Buddhism and Sex by Arnie Kozak, Ph.D.
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It's not difficult to figure out that sex wasn't high on the Buddha's list of things to do with his spare time. According to the Four Noble truths, desire is suffering, and the way to end suffering is to end desire. Naturally, sexual desire would fall into this category. However, the message here is not to avoid pleasurable things but to examine your potential attachments to them. Buddhism is not anti-hedonistic, just anti-attachment. The Buddha cautioned against harmful sexuality but did not discourage healthy sexuality. Every experience can be your teacher, including and especially, sexuality. Most Buddhist monastic traditions preserve celibacy, although not all do, and especially not in the West. Some Zen priests, like Protestant clergy, can marry.
Zen Master Ikkyu, who lived from 1394–1481, was an eccentric and mischievous Zen monk. He frequented brothels and wine houses, saying (according to John Stevens in Lust for Enlightenment), “Follow the rule of celibacy blindly and you are not more than an ass. Break it and you are only human.”
The ideal of the arhat was based on a life of celibacy and devotion to practice. For many years the tradition in Buddhism was for monks and nuns to remain celibate for life. However, as Buddhism spread and laypeople became more involved in practice, the emphasis on celibacy shifted in some traditions and practice. While remaining celibate can certainly free a person's energy — energy that could then be devoted to practice — it wasn't always convenient or practical for people to forgo a sexual life. As mentioned earlier, the tradition of celibacy may have been advocated to control the numbers of the sangha. A thousand monks is a lot of mouths to feed; a thousand monks with families would increase the demands on the community of lay supports manifold.
The Asian ideal of a celibate monastic didn't weather the journey west very well. When Buddhist teachings took hold in the late 1960s, it was happening in conjunction with the sexual revolution. Love-ins were not celibate affairs! Getting people to restrict themselves in a time of newfound liberation was neither feasible nor likely necessary.
There is no standard set of sexual behaviors that all Buddhists would agree upon. For instance, Zen teachers in the United States are often married with families. And some Tibetan monks are celibate while others practice tantric sex. Tantric sex takes sexual activity and transforms it into a spiritual practice where the partners practice meditation while engaging in sexual behavior. Tantric sex is a ritual thought to bring about strong states of awareness and to heighten practice. However, it is supposedly reserved for those who are extremely advanced in their practice. The sexual activities themselves are shrouded in secrecy and are different from the many books on the shelves of your local bookstore that purport to teach you the secrets of tantric sex (these would be based on Hindu mysticism rather than Buddhism).