Need sex, dont want it

      Buddhism, bioethics and society

      by prof. Suwanda H.Sugunasiri

Sex is natural and functional, like eating or sleeping, the Buddha would say. From that point of view, a sexual relationship may be explained away as simply two consenting adults giving in to a basic human drive. But the Buddha also makes a distinction between sex as need and sex as want. If sex as need is what keeps the human (or animal) race going, sex as want is what he explains as passion, one of three desires (or tanha) of sentience that keeps each one of us going in the life cycle.

In that light, a sexual act originating in want becomes more than a mere act. "Intent I say is action," says the Buddha. So first of all, sex comes to have karmic consequences, in this life or another, for both man and woman. It can come to be desire leading to more desire or insatiable desire.

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