Did the Buddha teach consent?

The Watercooler
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For the context of 5 precepts, it’s defined as broken when the following conditions are met.

  1. It must be a man or a woman with whom it is improper to have sexual intercourse.
    (under protection by family/friends, attached/married, and under religious vows)
  2. There must be an intention to have such sexual misconduct with such man or woman.
  3. There must be an act done to have such intercourse.
  4. There must be enjoyment of the contact of the organs.

So, gluttony, porn, violence are not covered. Sexual violence is under rape.

In higher level training, sure, stop all those too.

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43

I see lot of ‘must be’. This is a narrow and fixed minded interpretation of the five mind trainings. Please cite the ‘source’.

Does sexual misconduct happen with anyone not under protection (above legal age of consent 16 or 18 years)? Over 80-90% of rape happens with a non-stranger, acquaintance, or family member.

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The original article actually says:

one can find in canonical texts—in particular, the Vinaya or monastic discipline—another notion of consent, one based more on inner affective states than verbal permission. As a clear standard for ethical sex, this Buddhist consent falls short of the affirmative consent upheld by many institutions today, but it also challenges our contemporary approach to sexual ethics in healthy ways. Indeed, each idea of consent reveals the other’s strengths and shortcomings.

Which I think most can agree to. So, the author’s title seems a bit like click-bait (she acknowledges that the Buddha did teach consent in the Vinaya), but her real point, which I think is accurate, is that the Buddha is never recorded as specifically recommending only proceeding with sexual acts after receiving verbal affirmation that those acts are welcome.

As for why we have no records of him ever saying that, or more broadly giving any sort of sutta on the detailed ethics of consent for laypersons, I think there’s two categories of explanation: explanations of why he wouldn’t have touched on the topic, and explanations of why any such suttas wouldn’t have survived to the present day.

So far as I am aware, the Buddha never gives any advice on how to have sex at all. He describes sex (such as when confirming that sex between a mother and father is a necessary cause for human life), and advises against it, but that’s it. It’s possible that nobody ever thought it was an appropriate question to ask.

It is also possible that at one point he did advise laypeople on how to have consensual sex free of misconduct, and that sutta was irrelevant to the monastics, and probably also not terribly well received by the laymen. If the buddha had said, “only proceed with sexual acts after receiving verbal affirmation that those acts are welcome” who would have memorized it and passed it down? It’s conceivable that a layperson did ask the Buddha for this sort of advice, and then promptly ignored it and continued to engage in marital rape with his multiple wives.

What is clear however is that his reason for not addressing this was not approval of marital rape or any other form of rape not already covered by the five precepts. Because such a teaching (approving of non-consensual sex) is not in line with his other teachings (most crucially - he does not approve of those who mortify others).

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45

Thanks, that’s a helpful clarification. I haven’t looked into this in detail, it would be an interesting study.

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In many modern Asian countries (including Buddhist ones) sex is still a taboo subject. Children (even adult children) don’t talk to their parents about it, and vice versa. Sex education doesn’t exist. Men will talk to their male friends about it, and I sure women talk about it among themselves, as well. However, there is no public dialogue about sex in most Asian countries. Even certain aspects of women’s health is not spoken of much in Asia. I knew more about women’s bodies than my mainland Chinese girlfriend did. I had to tell her things about her own body that even she didn’t know. The only thing she had ever been told by anyone was one time, while in middle school, she and the other girls were taken aside and told, “Your body is going to change soon,” and that was it. When she got her first period, she had no idea what was going on. Even her mother never said anything to her about it. Within a religious context, lay people don’t go asking monks for advice about sex, including what can be regarded as consent. That would be unthinkable. I’m sure the same goes for women and nuns. It would be seen as wildly inappropriate by both sides to do that.

Modern India is still very conservative when it comes to sex. I don’t see why ancient India would have been any different. So I think asking why the Buddha didn’t teach sexual consent in the way we modern people understand it reveals a lack of understanding about not just ancient India, but also modern Asia. I think even modern Asian people would become very uncomfortable, and find it inappropriate, if a monk started talking about sex in anyway other than the 5th precept. So I’m pretty sure people would have responded the same way to the Buddha doing it 2,500 years ago.

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47

I agree with your overall point here, but I think the “Victorianism” of modern Asia regarding sex is in fact “Victorian”. It was not so long ago that the “orient” was perceived by the west as a land of forbidden sensuality and risque openness in the varieties of desire; Kāmasūtra, anyone?

While not disagreeing with the idea that we shouldn’t impose modern standards on ancient texts, it remains the fact that Buddhist texts, especially the Vinaya, are entirely unembarrassed and explicit in the way they talk about sex. Even taboos that are still unmentionable in the west are discussed entirely matter-of-factly. There’s a whole passage in the Vinaya that discusses the degree to which a corpse must be decomposed before it is no longer considered “intercourse” to have sex with it. It was the English translators of these passages who decided they were unmentionable.

And I don’t see any evidence that this is an outlier, historically speaking. The ending of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, for example, discusses the different methods of having intercourse in order to control the kind of child one gets. The horse sacrifice, on which that text is based, includes a bawdy and very public sexual or pseudo-sexual encounter between the queen and a dead horse. I could go on, but it would get weird!

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Yes, the Vinaya is pretty extraordinary in that regard. I think that’s part of the reason why, in East Asian Buddhism, it’s essentially forbidden for laypeople to see it. Frankly, it’s amazing that the different Vinayas have survived at all, or weren’t sanitized of all the sexual stuff.

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This issue of vinaya conceptions of consent is something that I have been looking at in some detail. It would really be great to be in conversation with you about this. I admired your recent article in Lion’s Roar about the aniyata rules, and published a response in the most recent Sakyadhita newsletter. Much respect to you, bhante.

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Thank you for this quote from my Tricycle article. Yes, the title is a bit click-baity. As anyone that has published on popular platforms knows, authors don’t always have full control over things like titles. My argument is that the concept of consent IS present in early sources, but that it is interestingly different from contemporary ideas about affirmative consent. I say interestingly, because, I think we can learn from Buddhist ethical thinking.

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51

Hi @langenap

Welcome to the D&D forum! :slight_smile:

Numerous resources are available here: may these be of assistance to you along the path!

With Metta,
Ric

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52

This article?

In this edition? — I’m not sure how to find your response?

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Yes, that is the correct article by Bhante Sujato, and yes, my article in which I respond to the article is in the edition of the Sakyadhita newsletter you have posted here. If you look down the table of contents, you will find a piece called “Ethical Reading and Buddhist #MeToo.” Thanks for your help posting these resources. I am new to the platform and not facile with posting, attaching, etc.

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Links can just be posted as-is on their own line or added in Markdown format [like](https://this.com) :smile:

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