The Red Thread - Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality

By Bernard Faure
After six years of ascesis, Sakyamuni realized the ultimate truth under the bodhi tree and became the Buddha, the Awakened. What is this truth according to the first Buddhist orthodoxy (for as we will see, there have been several)? It is expressed in the form of a tetralemma known as the "four noble truths": suffering, the cause of suffering, the possibility of ending suffering, and the method of achieving that end. The first two rubrics describe the world of samsara, the cycle of transmigration through birth-and-death. The driving force of this cycle is desire. Actually, desire is itself produced by ignorance, which makes one believe in the existence of an enduring self where the sage sees only fleeting states of consciousness. The third rubric deals with nirvana, the ultimate quiescence and extinction of all defilements or passions; the fourth describes the path to nirvana--the so-called eightfold path.

Some of these ideas were common in the Indian culture of the time. They were not radically new to Sakyamuni himself. Despite the attempts of his own father, King Suddhodana, to shield him from the harsh realities of the outside world, Sakyamuni had encountered these realities--in the form of a sick man, an old man, a corpse and an ascetic--during four excursions outside the palace. Paperback, 1998 324 pp. 6 x 9