Buddhist Warfare, chapters 2, 3, and 4

I know that I said that I would write a post about each chapter in “Buddhist Warfare”, but as I am reading the collection, I’m realizing that I’ll never get through it if I stick to that. So there will be times, such as this one, when I combine various chapters into one post and others when a post will be devoted to a single chapter.

One of the book’s editors, Michael Jerryson, mentions in the Introduction two key questions critical to how a reader interprets the contents of the book: “How can Buddhist scripture be interpreted for warfare? And how is it interpreted for warfare?”

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 readily follow this line of thought by focusing in rather specific ways. Of course, the danger with such specificity is that the argument gets lost in the larger context: do the examples cited in these chapters represent fairly the core teachings of the Buddha? In my opinion, they most certainly do not.

Chapter 2, by Stephen Jenkins, is titled “Making Merit through Warfare and Torture According to the Ārya-Bodhisattva-gocara-upāyyavisaya-vikurvana-nirdeśa Sūtra,” which means the conclusions of this chapter are based entirely on this single sutra. It is essentially a sutra filled with rationalizations, but it is worth pointing out the connection this sutra has with earlier writings in the Pali canon.

This sutra presents the dialogue between an ascetic named Satyavaca Nirgranthaputra and a king. Satyavaca also appears in the Majjhima Nikaya as the ascetic Saccaka. Jenkins says the two suttas in the Majjhima Nikaya in which Saccaka appears describe him as “a clever and aggressive anti-Buddhist debater.” When he engages the Buddha in debate, Saccaka asserts that his material form is self, perception is self, formations are self, and consciousness is self. The Buddha’s reply to Saccaka shows the connection to the later Mahayana sutra, which is to ask Saccaka if a king has the authority to execute those who ought to be executed; Saccaka replies that a king has this type of authority.

However, the Buddha asking this question doesn’t necessarily mean that the Buddha agrees that a King should exercise that authority. He is merely developing an argument using terms familiar to Saccaka to refute the ascetic’s assertion that body is self, that perception is self, that formations are self, and that consciousness is self. The trick gets Saccaka to agree that a king has such power, but then the Buddha asks Saccaka whether he has such power to control or determine his own form. Saccaka is silent and remains silent despite the Buddha repeating his question three times. The Buddha even warns Saccaka that to refuse to answer results in one’s head being split into seven pieces, whereupon a thunderbolt-wielding spirit shows up with the obvious intent of doing just that if Saccaka fails to reply.

Is this then an example of the Buddha forcing Saccaka “under threat of death,” as Jenkins suggests, to admit that a king has the power of execution? Or was the Buddha seeking to have Saccaka realize that his body is not self because he doesn’t have the authority of a king to demand what form he shall take? That he has no control, like a king, to direct his feelings, etc.? And is not the language used by the author of the sutta, written well after the Buddha’s death, reflective of the imagery associated with rural south Asia at the time? Was there really a thunderbolt-wielding spirit threatening to split Saccaka’s head open? Or was this colorful language added to add drama to the sutta?

Granted, run-of-the-mill people at the time, and to a large degree today still, believed these spirits to be real entities capable of interfering with their lives. To suggest that the presence of such language is evidence of a violent nature within Buddhism is more than a bit of a stretch in my view, however.

Jenkins then goes on to extrapolate from the later Mahayana sutra evidence of how a king is guided in the proper method of war and use of violence. There are some fairly twisted rationalizations here in my view, particularly the concept of “compassionate killing,” which Jenkins notes that the Buddhist scholar Michael Zimmerman writes is “incompatible with basic Buddhist ethics.”


The conclusion of this essay is particularly problematic. It starts with, “General conceptions of a basic Buddhist ethics broadly conceived as unqualified pacifism are problematic. Compassionate violence is at the very heart of the sensibility of this sutra.” (italics mine)

With this paragraph, Jenkins makes a broad statement and backs it up with one sutra, a sutra that in fact is not considered authentic in the Theravada tradition despite the effort Jenkins took at the start of his essay to describe the sutra’s history, influence and importance within Mahayana.

