Each of the ten actions to be avoided correspondingly are the cause for suffering. These actions are interrelated in both their motivation (the three poisons of anger, attachment, and ignorance) and their result (suffering, accumulation of negative karma). Moreover, these negative actions are compounding; avoiding one facilitates the avoiding of another, and engaging in one concedes the next. For example, if one has stolen something with trickery, lying was likely involved – both lying and stealing are both actions to be avoided. It’s easy to see how one can lead to another, and keeping one makes it easier to keep another.
The third physical action to be avoided as described by Patrul Rinpoche in “Words of My Perfect Teacher” is sexual misconduct. Of course, monks and nuns with full vows are expected to refrain from sex altogether. Householders are expected to follow an appropriate ethic for restricted behavior.
We could think of sexual misconduct in the same three ways as we did previously about taking what is not given: by violence, manipulation, or deceit. Compelling others to break their own vows is the most serious type of sexual misconduct. The intention behind our action is of primary importance – proper sexual conduct includes mutual consent by those not already committed to other individuals, with the expression of love, devotion and respect.
How we conduct ourselves sexually is a reflection of how we conduct ourselves in all areas of our life – our sexual energy is primal. Sexual misconduct is significant enough to require its specific identification in the actions to be avoided!
In our culture sexual messages run rampant –media saturation with sexuality (sex sells!), objectification of sexual partners (arm candy! tool! meat market!) and so on. What examples of subtle sexual misconduct can you think of? Are there examples of things that appear to be sexual misconduct on the surface, but upon further scrutiny, could be considered proper?
In the Dharma,
Sarah
#1 by Clotilde Wright on July 25, 2010 - 4:30 PM
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I think that there are subtle ways that people hurt others through sexual misconduct that they don’t even think about. For example, flirting with someone, or “running sexual energy” on someone much younger than you who doesn’t want that. This type of thing seems to be encouraged in our culture and it can take mindfulness to avoid. This goes back, as Sarah pointed out to “taking what is not given” or using other people to meet our own needs.
When it comes to sexuality, we just have to take each situation to the path so to speak and ask, if I act on this will I hurt myself or others?
#2 by physical therapist on July 25, 2010 - 5:41 PM
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Wow this is a great resource.. I’m enjoying it.. good article
#3 by Angela Tsultrim on July 26, 2010 - 5:03 AM
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In order to discuss sexual misconduct, it seems a discussion about sexual energy itself would be useful. Being a nun for nine years, sex from this x-celibates view is that sexual energy is like doing the magic eye. It seems we are always trying to find the hidden sexual message in everything and if we stare at something long enough we get it, the image comes through or one stares and stares and nothing, but you know it is still there. Maybe why many advertisers use hidden sexual messages in their ads in this way. It’s not that we are just going along and then this hidden sexual image made me go buy whiskey, it’s that I am also looking for it. Like my radar is up and on alert constantly, expecting a sexual message to reveal itself. I do this with people too, not even aware that I am doing it until I realize I am doing it. I wonder what that is all about? Is this expectation of some sort of bliss wave from someone disrespectful? Is tuning into their sexual energy stream an invasion of privacy? Can I even help this? Am I breaking some sort of tantric hidden vow that I am not even aware? I feel very much like a child who has stumbled upon a huge, deep cave when it comes to the true essence of sex, sexual energy, and sexual misconduct. So innately curious and yet so not ready or experienced enough to go spelunking on her own. Isn’t there a phrase by Chogyam Trungpa, ‘honey on a knife?’
#4 by Clotilde Wright on July 27, 2010 - 8:01 AM
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“Honey on a knife” describes indulging in destructive desires well. Pleasure and then the inevitable pain.
I remember Anyen Rinpoche saying that addiction is another word for “extreme attachment.” I think sexual misconduct can lead to an addiction or extreme attachment, or vice versa. So, examining our attachments, or what leads to them, seems important.
#5 by Yontan on July 27, 2010 - 9:15 AM
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From the pratimoksha pov, we can see sexual activity as yet another false refuge.
#6 by Yontan on July 27, 2010 - 9:02 PM
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As I understand the pratimoksha vows, especially in the context of keeping all three sets of vows (w/ bodhisattva and vajrayana) is that the essence is not causing harm. The litmus then, is simply whether someone is being hurt (including oneself!) Consent and respect, etc., are really just the beginning of finding sexual activity that avoids harm, isn’t it?
