Top Highlights

• Introduction What good are the scriptures to a man who has no sense of his own? Of what use is a mirror to someone who is blind? — Cāṇakya, Nītiśāstra (10.9) The fact that there is a textual warrant for something is no reason to accept it. Although what the texts say may be true in general, everything depends on social context . . . Therefore accep...
• understanding such prohibitions in the context of their time, culture, and society.” “If homosexuality is part of accepted norms [today],” he continued, “it is possible that it may be acceptable.” Who decides, however, whether it is acceptable in contemporary Buddhism? How do Buddhist ethical norms change? According to the Dalai Lama, No single per...
• of major social upheaval. Thinking of Buddhism as a progressive religion, many Buddhist converts adopted it in response to the perceived conservatism of other faiths. This modern version of Buddhism emphasizes individual freedoms and downplays hierarchy; it sees adherence to doctrinal and ethical norms as voluntary and largely a private matter. Mod...
• of my research therefore involved studying relevant materials from a wide variety of sources preserved in Pāli, Sanskrit, and Tibetan. Those sources are largely doctrinal, but Buddhist doctrine is dizzying in its diversity and in the heterogeneity of its genres. Discussions of sexuality are found in the scriptures, but also in cosmological and meta...
• institutional pressures, cultural presuppositions, and even their authors. Some philologists maintain that understanding a text’s literal meaning is the endpoint of inquiry and that any move to go beyond that is unwarranted.13 Although understanding the language of a text — what it literally tells us — is indeed important, there is more to comprehe...