Chapter 3 is filled with some very interesting history about Tibet and Mongolia. In “Sacralized Warfare: The Fifth Dalai Lama and the Discourse of Religious Violence,” Derek F. Maher examines the historical writings of the Fifth Dalai Lama and shows how they were constructed to support the violent war mongering of Gushri Khan. I don’t doubt for a minute the historical accuracy of the essay. What I doubt is its suitability as evidence of an innate violent nature to Buddhism.

This chapter details quite excellently what happens when politics is mixed up with religion - you get a holy mess. Because that’s what you have with Tibetan Buddhism for the most part: religious leaders who are also political leaders. And the fact that certain Tibetan schools fought wars against other Tibetan schools only demonstrates how rampant religious chauvinism was in Tibet; it by no means offers credible support that the Buddha’s teachings allows for such militaristic behavior.

In fact, the Buddha was quite clear just before his death when Ananda asks him who will lead the sangha after his passing. The Buddha said he would name no leader because there was nothing to lead. Buddhism is all about examining and knowing oneself, controlling oneself, of being harmless so that one can attain release. It's about being a better person so other living beings can be at ease. It was never about becoming the top dog school or sect and waging war against contrary opinions. But people are people and humans have a penchant for violence.

Buddhism, however, does not.

Chapter 4, “Legalized Violence: Punitive Measures of Buddhist Khans in Mongolia,” provides more evidence of the politicization of the dhamma. As Vesna A. Wallace clearly states in this essay: “By legislating social and ritual practices that were in accordance with Buddhist teachings and monastic rules and by introducing penal measures for the infractions of both monks and laypeople, Mongolian legislators converted Buddhist teachings and practices into state law.”

This isn’t evidence of a violent nature to Buddhism; rather, its evidence of how a theocracy was established in Mongolia around Buddhism. Wallace also provides examples of class division within Mongolian culture.

“The Russian ethnographer Pozdneyev, who visited Mongolia in the late nineteenth century, mentions a case in which a Mongol noble punished one of his serf’s sons for not making adequate progress in his studies as a Buddhist novice by tying him naked outside the tent during a winter night. When the boy died as a consequence, the nobleman was merely fined eighteen animals.”

Mahayana writings such as the Golden Light Sutra were seized upon by rulers because they provided an excuse for ruthless rule. “The Golden Light Sutra is perhaps the most adamant about the king’s duty to destroy evil deeds and inflict penalties on the evildoers in conformity with their crimes. If a king were to ignore any evil deed and neglect his royal duty, lawlessness and wickedness would increase, unfavorable asterisms and planets would rule, meteor showers would fall, evil demons would arise, and natural disasters, diseases, and foreign armies would ruin his kingdom.”

Now, if I were and king and that was my spiritual guidance, of course I would do what I thought would prevent evil demons from arising and foreign armies ruining my domain! And I, as such a king, would also like the ambiguity of the Golden Light Sutra, as it would allow me wide interpretation.

“(I)t leaves room for multiple interpretations concerning the degrees of punishments the ruler may implement in his task of upholding the law. It indirectly suggests that punishment enforces not only the law of a given society but also the laws of nature. For these reasons, the Inner Mongolian author Rashipuntsag referred to the Golden Light Sutra in his work ‘Crystal Rosary,’ declaring that Dharma laws do not prevent one from punishing criminals. He argued against Confucians who claimed that the state could be ruled only by means of secular laws because the law of Dharma was too weak to punish criminals, because it advocates compassion.” (Italics mine)

I’m looking forward to writing about the next chapter, because in that one, the author flatly states that any sect of Buddhism that justifies violence in any way is a false teaching and a corruption of the Buddha’s words.

