One source says 16, which seems to have been the typical marrying age among Indian noble caste (Sanskrit, kshatriya, warriors) administrators at the time. This was the age Siddhartha, who later on his enlightenment became "the Buddha," was married to his 16-year-old cousin, Princess Yasodhara.
Brahmin (priestly caste members who went to "college" to study the Vedas or "Knowledge Books") were expected to be celibate students, unlike our own modern brahmins.
The best teen "sex" comedy ever made. It's The Scarlet Letter that shows us ourselves!
Because he was young and was not enjoined to be celibate, India prudently prescribed marriage. Prince Nanda, as well as Prince Siddhartha, were not restricted to monogamy, however, not even our modern serial-monogamy.
They had "dancing girls" and female musicians and what seem to have been harems (polygamist kings ensuring palace pleasures). For lust and warriorship were ways of life for Shakyan and other Indian rulers. This was the Near East after all (not Nepal but more likely ancient Gandhara as Ranajit Pal shows), which continues these traditions. It's the same within American "castes," not only in our ubiquitous middle class.
Goodness knows that perhaps Shakyan princesses had dancing boys (or girls) of their own. It is certain all six of their senses were indulged with banquets (tastes), perfumes (smells), art (sights), music (sounds), baths and foot massages (tactile sensations), elaborate clothes and conquests (ego). Princes certainly had concubines when they ruled.
The point is, lust for sensual desires was the name of the game. So we say: Do it when you are doing it, and abandon it internally when you have given it up externally. To do otherwise is a sure way to misery.
Our Judeo-Christian mores, transplanted from the Near and Middle East, have been heavily influenced for millennia by contact with Buddhism. Ancient Jews were in Kashmir, India and in places along the Silk Trade Route from at least the time of the Buddha. So what happened in the Greater Indian Empire ("Bharat") influenced what went on in Egypt, Jerusalem, and Nazareth, and later Greece, Rome, Britain, Israel, and America ("the West").
But the message has been corrupted. We're averse to discussing lust. We cringe. We blush. We're humiliated to talk about sex, sexuality, or even nudity.
We overcompensate in certain parts of this country, flaunting our pornography and "liberalized" attitude towards free love, sex, and pleasure. But just under the surface we exhibit as many hang ups as most of the rest of the world, which looks to the Great Western Empire (America) for how to act and think.
Wisdom Quarterly says, enjoy pleasures when indulging them! AND temporarily abandon lust if serenity and insight are a meditative aim.
Why only temporarily? Wisdom Quarterly is different from every other Buddhist presence on the Web for one thing: We taught a young American the Dharma and saw it eventually result in literal enlightenment.
This took place in this decade. (Many people say there's no chance for enlightenment nowadays. Yet, we have seen it and have come to know of at least 21 other people to attain). The person we personally helped was nice, neither angry nor dumb, but lusty. Shockingly, this person continued to have and enjoy lust AFTER attaining.
We are not surprised, at least we shouldn't be (but still are sometimes), because there are a lot of examples of this in the ancient texts. Lust is set aside to attain, but it comes back unless one advances to the point of outgrowing the sense sphere (kama loka).
Not everyone who gains liberating knowledge-and-vision becomes a monastic. This leads to the paradoxical situation wherein worldly monastics have abandoned lust, but not noble lay practitioners.
It was this way at the time of the Buddha. Most people did not become monastics even after attaining one or another stage of enlightenment.
Even the deva-ruler Sakka, commander of two worlds in space, Tavatimsa and Catumaharajika (literal extraterrestrial worlds we do a disservice to when we refer to and dismiss them as "heavens"), is a stream enterer.
He has not completely given up lust. He is concerned and involved in human and non-human affairs on Earth and the longevity and success of the Buddha's Dispensation.
Maha Kassapa, the Buddha's second chief male disciple, had to shake Sakka and the partying devas (always with the parties up there) in their spacecraft/mansions.
Lust is that way; it is not fully abandoned until the the third stage of enlightenment.
Wisdom Quarterly's own earthly friend, advisor, and newest teacher attained not the first but the second of the four stages of enlightenment.
[Four stages is a simplification; there are in fact finer distinctions that can be made: The Path of Freedom (pp. 308-309) explains that there are TEN stages -- three kinds of stream enterer, the once-returner, five kinds of non-returner, and the arhat.] Lust has not yet been permanently abandoned. But to get to that stage, with a limit placed on future suffering, there was a temporary letting go of lust.
Without setting aside lust (as well as anger and delusion) during meditation there is no chance of staying serene (accessing the jhanas), developing the foundations of mindfulness (practicing "right mindfulness"), and gaining liberating insight. Our friend accomplished this in just four intensive months on retreat.
Is there any better, more enduring happiness than lust?
