetan Visionary Sera Khandro. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Junko, Minamoto, and Glassman, Hank. ‘Buddhism and the Historical Construction of Sexuality in Japan’. U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, English Supplement 5 (1993): 87115.Google Scholar
Keown, Damien. The Nature of Buddhist Ethics. London: Macmillan, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kieschnick, John. ‘Celibacy in East Asian Buddhism’. In Celibacy and Religious Traditions, ed. Olsen, Carl, 225–40. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Klunklin, Areewan, and Greenwood, Jennifer. ‘Buddhism, the Status of Women and the Spread of HIV/AIDS in Thailand’. Health Care for Women International 26 (2005): 4661.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Langenberg, Amy Paris.Buddhism and Sexuality’. In The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics, ed. Cozort, Daniel and Shields, James Mark, 567–91. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Langenberg, Amy Paris.Sex and Sexuality in Buddhism: A Tetralemma’. Religion Compass 9, no. 9 (2015): 277–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pommaret, Francoise, and Tobgay, Tashi. ‘Bhutan’s Pervasive Phallus: Is Drukpa Kunley Really Responsible?’ In Buddhist Himalaya: Studies in Religion, History and Culture: Proceedings of the Golden Jubilee Conference of the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, Gangtok, 2008, ed. Balikci-Denjongpa, Anna and MacKay, Alex, 5981. Gangtok, India: Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, 2011.Google Scholar
Powers, John. Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex, and the Body in Indian Buddhism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prebish, Charles S. Survey of the Vinaya Literature. Vol. 1: The Dharma Lamp Series. New York: Routledge, 1996.Google Scholar
Samuel, Geoffrey. Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1993.Google Scholar
Soh, C. Sarah. The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Yao, Ping. ‘Changing Views on Sexuality in Early and Medieval China’. Journal of Daoist Studies 8 (2015): 5268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yeshe, Lama Thubten. Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire, 2nd ed., ed. Landow, Jonathan. Boston: Wisdom, 2001.Google Scholar
Young, Serenity. Courtesans and Tantric Consorts: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Iconography, and Ritual. New York: Routledge, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwilling, Leonard. ‘Homosexuality as Seen in Indian Buddhist Texts’. In Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender, ed. Cabezón, José Ignacio, 203–14. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×