Durrian and potatoes and simsapa leaves

There is a lively discussion over at Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt, where John wrote an excellent post about comments made by the Dalai Lama recently at the University of Wisconsin. John notes in his post that within Buddhism, there is no concept of original sin, and he references a statement made by the Dalai Lama at Madison that our basic nature is pure rather than sinful.

This has led to a very interesting litany of comments raising the issue of original sin versus kamma; isn’t the idea of kamma similar to the concept of original sin? If Christianity posits that we are born with the burden of original sin, isn’t that parallel to the Buddha’s teaching on kamma, that our current birth condition and life is the result of our kamma, our previous actions both in the recent past and from previous lives?

I thought about leaving my own comment, but I realized my response would be far too long. Because, essentially, I believe the discussion to be frivolous. John is correct to say that there is no original sin within Buddhism; the Dalai Lama is correct to say that our basic nature is pure, that we corrupt this pure nature through our misunderstanding of how things really are.

And the comments by those who say that our current life condition is premised upon our past actions – kamma – both within this life and from earlier life times are correct as well.

But the effort to draw parallels between the two concepts of original sin and kamma is contrived and pointless, as they are not the same thing at all, nor are they even similar. It’s not that we’re talking apples and oranges here; the concepts of original sin and kamma are so fundamentally different that we might as well be talking about durrian and potatoes, and any discussion or effort to identify similarities between the two is to be concerned with the simsapa leaves up in the trees above our heads, rather than with the few leaves held within the Buddha’s hand. It is Wrong View.

First, there’s the fundamental difference between sin and kamma. A sin is an offense; to commit an offense, someone must be offended. Our vernacular reflects this with such phrases such as a “sin against nature” or a “sin against god.” Although nature is not a person, we personify it. Kamma is action and the results it brings. The crux of kamma is intent; when our intentions are turned into action either via doing or speaking, we create kamma because all action has a consequence, every cause results in an effect. The result can be either pleasant or unpleasant; there really isn’t any good or bad kamma, it’s all just kamma. That’s why the Buddha talked about liberation is achieved when we end kamma.

The effects of kamma can either be immediately manifested, or be delayed, or both immediately evident and delayed. And this is where, I believe, the discussion gets off track and people start to draw parallels between kamma and original sin. But let’s examine the concept of original sin first, because all I described above was sin.

As I recall from my catechisms, Original Sin originated with Adam and Eve. In the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve everything they needed, but He warned them not to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Satan manipulated Eve and tricked her into eating the fruit anyway and sharing it with Adam. This annoyed the hell out of God, and so he burdened not only Adam and Eve, but all of their progeny with Original Sin. So in Christian doctrine, or at least Catholic doctrine, we are born with the burden of the original sin – the first sin – committed by Adam and Eve. It’s not even our own sin! And the only way to lift this burden is to appease god and seek his forgiveness. As a gay man, I have no chance with this transaction.

However, I am the owner of my kamma. It is not a burden laid upon me, causing me to start my life in the hole, so to speak. It just simply is. And no matter what my current state of affairs are, no matter what my previous life had been, I always have the opportunity to eliminate my kamma and liberate myself in this life time, perhaps even in this moment. It is for me to accomplish, no one else, and no one else can prevent me from accomplishing it should I see its potential – not god, not a devil, not another person, just me.

I think people become fixated on the notion that “life is suffering,” the First Noble Truth. But that is really just one way of saying it. Life contains suffering, but it’s not all suffering all the time. So to suggest that “life is suffering” is the Buddhist rendition of original sin is to miss the mark of what the First Noble Truth is really telling us. In my post on the Four Noble Truths, I simplified the first truth into the absurd statement that “life sucks.” But the reality is that life doesn’t suck, life is simply life. We tend to say it sucks because life never fully meets our expectations, or at least when it does, it’s only temporary. Hence we become disappointed because we expect permanence where none exists. Ergo, we experience dissatisfaction.