This meant temporarily leaving behind the home life and its all-consuming concerns. It was the same in the past: Many if not most of the people who attained a stage lower than full enlightenment at the time of the Buddha were living and continued to live at home.
The need to set aside lust and other distractions is emphasized in the Buddha's teachings on the Five Hindrances to meditation which cloud the mind and obstruct the possibility of insight.
Jhana ("right concentration" in the Noble Eightfold Path) is the way to suppress the Five Hindrances, the first of which is lust, and other more subtle mental defilements (asavas and samyojanas). But vipassana ("liberating wisdom," insight, direct knowledge) is the way to uproot them.
You'll be a saint in most religions by suppressing the defilements in this way and can even gain psychic powers that "prove" your saintliness by doing so.
But uprooting, which often does not involve the development of psychic powers, is what makes one a Buddhist saint (arya, "noble one"). By achieving the first stage of Buddhist enlightenment, one finally puts a limit on suffering. One knows-and-sees nirvana directly. One is destined to become fully enlightened and liberated from rebirth and every kind of suffering within at most seven more rebirths.
(That may amount to many more centuries than it first appears: If one takes rebirth in any of the many celestial worlds, where lifespans are measured in aeons, the number of years to enjoy the senses is difficult to calculate in human years. For even the lowest celestial world has more pleasure to inspire lust, with access that lasts much longer).
What stands in the way? Lust. One needs to set aside a pleasurable thing for a much more pleasurable thing, which may sound like a paradox. This is generally only possible to do in the human world and the lower deva planes, because otherwise the pleasure is too great in those worlds and the danger too hard to see.
How can we set lust aside even for a moment? Force, willpower, guilt, shame, submitting to someone else's control? No, these will never hold. The only way to set aside, abandon, let go, and detach from our innate lust (and the other hindrances that obstruct serenity and insight) is contemplating the disadvantages of lust or contemplating the many advantages of doing so.
If we "contemplate" (anussati, prolonged and well-rounded mindfulness, sati -- recollection, consideration, reflection), the mind effortlessly lets go of what we cannot let go of using willpower.
Temporarily abandon lust. (Normally, we don't even dream of doing this even temporarily because it's the only happiness we know). Any kind of "permanent" abandoning will come by itself. There is no need to do it permanently. Do this:
- Just for this moment, consider the repugnant aspects of sensuality: Lust shrivels up.
- Just for right now, love (forgive and accept) someone who's done something to offend, hurt, or harm you: Anger wilts.
- Right in this present moment, be mindful (bare, unembroidered awareness) of whatever is given attention (with no discursive thinking, evaluating, or judging): Delusion is dispelled.
The Dharma is immediate, unaffected by time. The relief happens right away. It invites one to come and see, to test, to experiment with and experience. The Kalama Sutra is the most popular original Buddhist discourse in America (according to Wisdom Quarterly). But it is often misunderstood to mean, "Do whatever, use common sense." It's not "common" sense. It's something one can see without blind faith, belief, or trust in a foreign authority, yet that's just the beginning: There is still truth to discover and preserve.
The Buddha's son, Ven. Rahula, also suffered from intense lust at 16 (according to Ven. Dhammadipa, 2008 BAUS lectures), which is when his father had him apply himself to meditation to break through by temporarily laying that burden down. (It's there to pick up again later if one wishes).
Rahula saw that he, his father, and Ananda all had the "marks of great men" and were therefore destined to be monarchs over the entire Indian continent or world (cakkravartin kings) or buddhas, depending on whether or not they renounced the world. Rahula had renounced (at age 7), but Nanda had not. Both gained the unsurpassable bliss and safety of personal enlightenment. Both did it by sidestepping the lust that was arising.
Maha Pajapati (the Buddha's adoptive mother) and Janapada Kalyani (his half-brother's fiance) also contemplated. And their minds became calm, dispassionate, detached from craving, grasping, and clinging. This temporary freedom allowed them to win enduring freedom.
Even the Buddha's father, King Suddhodana, became fully enlightened -- in spite of the fact that he had lived sunk in sensual pleasures and administrative responsibilities, overseeing and defending Shakyan land holdings other clans wanted to overtake.
How did the Buddha's brother, sister, son, wife, adoptive mother, biological mother, father, and cousins become enlightened whether they had joined the Sangha or not? They did it the way everyone does, by settling and unifying the mind (with the first four jhanas or levels of Zen) then contemplating the Four Foundations of Mindfulness with that concentrated mind. It all starts with temporarily setting aside the craving called lust.
- Wisdom Quarterly tells the story of each family member.
- Lust during the Renaissance (Pagan Sphinx)
Nathaniel Hawthorne would be proud his Puritan American message was understood.
