Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. 36
A teacher will say that in appearance this precept is correct and its nature most excellent, but the average man will say that it applies to secret lewdness, that it is intended to hinder the development of love - aiiaka - to preserve one from wrong conduct, sexually speaking, and to hold people to only such sexual intercourse as the world allows. This, however, is not the case. The nature of this precept comes from the nature of the sacred law - Ho-sho, and it is for the good of both men and heaven, being the pathway to the holy world. The average man thinks lightly of the sex relations of men and women, but this is a grave error. It is written in the book Ritsu-mon. That. If one should laugh during a sermon on the nature of this precept, he should be expelled from the lecture hall. This shows how wise and holy men esteem this precept.
When the nature of the Law' operates heaven and earth appear, and in them the sexes - men and women - appear. Then, among these, this precept appears and reveals its excellent nature. The differences in both character and body between the sexes result from, or are, the manifestations of the Law nature. It is written in a sacred book that the golden-mouth cd - The Buddha - distinguished between the manifestations of the Law. He recognized the fact that the organs of sex are among the twenty2 organs - Koa - contained in the human body. The purport of this is beyond the understanding of the average man. Only those who have meditated deeply can understand it.
People of confused thought err in thinking that various deeds are committed because mankind is divided into the male and female sexes. The existence of the two sexes is not a mistake, just as it is not a mistake in a r0pe that some see in it the form of a serpent; or that it is a mistake in the stump of a tree that some see in it the form of a huge man and run h'om it in fear. The mistake is in the thought of people of confused and superstitious minds.
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