Sex and the Sacred

As a little boy growing up in India, I used to visit Hindu temples with my family. It was fairly common for the temple facades to be decorated with human figures, some of them nude. In some temples, these male and female figures were involved in various sexual acts. Later on I learned that some of these were same sex couples, although I have no recollection of seeing any.

Having spent much of my adult life in the US and as a Christian, my subsequent visits to these temples involved some psychological trauma. Nudity in a religious institution? I’d shake my head in disapproval. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. It’s a good thing that I now lived in a civilized society where sex and the sacred have nothing to do with each other. Or so I thought.

Following one of these visits abroad, I was in church (a Presbyterian church in Cincinnati), listening to our Pastor’s sermon with its usual combination of great fervor and “same old, same old.” I started idly thumbing through my Bible and came across the little known book, “Song of Solomon.” It had some of the lines that you heard this morning: “How beautiful your sandled feet, O prince’s daughter! Your graceful legs are like jewels, the work of a craftsman’s hands.” This was not the Christianity I knew.

Over a period of time, I realized that people in Biblical times were less sexually uptight than their counterparts in the latter half of this millennium. I suspect that if the Bible had been written more recently, “Song of Solomon” and certain other passages wouldn’t be there and the stories of Jesus associating with prostitutes, even in a Platonic way, would have never seen the light of day.

Medieval sexual repression influenced Hinduism and Buddhism, too. During the last few centuries, there have not been any notable books written in India like the Kamasutra and Anangaranga in which couples often pray and perform religious rituals before they enjoy each other’s bodies. By the way, as is the case with the “Song of Solomon,” there’s no indication that the lovers in these semi-religious Indian books were married.

The ancient Hindu/Buddhist approach to sex was based on the principle that making love didn’t have to involve genitalia. As we heard from Herman Hesse’s novel Siddhartha this morning, “every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every single part of the body has its secret which can give pleasure to one who understood.” The tantric segments of Hinduism and Buddhism went a step further. The tantric yogis and yoginis declared that sex, instead of being an obstacle to salvation (nirvana), could be the means to nirvana. How could one gain salvation through sex, you may ask. The tantric would reply, “it depends on your definition of salvation.” If salvation is defined as lack of repression, guilt, and shame or as physical fulfillment through attention to exquisite detail, you should be on your way to heaven.

Now let’s focus on the consequences of separating sex and the sacred, or more correctly, of making sex seem like it’s something unholy or dirty. “Sexual sin” becomes the paramount sin, and hypocrisy becomes our second nature. Mainstream ministers hold up Thomas Jefferson (who owned slaves) and Andrew Jackson (who caused a Native American genocide) as role models, while denouncing William Jefferson Clinton as the worst President ever. Ironically, if we rank our leaders—past and present--in the order of their compassion, as most wisdom traditions would teach us to do, our current President would probably be near the top. This hypocritical society has to share part of the blame for his confused conduct.

Another consequence of repression is the subjugation of women. What’s going on today in Afghanistan under the Taliban government is an example. Fear of human sexuality on the part of the fundamentalists there has led to a gender apartheid. A woman can not hold a job or leave her house unless accompanied by a male relative. Girls can not attend school after the age of eight. Before you dismiss this as a normal phenomenon in that part of the world, you should know that 60% of the teachers at Kabul University and 40% of doctors in Kabul used to be women until the new age of repression began in 1996.

This nation, with its own Puritan roots, subjugates women in more covert ways. Whereas in Afghanistan women are banished from public areas, here they are displayed, thanks to the influence of Madison Avenue, as caricatures, labotomized of their brains and souls. Both societies have this in common: they’re afraid of the sexuality of women as complete human beings.

What about us? Are we UU’s totally free of this neo-medieval environment of sexual repression? I don’t think so. It’s possible that we put down our bodies even more than the average person, because we over-value the brain. We may also be concerned that as religious liberals we may be mistaken for bohemians or believers in “free love.” It’s even possible that we hug less, we kiss less, and we hold hands less than some Baptists. But having a healthy attitude toward the body is not just doing more hugging, kissing, and holding hands. It is, as the Tantric Buddhist text puts it, “enjoying the world of sense” without being enslaved by it.

Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity as wisdom traditions have a lot to teach us. We may have launched women and men into outer space, but we have not come to terms with our own bodies, whatever color, gender, shape, age, and sexual orientation we are. The body is the temple. May we learn to live in it in peace, Shanti, and Shalom.

(Sep 1999)