Sariputta: “Now what, friends, is the noble truth of stress? Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; not getting what is wanted is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful.” (MN 141)

Yes, life is stressful! Birth is stressful! Right from the freaking start, life is a bloody morass of stress! But it isn’t specifically stressful for just we humans; it’s freaking stressful for all forms of life. Even plants experience stress!

This is not, however, equivalent to original sin. While we enter this world kicking and screaming and wanting to crawl back into the womb, we are nonetheless born into this world unburdened by any debt owed to some deity or higher power. Our ultimate happiness is not dependent on appeasing external forces; rather, the seeds to our happiness are already within us. We enter each lifetime fully equipped to stop the cycle on our own. Whatever burdens we carry from previous lives are our own; we made them, we can undo them.

Why “The Buddha” left me dissatisfied

In general, I thought the PBS special “The Buddha” was OK. That’s right, just OK. And one reason I thought it was just OK is that the documentary, in my opinion, brought up issues and raised questions that any reasonable non-Buddhist might have, and then failed to provide an explanation or context that would help a non-Buddhist resolve these issues or questions.

A second reason was it seemed to me that the producers of this documentary missed an opportunity to show to non-Buddhists how diverse Buddhism is. I will grant some leeway in this because, after all, the documentary was titled “The Buddha,” and not “Buddhism.” But many non-Buddhists tend to look at Buddhism as something Tibetan because of how frequently we see and hear about the Dalai Lama in the media. This documentary did nothing to dispel that misperception. In fact, I think it reinforced it.

My first issue with the documentary was quickly raised when the program began to cover the myth surrounding the Buddha’s birth. I am quite familiar with the story and I wasn’t surprised that it was brought up. What surprised me was that there was no explanation provided about the myth. The Buddha sprouted out of the side of his mother? She was impregnated by an elephant?

Like many cultures of that time – approximately 500 BC – Indian culture during the Buddha’s time regarded women with disdain and mistrust, even among the upper castes. A woman’s body was considered filthy, and for as a great a holy person as the Buddha was eventually regarded to be to have been created through such a mundane practice as intercourse, and to have been birthed vaginally, would likely have been viewed as unworthy of the Buddha’s stature. But another clue for me about this myth is that the Siddhartha’s mother reportedly died shortly after his birth. That leads me to think that Siddhartha’s birth was a difficult one. Because the tale describes his birth with Siddhartha coming out of his mother’s side, I am inclined to think that something like a Caesarean birth was necessary. Given the era when this occurred, such a procedure was certainly complicated and Siddhartha’s mother could very well have died from a post-procedural infection. And besides, many women during that time died during or shortly after childbirth. I’m not suggesting my explanation is the right one, but there was no explanation provided at all. For a skeptical non-Buddhist, such a myth would come across as being very similar to the more familiar birth story surrounding Jesus. And if Buddhism is such a rational religion, which is often how it is presented and viewed by others, why does it cling to such myths about the Buddha’s birth?

A similar problem with the presentation occurred during the descriptions of Siddhartha’s awakening. The graphical presentation has this gigantic monster Mara surrounded by hordes of demons attempting to deter Siddhartha’s eventual enlightenment. Again, no explanation of what this might mean, of what was going on, that could reveal to a non-believer in an intellectually palatable manner what might have been going on with Siddhartha at the time. In other words, what was the metaphor? Because Buddhism does not require you to believe that is exactly what happened. In fact, that event can be easily explained as a metaphor allowing someone who has no belief at all in spirits or gods to understand the final struggle Siddhartha faced before attaining enlightenment. As my first teacher explained to me, Mara represents the deluded mind, all the demons dancing around represent our chaotic thoughts. The final struggle for Siddhartha was to subdue the mind, to no longer let it control his actions and thoughts, but to reign it in so it could be directed toward more skillful actions. The mind rebels against this, as anyone who practices meditation can attest to. When the mind – as represented by Mara – is finally subdued, freedom is realized.

