I'm not 100% sure, but I think most people probably know that the Western pop Buddhist view that the religion has an easy going, shrug-shoulders attitude towards matters of sex and sexuality is not exactly well founded in its origins. But I hadn't read before this story, which appeared recently in
an AEON article indicating the amusingly extreme degree to which you can say that the Buddha himself was far from "sex positive":
The inciting incident was when a man named Sudinna left his wife and
parents to become a monk. Some time later, he came home and made love to
his wife – not for love or lust, but at the urging of his mother. She
worried that if she and her husband died without an heir, the king would
seize their property. Although there was no rule against monks having
sex at the time, Sudinna felt guilty and told some other monks what had
happened. Those monks tattled to the Buddha, who summoned Sudinna for
perhaps the worst scolding in Buddhist literature:
Worthless
man, it would be better that your penis be stuck into the mouth of a
poisonous snake than into a woman’s vagina. It would be better that your
penis be stuck into the mouth of a black viper than into a woman’s
vagina. It would be better that your penis be stuck into a pit of
burning embers, blazing and glowing, than into a woman’s vagina. Why is
that? For that reason you would undergo death or death-like suffering,
but you would not on that account, at the breakup of the body, after
death, fall into deprivation, the bad destination, the abyss, hell.
Over the long history of Buddhism, most of its vast literature has been
composed by celibate monks. Sexual intercourse – defined as the
penetration of an orifice even to the depth of a sesame seed – was the
first transgression to entail permanent expulsion from the monastic
order. Monks have written works of particular misogyny, such as the
‘Blood Bowl Sutra’ where the blood is menstrual blood. They’ve also
sought to control the sex lives of Buddhist lay people by imposing a
wide range of restrictions, such as prohibiting sex during the day or
the penetration of any orifice other than the vagina. These rules have
remained in place, cited in modern discussions of Buddhist attitudes
toward gay and lesbian sex. Buddhist texts across Asia have presented
monks as models of chastity. However, their depiction in the plays and
novels of various Buddhist lands can be quite different – like in
medieval Europe, monks were often portrayed as lechers.
The article then goes on to talk about how the Indian idea of tantric sex, which apparently came along about a millennium after Buddha's death (really? - I wouldn't have guessed that timing), was a theory that elevated sex as spiritually important. (I thought tantra was more of a Hindu idea that one related to Buddhism, but I've never made a study of it.)
Such efforts to spiritualise sex have always struck me as unconvincing and pre-modern; particularly so in light of an understanding of evolution.
But as far as I know, the Indian attempt to make sex something divine still only extended to heterosexuals, and it seems you actually have to go back to later Buddhism, at least in Japan, for making the same attempted justification for homosexual activity, particularly of the pederast variety. I was surprised to learn recently that there is a common belief there that the founder of one of the Buddhism branches gave endorsement of sodomy amongst his monks. It's explained in detail in this lengthy (and really quite interesting)
scholarly article on Buddhism and homosexuality in Japan, from which I extract this:
Although present, Tantric sexual imagery
which involved the unification of male and female was of marginal
influence in Japan. Far more pervasive in male Buddhist institutions
was the influence of homoerotic and even homosexual imagery where
beautiful acolytes were understood to embody the feminine principle.
The degree to which Buddhism tolerated same-sex sexual activity
even among its ordained practitioners is clear from the popular
myth that the founder of the Shingon school, Kooboo Daishi (Kuukai),
introduced homosexual acts upon his return from study in China in
the early ninth century.
This myth was so well known that even
the Portuguese traveller, Gaspar Vilela had heard it. Writing in
1571, he complains of the addiction of the monks of Mt. Hiei to
‘sodomy’, and attributes its introduction to Japan to
Kuukai, the founder of Koyasan, the Shingon headquarters[6].
Jesuit records of the Catholic mission to Japan are full of rants
about the ubiquity of pederastic passion among the Buddhist clergy.
What particularly riled the missionaries was the widespread acceptance
these practices met with among the general populace. Father Francis
Cabral noted in a letter written in 1596 that ‘abominations
of the flesh’ and ‘vicious habits’ were ‘regarded
in Japan as quite honourable; men of standing entrust their sons
to the bonzes to be instructed in such things, and at the same time
to serve their lust’[7]. Another Jesuit commented
that ‘this evil’ was ‘so public’ that the people
‘are neither depressed nor horrified’[8]
suggesting that same-sex love among the clergy was not considered
remarkable....