I suppose it may be too much to ask, but at least we can aim for keeping our sexual engagements within the “emptiness of the three spheres” that honors our interdependent natures, acknowledges the inherent suffering in compounded phenomena and dualistic conceptual experience. It’s not much unlike how we should relate to a good chocolate chip cookie from that perspective. Or perhaps it’s a better example, giving a chocolate chip cookie. Sharing a chocolate chip cookie?
Gluten-free, of course.
It can be a really awesome experience, sharing a good cookie with someone. I could do it three times a day.
#7 by Angela Tsultrim on July 27, 2010 - 9:10 PM
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I suppose then, the most of us, for the better part of the day are under false refuge and are extremely attached. There was something else I remember that I wanted to share. It started happening about 6 or 7 years ago, about 3 years into being a nun. I would tie up my nun’s skirt in this unique monastic folding way that Tibetan monks and nuns do, and as I was doing it I would take my vows every morning with each fold I put into the skirt. I was only under the first five vows, of no killing, no stealing, no lies, no alcohol, no sex. I began to get this sense or hunch that each one of these vows was just the tip of the iceberg, that on some deeper level they applied to the nature of the mind as well. They weren’t just some restrictive behavior code to make me be a better person, even though they were that too. I don’t know maybe I will be severely corrected here but it was like no killing tied into why kill any thoughts? They are all the deity anyways. No stealing felt like it was linked to don’t get caught up in past or future thoughts; don’t steal your time away, no lies seemed to be connected to being totally authentic, being totally in the moment, and no alcohol seemed to be connected to not being attached to the bliss that comes with meditations, but the funny thing was I could never and still cannot connect into what no sex could possibly mean. It’s like a blind spot. Which is so funny because almost everyone of my Tibetan Buddhist picture or thankas, well the deities are in union. It is so in my face but I completely am dumb to it, the deeper meaning that is. Yeah, sure, I can read the books and get the text book meanings but to experience it on a personal level, seems to be a very slllowww dawning. More Vajrasattva’s for this one.
#8 by Yontan on July 27, 2010 - 10:20 PM
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Angela I think you are correct that most of us spend most of our lives chasing false refuges. That is the essence of grasping. Hope of something better, a way out. The First Noble Truth points to the fact that there is no way within compounded existence to find real and authentic, lasting and substantial happiness. The best we can do is to achieve a (compounded and temporary) state of happiness that eventually leads to loss and sorrow: the god realm as they say. For the upasaka/upasika (householder) it’s a little more confusing still, since sexuality per se is not proscribed, only a loosely defined “misconduct” which somewhat varies according to culture. (Some of the old Tibetan tribes had polygamous families, unlike India and the West.) A perfectly acceptable modern translation would be to refrain from misusing sex. What are the proper uses of sex?
I like your inner reading of the five vows, but historically (Theravada, et alum) they would’ve been seen prima facie, “restrictive behavior code to make me be a better person” as you put it. We take them within the context of the mahayana which gives another dimension entirely, but controlling sexual urges has always seemed to me a very simple and direct way to cut to the quick of taming mind and abandoning worldly dharmas. Maybe that is not correct.
About images, my understanding is that the union represented in thankas has nothing to do with what we’re discussing. This is the union of appearance and emptiness, bliss emptiness, etc. and not at all two things coming together, much less in any sort of procreative or grasping way. That’s a discussion for another time, I suppose, but this conflation of sexual union and yab yum images is among the main reasons these images were originally kept secret. There are aspects of inner vows which seem to run directly counter to the pratimoksha vows, but understood in context they are actually for liberating the restrictive bondage that a rigid conceptual adoption of these vows can lead to. Misunderstood they can be utterly devastating to the spiritual project.