But again, all these “experts” who were brought on for the show didn’t touch any of this at all. And as one of my non-Buddhist friends commented to me, it just seemed like a bunch of mystical mumbo jumbo no different from all the demons and angels and all that associated with Christianity. Rather than bringing a skeptical non-Buddhist closer to accepting Buddhism as a viable alternative to monotheism, it is my belief that this portion of the documentary pushed many away.

And then there is my second issue, which is more subtle, and that is this program did nothing to explain Buddhism is an extraordinarily diverse religion, represented by a wide variety of teachers and teachings. Nor did the program explain that there are many facets of the Buddhist practice that have little or nothing to do with what the Buddha taught, but are rather manifestations of local culture. Selecting Richard Gere as the program’s narrator makes some sense because he is widely known both as a public figure and as a Buddhist. But his alignment with Tibetan Buddhism only feeds a general misperception that anyone who is Buddhist practices the Tibetan form and follows the Dalai Lama as if he were a Buddhist pope. The fact the program included interviews with the Dalai Lama only reinforces this misperception. The other monk and nun interviewed for the program, who were they? Where were they from? What vehicle do they follow? Do they also follow the Dalai Lama? The entire program, in that respect, struck me as being very ethnocentric and culturally biased.

Granted, as I mentioned earlier, the show was titled “The Buddha,” and hence it was about the Buddha, not necessarily about Buddhism. Nonetheless, I was very disappointed by what I saw as a one-dimensional presentation that missed many opportunities.

His Holliness on Homo-ness

Here is another post that is part of the Great Article Swap among us Buddhist bloggers, this one from the Rev. Danny Fisher. If you're not familiar with him and his blog, you ought to be. Here it is.

First, many thanks to Richard for hosting my comments here, and to Nate for making this whole Buddhist blog swap happen.

When Richard and I got in touch, he suggested as possible topic the confusion among gay Buddhists and straight allies “by what we perceive as the Dalai Lama’s waffling on the gay issue in Buddhism.” In addition, he suggested clarification about “what is more important for gays as they approach Buddhism: personal acceptance of who we are prior to taking up Buddhism, or using Buddhism as a vehicle for self acceptance.”

I’ve examined the first issue, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s stance on homosexuality, in some depth in a past post at my blog. Richard suggested that I rework some of what I said there and elsewhere, though, so I will begin by doing that.

In my post, I concluded that it would be difficult to characterize His Holiness as homophobic. If we’re defining a homophobe as someone who demonstrates an “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals,” then His Holiness does not qualify: statements like those he made to the XXIII World Conference of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, as well as his willingness to meet and listen to gay Buddhists like the late Steve Peskind, demonstrate a much more open mind and heart than that, I think.

Still, other things he has said (in the context of conversations about sexual misconduct “according to the Buddhist tradition”) have been less than satisfying and even confusing. Additionally, there are things His Holiness could say that he’s not saying. In my post, I suggested that while he is right to remind us that he’s not the pope of all Buddhists, I think Peskind too is right to note that he could do more to “commit himself to helping correct harmful Buddhist teachings still on the books–including the conduct codes which can fuel homophobic behavior among Buddhist teachers and students.” While His Holiness can’t change the tradition, I suspect certain kinds of statements would be enormously influential coming from him. Imagine if he said, “According to the Buddhist tradition, homosexuality is sexual misconduct…but that’s an idea that’s a product of the time of the tradition’s origins and we should throw it away.” Call me overly optimistic, but I think that would have a pretty big ripple effect. He’s not a Buddhist pope, but, when this Dalai Lama speaks, a lot of people–a lot of Buddhists in the world–listen. With all due respect, it doesn’t quite do to say “According to the Buddhist tradition…” and leave it at that.

