distracted by the sight of the white thighs of a woman
who has hiked up her dress to wash clothes by a river.
The sage tumbles from the sky, bereft of his supernat-
ural abilities. In one moment of sexual arousal, all the
fruits of years of discipline are lost. He marries the
washerwoman and settles down to a life more ordi-
nary. In this story, the control of sexual urges is pre-
sented as a kind of litmus test for spiritual attainment.
For the monastic community, the threat of sexual
temptation was recognized as a serious obstacle to
progress on the Buddhist path. For this reason, the dis-
ciplinary codes for MONKSand NUNS, the VINAYA, are
quite explicit and exhaustive in the varieties of sexual
activity they proscribe. The monk’s rule clearly states
that genital, oral, manual, or anal sex is absolutely pro-
hibited, be it with humans, divine beings, or animals.
These acts will result in expulsion from the Buddhist
order (SAN ̇GHA), as will making a lustful remark to a
woman about her pudenda or her anus. Intentionally
emitting semen (nocturnal emissions excepted) or
causing someone else to do so will result in temporary
suspension from the order. The nun’s rule is similarly
detailed.
Yet, while celibacy and complete sexual abstinence
was an ideal for the clergy, for the LAITY, sexuality was
an essential and celebrated aspect of life. In the differ-
ent geographical and cultural areas where it flourished,
Buddhism often assimilated itself to autochthonous
fertility cults, enlisting local deities into the Buddhist
pantheon. Thus, although proscribed for monks and
nuns, lay sexuality was not merely tolerated as a nec-
essary evil, but could, in fact, be lauded as a positive
good. In some parts of Southeast Asia, where tempo-
rary ordination of young men is common, time spent
as a monk is understood to increase one’s fertility and
virility.
Sexuality and the lay Buddhist
The earliest surviving Buddhist STUPA, the great stupa
at SAN
CIin central India, was built around the third
century B.C.E. In its richly carved decorative railings
and gates, which date from a few centuries later, the
modern viewer is afforded a glimpse into the sumptu-
ous world of ancient Buddhist sexuality. These stone
fences and doors are adorned with frankly seductive
statues of female tree sprites (yaksl) and male–female
pairs in attitudes of erotic play or union (maithuna).
The gracefully arched pose of the yakslas she grasps
the branches of a mango tree is echoed in ancient In-
dian representations of the Buddha’s mother, Maya, as
she painlessly delivers the bodhisattva from her side.
The person of Lady Mayais a telling indicator of Bud-
dhist ambivalence toward sexuality. The bodhisattva,
the Buddha-to-be, must choose for his mother a
woman who is the epitome of sexual attractiveness and
fecundity, and yet she must die ten days after bearing
him so that there can be no chance of her being de-
filed by any subsequent sexual intercourse.
In every Buddhist culture, lay donors and support-
ers of Buddhism far outnumbered monastics. The in-
stitution of the family has been a focus of Buddhist
theory and practice in every context—from India, to
Thailand, to Korea. Lay worshippers who visited the
Sañcstupa and similar sites like Bharhut, while they
no doubt also sought proximity to the relics of the Bud-
dha enshrined within the monument, would have been
keenly interested in these visual representations of gods
and goddesses who had ensured sexual fulfillment and
safe childbirth long before the advent of S ́akyamuni.
New stories were created to demonstrate the Bud-
dhist nature of such deities. These deities, whom peo-
ple were accustomed to worshipping, were given new
Buddhist identities and thus existing loyalties and de-
votions were brought into the Buddhist fold. One pop-
ular pairing was Pañcika (Kubera), King of the Tree
Sprites, and Harit, a ravenous demoness converted by
S ́akyamuni. Statues of this couple, often surrounded
by small children, gave the laity a positive vision of
their own sexually engaged lives with the attendant
blessings of progeny that belies the stereotype of Bud-
dhism as a pessimistic and world-denying faith.
Wherever Buddhism spread, a similar kind of con-
quest through assimilation occurred. For instance, in
Japan, popular tales recounting the origins of Buddhist
deities often incorporated local gods and goddesses
and more often than not involved a story of star-
crossed lovers. Medieval Buddhist interpretations of
Japan’s cosmogonic myth placed particular emphasis
on the lesson of the creative power of sexual union.
Laypeople saw no contradiction between adherence to
the Buddhist teachings and an active sex life; native fer-
tility cults survived in Buddhist guise.
And yet, it was not only the laity who sought sex-
ual fulfillment. In many MAHAYANAcountries, mem-
bers of the san ̇gha, specifically monks, saw fit to
embrace women as wives or lovers either in secret or
publicly. The bodhisattva Avalokites ́vara is said to have
visited the thirteenth-century Japanese monk SHINRAN
(1173–1263) to assure him that she would remove
from him the obstacle of sexual desire by transform-
ing into a woman and becoming his wife. In today’sSEXUALITY