Anthony Fiorucci
Guilty Pleasures
Kāma in ancient India and the Pali Vinaya
While mostly discussed in relation to treatises such as the Kāmasūtra, the notion of kāma has deep roots in Indian intellectual and cultural history. Popularly associated with sexuality, kāma in fact extends far beyond that to include what may be called ‘sensuality’ broadly understood. Using the canonical Pali literature as sources and drawing on theories of the senses and aesthetics in anthropology and cultural studies, Guilty Pleasures investigates the significance of kāma in early Buddhism and its centrality in Buddhist doctrine, ethics, and monastic law.
The last centuries BCE in northern India witnessed major socioeconomic transformations: urbanization, the proliferation of trade, the transition to an early market economy, and increased economic disparities. All of this had a significant impact on patterns of material consumption and transformed how individuals viewed the relation between wealth and pleasure, the senses and their gratification. It is in this period of social upheaval that kāma assumes its cultural significance and in which early Buddhism develops.
Early Buddhism places kāma front and center in its diagnosis of the human predicament and its normative ethics. While gratification of the senses is considered a natural component of household life and heavenly existence, the monastic vocation is conversely premised on the renunciation of kāma. Accordingly, a litany of legal rulings in the Pali Vinaya proscribe a wide range of material practices because of their purportedly sensuous nature – seen in domains as diverse as sexuality, bodily care, ornamentation, dress, furnishings, and musicality. By demonstrating the strong connection between monastic law and the central philosophical, ethical, and soteriological concerns found in the sutta literature, this study challenges the scholarly tendency to view monastic discipline as largely divorced from Buddhist ethics, while also uncovering a cultural history of ancient India in the process.
Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis | Volume 31
1st edition 2026
hardback, 575 pages
ISBN 978-3-86977-304-9
138,00 €
