[Buddha-l] Re: Seduction of a holy man

[Andrew Skilton]

Joanna,

In the spirit of not answering your original query, one of my favourite
seduction stories is jataka 526 (nalinika), which sadly involves no speaking
foetuses that save the day. Here a father brings up his son as an ascetic, whose
power eventually threatens Sakka.  Sakka therefore punishes the locals (why
not?) and talks the local king into sending his daughter to seduce the lad.The
entire community it seems gets involved in launching this nubile spiritual
Exocet against the young man, it being arranged that she descends on him while
his dad is away rooting up herbs.  The inevitable happens, related with much sly
humour by the way, but interestingly while the lad loses his powers due to
sexual indulgence, he subsequently regains them through the practice of the
brahma viharas. (The local community is saved, by the way.)

Stan,

Not sure how this one fits your typology. Here the ascetic 'succumbs' but is
rehabilitated.  His 'failure' is not, surprisingly, a satire of phoney holy men.
 In a way his 'purity' remains intact, not least because he is amusingly
depicted as completely ignorant of sexual difference even after his encounter,
but perhaps also because the story is placing the 'ethical' virtues of the
brahma viharas above the 'ritual' virtue of sexual abstinence?  

Andrew



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Andrew Skilton 

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