2 Answers

  1. Monks take a vow of celibacy. They abstain from any sensual pleasures, from sex with people, animals, from self-satisfaction. They abstain not only from physical intimacy, but also control their mental propensities to sensual pleasures. The goal of a monk is freedom of mind, and sense gratification is hindering things that cause the mind's attachments. There are practices to neutralize sense gratification, when a monk thinks about the conventionality and impermanence of attractiveness. A monk reflects on how any attractive person becomes old, sick, or ugly. They also represent the internal organs of a person, the skeleton, blood, saliva and snot, digested food, and other physiological processes.

    There is a rule for lay people: refrain from adultery and depraved behavior. Lay people take a vow not to enter into relationships with married people, with people who are under the protection of parents or guardians, with people who, for any reason, are not able to make a decision about voluntary consent to such a relationship. One of the foundations of lay behavior is non-harming. If intimacy is the cause of suffering, anxiety and dissatisfaction for someone, then it is refrained from.

    Sex for conception is considered harmless by Buddhists only if future parents are willing to do everything possible so that their unborn child does not suffer and becomes happy. Birth in the form of a human being is considered a great success and the result of accumulating a large number of good merits. In Buddhism, it is believed that conception will occur only if the basis of consciousness with a tendency to life is embodied in a material form. That is, the parents only provide the right conditions for the incarnation of the mind, and the main reason for birth is the mind's attachment to existence. That is, a person is born because the mind has accumulated traces of past existence, as if unfinished business.

  2. Normally (well, of course). In the secular version – there is a ban on “dishonest” copulation (infidelity, seduction, etc.), but against healthy marital or even not, but with the consent of coitus in Buddhism there is nothing against it.

    On the other hand, the monastic code has a complete ban on mating, and this is understandable. Sensual pleasures (and sex is probably the most powerful form of them) are the basic objects of attachment/dependence for the mind, which Buddhism teaches you to get rid of.�

    It is worth emphasizing that the problem is precisely unhealthy and destructive dependence on anything, as they would say now, addiction. But sex itself is just a pleasant and necessary activity for reproduction. Another question is whether it makes sense to multiply, increasing the number of suffering creatures, about this so immediately I will not say that the Buddhists answer.

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