Holding to these Buddhist sexual ethics suggest that being a “good Buddhist” and being gay are mutually exclusive. (You can have heterosexual sex and still be a good Buddhist, but you can’t ever have homosexual sex and be a good Buddhist it seems.) And to keep saying “According to the Buddhist tradition…” with no postmodern, critical, scientific reflection is problematic in that it can (intentionally or unintentionally) enable homophobic behavior. His Holiness has frequently said that if modern scientific findings contradict our beliefs—even our most deeply held Buddhist beliefs—we must change. I would agree. On that point, the American Psychological Association has rightly noted that there have been many compelling studies about the biological and psychological origins of homosexuality and that “most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.” The sciences are speaking loudly and clearly to us, and we have a responsibility to respond.

In addition, great compassion and loving-kindness are important values in every Buddhist tradition. Is it not an extraordinarily uncompassionate, unloving, and unkind thing to (grossly or subtly) dehumanize others and (implicitly or explicitly) deny them their civil rights? I would certainly not like it if I were denied equal protection under the law. How about you?

Consider this: Civil unions offer many of the same rights and privileges of marriage, but exclusively at the state-level—they are not recognized by the United States Federal Government the way that marriages are. Furthermore, under the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 (DOMA), other U.S. states are not obliged to recognize these unions (nor are they required to recognize legal gay marriages in other states). The General Accounting Office lists over 1,100 benefits and protections for married couples–which relate to things like Social Security and VA benefits, health insurance and visitation rights, family leave, immigration law, taxes, and more–and civil unions protect only some of these rights. Because civil unions are not recognized by the federal government, this means, among many other things:

• gay couples cannot file joint-tax returns and enjoy some of the same tax protections as married couples;
• a United States citizen cannot sponsor a non-American for immigration through a civil union the way he or she could through marriage;
• if someone in a civil union receives benefits through their employer for their partner and/or children from that union, they must report the entire premium—including the share he or she paid and the share the employer paid—as income on his or her federal tax return.

Where is there love and compassion in allowing our fellow human beings to be treated in such an unjust way?

There have been powerful words and gestures of support for the gay community in the past couple of years from such Buddhists as B.P.F. Executive Director Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Jodo Shinshu priest William Briones, Chaplain Mikel Monnett, and others. There need to be more. For my part, I am committed to serving the LGBTQ community as a straight ally. I hope more of my fellow Buddhists will join me. For resources on being an ally, I refer readers to Safe Zone For All.

The Third Precept

There were many things that attracted me to Buddhism, but perhaps none was more persuasive than the Third Precept.

The Third Precept states: Kamesu micchacara veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami, (in Pali) “I undertake the course of training in refraining from wrong-doing in respect of sensuality.”

More simply put, it guides one to refrain from wrongful sexual conduct. However, let’s not lose sight of the issue of ‘sensuality” as this involves much more than just sex. That may be discussed another day.

I have a much fuller understanding now of what those five words mean – refrain from wrongful sexual conduct – than when I first heard them, but even upon my first inkling of what was entailed in the notion of “wrongful sexual conduct,” I felt like I had finally found a home. Of course, while the meaning of these words was and remains crystal clear to me, it is nonetheless the focus of an endless debate within the Buddhist community. And comments by the Dalai Lama have perplexed what might be described as the more liberal, Western, element of Buddhism. As James Shaheen writes in his blog for The Huffington Post:

“At a conference some 12 years ago, when gay leaders met with him (the Dalai Lama) in San Francisco to discuss the Tibetan Buddhist proscriptions against gay sex, he reiterated the traditional view that gay sex was ‘sexual misconduct.’ This view was based on restrictions found in Tibetan texts that he could not and would not change. He did, however, advise gay Buddhist leaders to investigate further, discuss the issue, and suggested that change might come through some sort of theological consensus.”

Jeff Wilson from Tricycle (Shaheen is Tricycle’s editor) writes an excellent follow-up blog that I strongly recommend you read. But suffice it to say that, unlike what many Westerners think (particularly Westerners who only have a passing knowledge of Buddhism), the Dalai Lama’s word on Buddhist doctrine is hardly the last. I’m frequently asked about this when I reveal that I practice Buddhism, and each time I reply that the Dalai Lama is an important Buddhist leader, but he does not lead all Buddhists.

