Guilty Pleasures : Kāma in ancient India and the Pali Vinaya

Sammanfattning: While most heavily associated with treatises such as the Kāmasūtra, the notion of kāma (‘sensual desire,’ ‘sensual pleasure’) has deep roots in South Asian intellectual and cultural history. Strongly associated with eroticism, kāma in fact extends far beyond mere sexuality encompassing what may be called sensuality broadly understood. Early Buddhist monasticism in particular displays both recognition of and preoccupation with notions of kāma extant during its formative period. Indeed, the monastic vocation is oftentimes described as entailing the abandonment and ultimately the transcendence of kāma. This basic ideological framework is clearly evinced in the Vinaya literature, the corpus of monastic law intended to govern the daily lives of monks and nuns. This study explores the import of kāma as portrayed in the canonical Pali literature, delineates Buddhist doctrinal stances towards kāma, and examines how kāma relates to the program of monastic discipline as reposited in the Pali Vinaya. Drawing on theories of the senses and aesthetics in anthropology and cultural studies, the study gears analytic attention to how kāma relates to affect, corporeality, and materiality. This study argues that the Buddhist tradition developed in ambivalent and dialectical relation to notions of kāma. On the one hand antagonistic to it, Buddhist thought in fact sublimates kāma within its larger ethical framework. Therein endowment with the objects of sensual enjoyment (kāmaguṇa), whether on the human plane or in the various Buddhist heavens, is presented as consonant with one’s prior performance of meritorious actions. Although an entirely legitimate ethical domain for householders, the monastic vocation is conversely premised on the renunciation of sensual pleasures. Accordingly, in the Pali Vinaya a plethora of behaviors—covering domains as diverse as sexuality, bodily care, ornamentation, dress and furnishings, consumption of music, and everyday social interactions—are formally prohibited to monastics purportedly due to their associations with sensuality. This study examines in detail the kinds of material practices associated with kāma and how they become restricted in the Pali Vinaya, while also gearing attention to the tensions and ambiguities inherent in this legislative process. The study contributes to existing scholarship by uncovering how one persistently central category of Indic thought, kāma, finds expression in early Buddhism, thereby contributing not only to the study of early Buddhist monasticism but to South Asian cultural history more generally.