What can the great religions teach us about pornography? Posted Wednesday, May 28 2008 by ThroughTheFlame.org - This article is under construction. In the modern day and age, with it's anything goes attitude towards sex and morality, is there something that we can learn from the great religions of the world?
At Through the flame, we encourage open-mindedness about religion and at the very least tolerance. This article is for people who may be interested in learning what the wisdom of thousands of years says about sex and sexual values. Religions are presented in alphabetical order.
Buddhism
Like all religions, Buddhism takes a strong ethical stand in human affairs and sexual behaviour in particular. The most common formulation of Buddhist ethics are the five precents:
1. Refraining from harming living beings/practising loving kindness
2. Refraining from taking the non-given/practising generosity 3. Refraining from committing sexual misconduct/practising contentment
4. Refraining from false speech/practising truthful communication
5. Refraining from intoxicants/practising mindfulness.
The five precepts constitute an integrated set - each precept supports the others. To know what 'sexual misconduct' means you look at the other precepts. 'Sexual misconduct' ...means any sexual conduct involving violence, manipulation or deceit - conduct that therefore leads to suffering and trouble. By contrast good sexual conduct is based on loving kindness, generosity, honesty, and mental and emotional clarity - conduct that has good results.
Dhammapada 48 "The man who gathers flowers [of sensual pleasure], whose mind is distracted and who is insatiate in desires, the Destroyer brings under his sway."
Dhammapada 186 Not by a shower of gold coins does contentment arise in sensual pleasures.
Dhammapada 334-37 The craving of a person addicted to careless living grows like a creeper. He jumps from life to life like a fruit-loving monkey in the forest. Whomsoever in this world this base clinging thirst overcomes, his sorrows flourish like well-watered birana grass. Whoso in the world overcomes this base unruly craving, from him sorrows fall away like water drops from a lotus leaf. This I say to you: Dig up the root of craving like one in quest of the birana's sweet root. Let not Mara crush you again and again as a flood crushes a reed.
Nagarjuna, Precious Garland 149-57
This is an excerpt from a meditation about bodies in general, and is not intended to denigrate women.Gautama Buddha himself came to such a realization about the body's loathsomeness one evening when his father tempted him with courtesans in an effort to keep him from leaving home and beginning his spiritual quest.
The mouth is a vessel filled with foul Saliva and filth between the teeth, The nose with fluids, snot, and mucus, The eyes with their own filth and tears.
The body is a vessel filled With excrement, urine, lungs, and liver; He whose vision is obscured and does not see A woman thus, lusts for her body.
This filthy city of a body, With protruding holes for the elements Is called by stupid beings An object of pleasure.
Why should you lust desirously for this While recognizing it as a filthy form Produced by a seed whose essence is filth, A mixture of blood and semen?
He who lies on the filthy mass Covered by skin moistened with Those fluids, merely lies On top of a woman's bladder.
Udana 75-76 Clinging, in bondage to desires, not seeing
in bondage any fault, thus bound and fettered,
never can they cross the flood so wide and mighty.
Blinded are beings by their sense desires
spread over them like a net; covered are they
by cloak of craving; by their heedless ways
caught as a fish in the mouth of a funnel-net.
Decrepitude and death they journey to,
just as a sucking calf goes to its mother.
Although pornography is not specifically addressed in Christian scripture, the principle (viewing/reading what's impure) certainly is:
Matthew 5:27-28
"You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
1 Corinthians 6:18 "Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body."
Col. 3:5 "Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry."
Philippians 4:7, 8 "Keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus... Whatsover things are pure... if there be any virtue... think on these things."
Ephesians 5:3 "Love does not mean promiscuous sex, however: But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people."
1 Peter 2:9 "For he hath called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light!"
1 Timothy 5.1-2 Treat younger men like brothers, older women like mothers, younger women like sisters, all in purity.
1 Peter 2.11 Beloved, I beseech you... to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul.
Laws of Manu 2.94 Desire never rests by enjoyment of lusts, as fire surely increases the more butter is offered to it.
Bhagavad Gita 16.21 There are three gates to self-destructive hell: lust, anger, and greed.
Bhagavad Gita 3.36-41 Arjuna:
What is the force that binds us to selfish deeds, O Krishna? What power moves us, even against our will, as if forcing us?
Krishna:
It is selfish desire and anger, arising from the state of being known as passion; these are the appetites and evils which threaten a person in this life.
Just as a fire is covered by smoke and a mirror is obscured by dust, just as an embryo is enveloped deep within the womb, knowledge is hidden by selfish desire--hidden, Arjuna, by this unquenchable fire for self-satisfaction, the inveterate enemy of the wise.
Selfish desire is found in the senses, mind, and intellect, misleading them and burying wisdom in delusion. Fight with all your strength, Arjuna! Controlling your senses, conquer your enemy, the destroyer of knowledge and realization.
Allama Prabhu, Vacana 91
They say that woman is an enticement.
No, No, she is not so.
They say that money is an enticement.
No, No, it is not so.
They say that landed property is an enticement.
No, No, it is not so.
The real enticement is the insatiable appetite of the mind,
O Lord Guheswara!
Bhagavad Gita 16.7-16 The demonic do things they should avoid and avoid the things they should do. They have no sense of uprightness, purity, or truth.
"There is no God," they say, "no truth, no spiritual law, no moral order. The basis of life is sex; what else can it be?" Holding such distorted views, possessing scant discrimination, they become enemies of the world, causing suffering and destruction.
Hypocritical, proud, and arrogant, living in delusion and clinging to deluded ideas, insatiable in their desires, they pursue their unclean ends. Although burdened with fears that end only with death, they still maintain with complete assurance, "Gratification of lust is the highest that life can offer."
Bound on all sides by scheming and anxiety, driven by anger and greed, they amass by any means they can a hoard of money for the satisfaction of their cravings.
"I got this today," they say; "tomorrow I shall get that. This wealth is mine, and that will be mine too. I have destroyed my enemies. I shall destroy others too! Am I not like God? I enjoy what I want. I am successful. I am powerful. I am happy. I am rich and well-born. Who is equal to me? I will perform sacrifices and give gifts, and rejoice in my own generosity." This is how they go on, deluded by ignorance. Bound by their greed and entangled in a web of delusion, whirled about by a fragmented mind, they fall into a dark hell.
Islam
Hadith of Muslim The adultery of the eye is the lustful look, and the adultery of the tongue is the licentious speech, and the heart desires and yearns, which the parts may or may not put into effect.
Judaisim
Psalm 101:3 "I will set no unclean thing before my eyes."
Talmud, Nidda 13b He who excites himself by lustful thoughts will not be allowed to enter the division of the Holy One.
Toaism
Treatise on Response and Retribution, Appended Tales It is true that you commit no actual crimes; but when you meet a beautiful woman in another's home and cannot banish her from your thoughts, you have committed adultery with her in your heart. Consider a moment! Would you have sufficient control over yourself to imitate the sage Lu Nan-tze if you were placed in a similar position? When he once found himself obliged to pass the night in a house whose only other occupant was a woman, he lighted a lamp and read aloud until morning to avoid exposing her to unjust suspicions.