But I digress.

When I first learned of the Third Precept, the words were spoken by an Anglo-American monk at a dhammasala near Lansing, Mich., during a Dhamma talk for the celebration of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death. He laid things out quite simply; that sex is sex, regardless of whether it involves two men, two women, or a man and a woman. Buddhist doctrine does not prohibit sex for lay people. What matters is whether the behavior, and the motive, was skillful.

Skillful? Does that mean only good sex is OK, and bad sex is not? As silly as that may sound, it seemed an odd way to speak about this. Yet, the choice of the word “skillful,” I soon learned, was both deliberate and correct. In fact, the precept could be read to say, “To refrain from unskillful sexual conduct.” Because use of the English word “wrongful” in most Buddhist references has nothing to do with some moral code (although Buddhism does promote living by a moral code).

What confuses many people, I think, is that the Third Precept is also occasionally presented with these words: “To refrain from sexual misconduct.” As a gay man who grew up under an oppressive Christian doctrine and Catholic hegemony that portrayed homosexuals as sinners doomed to eternal damnation, I really needed to understand the nuances of how this precept was being presented. Because the more you study the Dhamma, the more it becomes apparent that nuance is very important.

As I soon learned from that monk I first heard speak about the Third Precept, it often helps to ask the question, “What did the Buddha say about this?” Because many Buddhists have much to say about homosexuality and sex, but not every Buddhist has his or her opinion well-grounded in what the Buddha actually said.

For example, in the Sammaditthi Sutta: The Discourse on Right View, from the Majjhima Nikaya (MN9), the Buddha explains what is skillful and unskillful, identifying sexual misconduct as unskillful, refraining from such conduct as skillful. And in the Cunda Kammaraputta Sutta: To Cunda the Silversmith, from the Anguttara Nikaya (AN 10.176), the Buddha is more explicit in his description of sexual misconduct. Speaking of a skillful man, the Buddha says:

“He does not get sexually involved with those who are protected by their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their sisters, their relatives, or their Dhamma; those with husbands, those who entail punishments, or even those crowned with flowers by another man.”

As I learned through attending Dhamma classes, the Third Precept is very closely linked with the Second Precept: To refrain from taking what is not given. Obviously, forced sex was very unskillful – it’s rape. But even having willing sex with someone married or “attached” with someone else was unskillful. As was sex with minors; minors were still under the protection of “their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their sisters,” etc. And someone betrothed to another was off limits as well.

So it became clear to me that having sex, per se, was not the problem, nor was the gender of my partner: the issue was whether the sexual activity was a form of taking something that was not freely given. This was all basic common sense, really, when you think about it.

I started to think that I was going to like this Buddhism thing. But there was a point that bothered me. I could understand the relationship between the Second and Third precepts, but did that mean I could have all the sex I wanted, with whomever I wanted, as long as it was freely given? Of course, I quickly learned that unrestrained sexual activity was just as unskillful as having sex with the wrong person.

Those peculiar words again, skillful and unskillful. Promiscuity was not a sin, or wrong, in a Buddhist sense, but it was unskillful. And thinking about my past activities and the consequences they brought, I began to understand what this skillful and unskillful meant.

Buddhist talk about wrong actions, but an action is not wrong because it offends a law laid down by some deity. An action can be wrong if it’s unskillful, and an action is unskillful if it brings you pain, suffering, loneliness, depression, anxiety, any of these negative feelings. And it’s unskillful when the consequences also include pursuit by the police, the courts, a jealous boyfriend, or contracting a disease.

And there it was; something very important was arising within me. I began to realize that any pain and suffering, loneliness and self-pity I had experienced in life was largely my own responsibility. I created all this through my unskillful acts, it wasn’t the outside world against me. And if all the times that I felt bad were the result of my unskillful acts, then I could reduce my bad feelings, my suffering, by choosing to act more skillfully.

What a novel idea.