Great-Bliss-Tantric-Sex-and-the-Path-to-Inner-Awakening

Chapter 1.
The Path of Renunciation:
The Common Vehicle
“Sensual pleasures have been compared to a charcoal pit by the Blessed One.
They provide much suffering and despair, while the danger in them is still more.”
- The Buddha to his monks, The Sūtra to Potaliya
“There are, householder, these four kinds of happiness which may be achieved by
a layperson who enjoys sensual pleasures - the happiness of possession, the happiness
of enjoyment, the happiness of freedom from debt, and the happiness of blamelessness.”
- The Buddha to his lay followers, The Numerical Collection
A Traveling Buddhist Monk
At twenty years of age, he was
young and handsome, and
exceptionally well-educated by his
father, a brahmin priest in the city of
Pragjyotiśa, in the kingdom of
Kāmarūpa in northeast India. His
father, a noted scholar at a major
Śaiva temple, was recently defeated
in a public debate against a traveling
Buddhist monk, a professor at the
great Buddhist university of
Nālandā. The defeat sent shock
waves across the city, and many
feared the priest had been the victim
of black magic. With the young
man’s family disgraced, and
fascinated by the new teachings, he
took the money his father saved for
his marriage and went to see the
monk. The monk gave him the
Refuge Vow and Lay Precepts, and
placed a protection cord around his
neck for safe journeying. The young
man headed off in a small boat along
the Brahmāputra and Ganges rivers
to the city of Pāṭaliputra, and then to
study at the fabled center of
Nālandā.
13