“Oblivious to the incongruities involved, temple artists used couples tenderly making love as decorative illustrations for stern sutras preaching total abstinence from sex.”

from Lust for Enlightenment (1990)

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“Buddhism was one of Japan's earliest and most important imports [but] there was one aspect of that doctrine that the Japanese could not embrace: celibacy... In Japan, celibacy never had a chance... Phallicism has always been the norm in Japanese religion.”

from Lust for Enlightenment (1990)

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“An interesting feature of Buddhism is that courtesans are recorded as faithfully observing all the precepts – evidently because their occupation was an accepted one, their professional behavior was not classified as sexual misconduct.”

from Lust for Enlightenment (1990)

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“Unlike other world religions that possess elaborate theologies of marriage, Buddhism has very little to say about the subject, considering marriage (and divorce) a matter of secular concern... [in] Tibet, the mere presence of a Buddhist priest at a wedding ceremony is thought to bring bad luck.”

from Lust for Enlightenment (1990)

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“Tsogyel worked for the good of all—feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, instructing the ignorant, and 'giving her sexual parts to the lustful.'”

from Lust for Enlightenment (1990)

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“Ideally, at the moment of conception both the mother and the father are senseless with bliss, melting together to create a psycho-physical mandala.”

from Lust for Enlightenment (1990)

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“Chinese empress Wu patronized Buddhism over Taoism and Confucianism because she believe that Buddhism provided an ideological basis for the rule of the world by a woman.”

from Lust for Enlightenment

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“One Tibetan medical text recommends the following schedule for sexual intercourse: 2 or 3 times a day in winter; every two days in spring and autumn; once every 15 days i summer,”

from Lust for Enlightenment, 1990

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“when asked by a foreignor why Tibetans freely donatged their children to monasteries, a father replied with a smile, 'We are simply returning the sons who were fathered by the monks with our wives.'”

from Lust for Enlightenment, 1990

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“even Daruma, the paragon of self-control and steely resolve , is tempted by the charms of willowy young beauties... artists painted the patriarch as being completely under the spell of the girls”

from Lust for Enlightenment, 1990

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