#9 by Yontan on July 27, 2010 - 10:38 PM
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Also, as lay practitioners, we don’t have the same sort of behavior code and punishment that monks and nuns do. Generally, falling short of the precepts is considered unskillful, but we are not “defeated” and banished from the order, if you get where I’m going. Certainly there is no “sin” in the way Judeo-Christians conceive. We really do have to be that light unto ourselves, and discover how to shed the light of emptiness upon our cravings, thereby releasing ourselves from their control. (It’s like any other klesha.) From that point, whatever we might do can be motivated by Great Compassion and aimed at helping achieve the benefit of oneself and others. Here we can relax about the particulars, since our actions will naturally be informed by the current cultural expectations, and the issue of our own worldly gratification is simply vaulted over.
Seems if we are not at the point where our bodhicitta is our main motivation, then the precepts act as a sort of cattle chute, keeping us moving forward while we’re working that learning curve.
#10 by Angela Tsultrim on July 28, 2010 - 9:36 AM
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Wow, thanks. I suppose I prefer a deeper meaning to why I am conducting or not conducting myself better. I am more apt to conduct myself properly if I get the gist of it. Never been to good at just doing it because “they say to.” Hence, I am no longer a nun. Just me, I guess. I was meditating this morning on no sex as a vow, once again, and I think something broke through. I have a hunch no sex means no ordinary views. Pure perception. Which would explain my blind spot. Pure perception is sooo dawgone difficult for me. To the point where I wonder if I have a genetic disorder that prevents me from having pure perception. It could be called Puresomy 21 or something, aka, Ordinary View Syndrome. Maybe I’ll quarantine myself, could be contagious.
#11 by SarahJ on July 28, 2010 - 12:37 PM
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Great discussion!
OVS/PS21 – I am afflicted as well.
#12 by Yontan on July 28, 2010 - 12:51 PM
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LOL. Angela, you’re a treasure. I suppose if pure perception were easy samsara wouldn’t be such a big deal. I certainly make no claim to seeing the world and inhabitants as the deity, but I’m getting good at pretending. And as Anyen Rinpoche himself has said, “sometimes pretending works!”
I like to ask myself, when sticky situations arise, “WHAT IF that person is a buddha, and WHAT IF I and all beings are ever-free of bondage, swimming in infinite possibilities?” Every once in a while it helps me get a glimpse outside my own habitual patterns and fixated notion of identity, and choose something that actually responds to the situation instead of simply more of the frantic, doomed, incessant spackling job of my ego trying to cover over the flaws in this idea that things are going to be ok….
#13 by Angela Tsultrim on July 28, 2010 - 1:42 PM
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Tell me about it. Insights are like being Spider man. We can shoot our little spidey web thing up to the top of the building or mountain (the insight) but then we have to work it, hand over hand, moment by moment, year by year, getting to the top, to live it (the actualization). And don’t get me started on what happens if we slip. Oyvai!
#14 by Julie on July 28, 2010 - 10:11 PM
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Fascinating insight, Angela!
It seems to me that no alcohol isn’t so much related to meditative bliss per se, but to meditative absorptions (the infamous ‘empty void.’)
Bliss (as I have heard it described) is an actual term for an authentic meditative resting in the View (or a byproduct) (Yontan can correct me, because I don’t know stuff).
So an inner/secret meaning on avoiding sex? My ideas are flitting around ideas of the divine masculine and feminine and knowing that they are yin and yang, and yet still equality, indivisible yet both appearing. Sex seems the heart of duality/polarization (because there is an ‘other’ that we are communing with). So I can say that it would relate to looking beyond duality; the correct view is nonduality with the play of appearance and emptiness.
#15 by Clotilde Wright on July 29, 2010 - 8:21 AM
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Using your cookie analogy Yontan, I think avoiding sexual misconduct helps to keep us from turning into the Cookie Monster, the furry blue creature overpowered by ignorance and desire.
No offense Cookie Monster…..
#16 by Angela Tsultrim on July 30, 2010 - 6:12 AM
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I’m not so great with the proper lingo, but I get you, Julie. I guess I mean not getting attached to God realm-mind. From where I am at now, in retrospect, all I can say is whenever I think about the no-sex vow a sense of “big mind” comes in, as opposed to my ordinary mind I am dealing with everyday, my own inner cookie monster. Even though I am sure my little mind and big mind are connected, I have not really experienced this. One thing for sure, a well made cookie, sure is yab-yummy. Haha.
#17 by Ananda on August 6, 2010 - 12:16 AM
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I love you all so much.