Sexual Misconduct

Sexual Misconduct

Date Posted:
January 2006

A nun asked about problems with sexual misconduct. Rinpoche gave the following advice.

Whenever you see a person, don't think of the skin, just look only at the insides, the bones, skeleton, and flesh, all the dirty things in the stomach. Think that this is nothing new, that you have had this relationship countless times in the past with the same person, and the result was nothing happened, you are still in samsara, suffering, you never got liberated from samsara, and are experiencing suffering samsara without beginning. Think: If I am still attached to this, this suffering samsara will be endless. It will interfere even with achieving liberation from samsara and actualizing the path for that.

It will interfere with achieving enlightenment for sentient beings and thus performing perfect work for sentient beings. Therefore, being attached to this – to that person's body and sexual pleasure – harms and becomes an obstacle to performing perfect work for sentient beings. This is how your attachment harms sentient beings.

This negative karma with this person is due to past negative karma that left a negative imprint on the mind. That negative imprint is experienced now, and that's why this negative karma happened – this breaking of a vow.

Think how harmful this negative imprint is, and that the more one continues that act, the more it will leave negative imprints on one's own mental continuum and cause harm in the future. So, negative imprints cause great harm for one's mind and make it extremely difficult in the future to overcome delusions, and extremely difficult to have realizations of the path to liberation and enlightenment.