Buddhism and sex in Japan and the Homosexual

http://www.westernbuddhistreview.com/vol3/homosexuality.html

"From the earliest times until today, indigenous Japanese religion, known as Shinto, has maintained a sex-positive ideology, particularly with regard to the role of sex in procreation. Even now, it is possible to see in village festivals processions which feature enormous carved wooden phalli which are taken out of the local shrine and paraded around the fields so as to bless them and make them fecund. Unlike in Christian creation myths where the advent of awareness of sexual dimorphism is seen to mark a deterioration in the human condition (resulting in expulsion from Eden), in Japanese mythology the divine ancestors Izanagi and Izanami are shown to be curious and experimental about sex. The male Izanagi, tells his female companion that he would like to take his ‘excessive part’ and insert it into ‘the part where you are lacking.’ From this divine union springs the Japanese race. Although Shinto is largely without a developed theological system, when sex is theorized, it is usually understood to be a good thing, a ‘Way’ or doo, originating with the divine ancestors. As one seventeenth-century theologian explains:

From the beginning of the two support oomikami, Izanagi no mikoto and Izanami no mikoto, down to the birds and the beasts who receive no instruction, the intercourse of male and female is a way, like nature, that has been transmitted to us. Since the procreation of descendants is a great enterprise, it must be revered.[3]

The first challenge to Japanese nativism came with the introduction of Buddhism in the seventh century. It was in contrast to Buddhism, the ‘Way of the Buddha’, that native beliefs became codified as Shinto or the ‘Way of the gods’. It is, of course, impossible to describe the Buddhist attitude toward sexuality because ‘Buddhism’ is reformulated and re-expressed in different cultures and at different times, adopting and redefining aspects of the cultures in which it has taken root. However, as with Christianity, there are broad outlines or features that have persisted over time and that can be pointed to when attempting to make generalisations. Firstly, early Buddhism discerned two forms of lifestyle appropriate to Buddhist believers: monastic and lay. For those men and women ordained as bhikkhus or bhikkhunis, total celibacy was required, while lay followers undertook to take five ‘training principles,’ the third of which was ‘kaamesu micchaacaaraa verama.nii sikkhaapada.m samaadiyaami’ (I take the rule of training ‘verama.nii sikkhaapada.m samaadiyaami,’ not to go the wrong way ‘micchaacaaraa,’ for sexual pleasure ‘kaamesu’). Unlike the Christian penitentials of the medieval period, Buddhist texts do not go into great detail explicating exactly what the ‘wrong’ and ‘right’ ways regarding sexual pleasure actually are. As with other actions, they are subject to the application of the golden mean: ‘[t]he deed which causes remorse afterward and results in weeping is ill-done. The deed which causes no remorse afterwards and results in joy and happiness is well done’ (Dhammapada). Rather than essentialising actions as good (puñña) or bad (paapa), Buddhism instead utilised an ethic of intention, understanding acts as skillful (kusala) or unskilful (akusala). Motivations were skillful or unskilful, not in relation to a creator deity’s designer-realist agenda but in terms of the degree to which they resulted in a lessening of desire. In Buddhism, desire was a problem, not because it was evil but because the attachment it produced caused suffering.

Buddhism was essentially disinterested in procreation which was, after all, seen as the mechanism whereby beings were chained to a constant round of rebirths in sa.Samara. This necessarily brought it into conflict with the indigenous cultures of Eastern Asia where, under Confucian influence, the perpetuation of the family line was seen as an obligation to the ancestors. Yet, although doctrinal Buddhism had little interest in procreation and never developed a discourse about it, Mahayana Buddhism did utilise the powerful imagery surrounding the sex act as a hermeneutic device. From the fifth century in northern India, various Buddhist schools developed which utilised sexual imagery as a means of communicating metaphysical truths such as the non-differentiation of Samara and nirvana. Male Buddha and Bodhisattva figures were represented in sexual union with their female consorts, thus giving a heightened exposure to female elements within the tradition. Practitioners occasionally went beyond symbolism and integrated sexual practices into their rituals. However, as with Taoist sexo-yogic practices designed to promote long life, these practices were not meant to result in ejaculation but to transmute sexual into spiritual energy. The Shingon school of Japanese Buddhism founded by Kuukai (774 -835) developed its own form of Tantra, Tachikawa Ryu, ‘the main sex cult of Japan’[4] which taught that the loss of self in the sex act could lead to an awakening of the spirit. These developments represent an important difference between Buddhism and Christianity with regard to sex. As LaFleur comments: ‘there does not seem to be anything comparable in Europe to the Japanese Buddhist use of sexual union as either a religious symbol, or as increasingly became the case, as itself a context for religious realization’[5]. What was remarkable about certain trends within Japanese Buddhism was that sex came to be viewed as a good in itself apart from its role in procreation. In Japanese Buddhism, the divorce of sexuality from procreation enabled sex to become a religious symbol released from the domesticating realm of the family.

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."