The homoerotic environment of Buddhist
monasteries actually inspired a literary genre,
Chigo monogatari
(Tales about acolytes), which took as its theme the love between
acolytes (
chigo) and their spiritual guides. These homoerotic
relationships were ‘firmly grounded in the familiar structures
of monastic life’
[10]
and were meant to appeal to their Buddhist audience. A common theme
of these tales is the transformation of a Buddhist deity, usually
Kannon (Sanskrit Avalokite'svara), Jizoo (skt. Ksitigarbha) or
Monjushiri (Sanskrit Ma~nju'srii)
[11], into a beautiful young acolyte. The acolyte then
uses his physical charms to endear himself to an older monk and
thereby lead him to Enlightenment. In the fourteenth-century
Chigo
Kannon engi, Kannon takes the form of a beautiful novice to
become the lover of a monk who is longing for companionship in his
old age. After a few years of close companionship, however, the
acolyte dies, leaving the monk desolate. Kannon then appears to
the monk, reveals that he and the acolyte were one and the same
and delivers a discourse on impermanence. Childs comments that:
The article then goes on to give other examples of how the love of "beautiful youth" was given a metaphysical context. (Some of the other examples from literature of the time are pretty surprisingly graphic.)
Now, while I had read before that the Samurai class in Japan had a pederastic mentoring thing going, I hadn't realised that it was connected to Buddhist justification for such activity too:
As pointed out above, many sons of
the samurai were educated in Buddhist monasteries and Buddhist paradigms
of intergenerational friendships, often sexual in nature, influenced
male-male relations in the homosocial world of the samurai more
generally. This was especially true in the Tokugawa period (1600-1857)
when the samurai became concentrated in great castle towns like
Edo (present-day Tokyo) where there were comparatively few women.
That there was a ‘positive moral value attached to male-male
love relationships among the samurai during this period’ is clear from the
large amount of literature dealing with these relationships.
I think it fair to say that there has never been anything similar in Christian history. (By which I mean, while obviously there would have been monks having gay sex, no one ever tried to paint it as something with a divine purpose or endorsement.) And, obviously, the question can be asked as to how much of the attempted rationalisation of pederasty is really just opportunistic. (In fact, the description in the article suggests the Japanese monks' practice was bordering on paedophilia rather than pederasty - but it's not 100% clear.) It also suggests that amongst Samurai, while open and nothing to be ashamed of, the sexual aspect of mentoring relationships was not emphasised, and it was expected that it would end at the boys' coming of age, even if the close friendship was to continue.
Both articles I have linked to here make the point that Buddhism was fully on board with the idea of women being defiled by menstruation - something that I think Christianity didn't dwell upon, although I am not sure why. The second article suggests that the lower status of women in Japan helped account for the greater value put on male to male relationships, and I suppose I have read the same thing about Greece. Did Ancient Roman culture not go down the pederastic path to the same extent because they weren't quite as dismissive about the status of women? I'm not sure. Certainly, in the case of Afghanistan's creepy boy love scene amongst the dirt poor rural Muslims, the low status of (and separation from) women must figure prominently into how such a cultural practice arises.
Or so you would think. I mean, India is supposed to have long been very conservative in the matter of pre-marital sex, which apparently means some opportunistic same sex activity amongst the likes of male truck drivers, for example. [I remember this was a concern for the spread of HIV]. But I don't think it has any kind of reputation for a cultural acceptance of pederastic interests. Each culture is complex in its own way when it comes to these matters, it seems. [Update:
here's an article arguing that the prudish version of Hinduism dominating modern India is the fault of the Victorian English rule! Who knows how accurate that is?]
Anyway, the whole attitude to sexuality thing seems to be in some state of flux again throughout Asia, where it seems that China has decided to officially panic about the current fashion for young male feminisation spreading through youth media:
China's 'sissy pants phenomenon': Beijing fears negative impact of 'sickly culture' on teenagers
Everyone should blame South Korea for this. As anyone who has ever strayed onto SBS's Popasia program in the last 6 months would have seen, it is very, very, very clear that someone in that highly controlled and somewhat weird K Pop industry has decided that the market wants not just the former soft, gay/androgynous, non threatening version of young masculinity that it (and the Japanese equivalent) used to be known for, but actually fully fledged feminised fashion which looks more akin to guys going through a transgender process. It's really weird to see, and personally, I can't see how it can appeal to its (presumably) predominantly female audience on a long term basis.
I still wonder though whether the big gender imbalance in China is going in future to once again lead to a softening of Chinese cultural attitudes to same sex relationships. But obviously, the government fears that this may make them look weak.
Perhaps they should be sending out experts to look at how it worked in Sparta and amongst the Samurai as examples of how to make gay activity look masculine. Perhaps they can give the Japanese Buddhist example a bit of a miss, though...
