A matrix of sexual practice: pro-sex and anti-sex, pro-natalist and anti-natalist

Abstract

This paper draws on attitudes to sex and sexuality in textual sources of the early haṭha period (11th-15th centuries) to problematise an easy dichotomy between antinatalist ascetics and pronatalist laypeople. Highlighting instead the diversity of both injunction and practice in relation to sex, the paper demonstrates both the heterogeneity of the sources and suggests an overarching prosaic approach to sex and sexuality. The practices are at times celibate yet affective such as in descriptions of vajrolimudrā (a technique of drawing fluids upwards through the body) and in descriptions of embodied experiences of kuṇḍalinī. Elsewhere, the practices are sexual yet (non-) reproductive, such as sexual yoga that appears to take place during less fertile times in the menstrual cycle. I suggest a theoretical grid model to accounts for these practices, a model that sidesteps analyses of religious traditions as simply ascetic or lay and instead uses a framework of pro-natalism/anti-natalism and pro-sex/anti-sex orientations. This approach to sex and sexuality draws on the work of Langenberg (2015) in relation to Buddhist vinaya and Palmer (1994) in relation to new religions. The matrix of pro-natalism and anti-natalism and pro-sex and anti-sex orientations is a more productive mode of analysing these sources than the hierarchical and redundant ascetic versus lay. This nuanced heuristic paradigm helps explicate approaches to sex and sexuality and highlights the anti-natalist orientation in haṭha yoga contexts.