Adultery

====Buddhism====
Buddhist texts such as [[Digha Nikaya|Digha Nikāya]] describe adultery as a form of sexual wrongdoing that is one link in a chain of immorality and misery. According to Wendy Doniger, this view of adultery as evil is postulated in early Buddhist texts as having originated from greed in a [[rebirth (Buddhism)|previous life]]. This idea combines Hindu and Buddhist thoughts then prevalent.<ref name="DonigerOFlaherty1988p33"/> [[Sentient beings (Buddhism)|Sentient beings]] without body, state the [[Tripitaka|canonical texts]], are reborn on earth due to their greed and craving, some people become beautiful and some ugly, some become men and some women. The ugly envy the beautiful and this triggers the ugly to commit adultery with the wives of the beautiful. Like in [[Hindu mythology]], states Doniger, Buddhist texts explain adultery as a result from sexual craving; it initiates a degenerative process.<ref name="DonigerOFlaherty1988p33">{{cite book|author=Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty|title=The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sktbYRG_LO8C|year=1988|publisher=[[Motilal Banarsidass Publishers]]|isbn=978-81-208-0386-2|pages=33–34, n. 102–103|access-date=22 June 2018|archive-date=21 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191221014648/https://books.google.com/books?id=sktbYRG_LO8C|url-status=live}}</ref>

Buddhism considers celibacy as the monastic ideal. For he who feels that he cannot live in celibacy, it recommends that he never commit adultery with another's wife.<ref name="Harvey2000p71">{{cite book|author=Peter Harvey|title=An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values and Issues|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9CTSz3EVRpoC&pg=PA71|year=2000|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|isbn=978-0-521-55640-8|pages=71–74|access-date=22 June 2018|archive-date=21 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191221050538/https://books.google.com/books?id=9CTSz3EVRpoC&pg=PA71|url-status=live}}</ref> Engaging in sex outside of marriage, with the wife of another man, with a girl who is engaged to be married, or a girl protected by her relatives (father or brother), or extramarital sex with prostitutes, ultimately causes suffering to other human beings and oneself. It should be avoided, state the Buddhist canonical texts.<ref name="Harvey2000p71"/>

Buddhist Pali texts narrate legends where the Buddha explains the karmic consequences of adultery. For example, states Robert Goldman, one such story is of Thera Soreyya.<ref name="Goldman1993p374"/> Buddha states in the Soreyya story that "men who commit adultery suffer hell for hundreds of thousands of years after rebirth, then are reborn a hundred successive times as women on earth, must earn merit by "utter devotion to their husbands" in these lives, before they can be reborn again as men to pursue a monastic life and liberation from ''samsara''.<ref name="Goldman1993p374">{{cite journal | last=Goldman | first=Robert P. | title=Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety in Traditional India | journal=Journal of the American Oriental Society | volume=113 | issue=3 | year=1993 | issn=0003-0279 | doi=10.2307/605387 | pages=377–381| jstor=605387 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author1=Dharmasena|author2=R Obeyesekere|title=Portraits of Buddhist Women: Stories from the Saddharmaratnavaliya|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vvWA5wlIWnQC|year=2001|publisher=State University of New York Press|isbn=978-0-7914-5111-3|pages=213–218|access-date=26 October 2018|archive-date=24 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191224134025/https://books.google.com/books?id=vvWA5wlIWnQC|url-status=live}}</ref>

There are some differences between the Buddhist texts and the Hindu texts on the identification and consequences of adultery. According to José Ignacio Cabezón, for example, the Hindu text ''Naradasmriti'' considers consensual extra-marital sex between a man and a woman in certain circumstances (such as if the husband has abandoned the woman) as not a punishable crime, but the Buddhist texts "nowhere exculpate" any adulterous relationship. The term adultery in ''Naradasmriti'' is broader in scope than the one in Buddhist sources. In the text, various acts such as secret meetings, exchange of messages and gifts, "inappropriate touching" and a false accusation of adultery, are deemed adulterous, while Buddhist texts do not recognize these acts under adultery.<ref name="Cabezon2017p454">{{cite book|author=José Ignacio Cabezón|title=Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sCjhDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA454|year=2017|publisher=Simon & Schuster|isbn=978-1-61429-368-2|pages=454–455, footnote 1145|access-date=23 June 2018|archive-date=22 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191222083102/https://books.google.com/books?id=sCjhDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA454|url-status=live}}</ref> Later texts such as the ''Dhammapada'', ''Pancasiksanusamsa Sutra'' and a few Mahayana sutras state that "heedless man who runs after other men's wife" acquire demerit, blame, discomfort and are reborn in hell.<ref name="Cabezon2017p44">{{cite book|author=José Ignacio Cabezón|title=Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sCjhDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA454|year=2017|publisher=Simon & Schuster|isbn=978-1-61429-368-2|pages=44–45, footnotes 79 and 80|access-date=23 June 2018|archive-date=22 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191222083102/https://books.google.com/books?id=sCjhDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA454|url-status=live}}</ref> Other Buddhist texts make no mention of legal punishments for adultery.<ref name="Cabezon2017p454"/>