Romans 1:27 · World English Bible
Likewise also the men, leaving the natural function of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men doing what is inappropriate with men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.
Avijjā: Ignorance Not-knowing, the root the rest of the chain hangs from. "Their error" renders a word for wandering off the road, and Paul has already traced the wrong turn back to an earlier moment, when truth got traded for a lie and worship went to the made thing.
From the Buddhism reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
BUDDHISM
Avijjā: Ignorance Not-knowing, the root the rest of the chain hangs from. "Their error" renders a word for wandering off the road, and Paul has already traced the wrong turn back to an earlier moment, when truth got traded for a lie and worship went to the made thing. A traveler who takes the wrong fork in the dark keeps walking in good faith, and every mile after bends further from where they meant to go.
Anusaya: The underlying tendency Passion lying dormant beneath the surface, like coals banked under ash. Burning toward one another does not begin at the moment of burning; the readiness was laid down long before, waiting only for an occasion and a face to attach itself to. So the useful question concerns what has been sleeping in someone and what has been feeding it, more than which body happened to strike the spark.
Rāgaggi: The fire of lust One of three fires the Buddha said the whole world is burning with. "Burned in their lust" needs almost no translating into Pali: the eye burns, the seen thing burns, and the feeling that comes of that contact burns too. A fire grows hungrier the more wood you feed it, and that hunger is the danger here, whichever way the flame happens to lean.
Kāmesu micchācāra: Sexual misconduct The lay training rule covering sexual harm. Its Pali wording marks off those already under someone's protection, by family, marriage, vow, or law, so the fault it locates is always a trust broken or a consent missing. Held against that measure, "inappropriate" becomes a question with a plain test, who was injured and how, and two people turning toward each other do not fail it by that fact alone.
Kammavipāka: Action and its ripening Deeds bearing fruit in the one who does them. "Receiving in themselves" is exact: no sentence comes down from a bench, the result grows where the seed went in, inside the doer's own habits and heart and the ordinary weather of a day. "Due" then carries the sense of fitting that fruit has with its seed, an accuracy no court could arrange from outside.
Buddhism lens
What have I been quietly feeding, and what would it look like to stop adding wood?
Racing after what excites the senses leaves the mind scattered and the heart hunting. The sage tends the center rather than the chase.
A fire grows with what you give it, and so does desire, so the way out is not a bigger supply but a cooler head. Feeding it to satisfy it is how the flame learns its appetite.
Knowledge is covered over by desire the way fire is hidden by smoke, and the senses dragging a person along is where discernment is lost first. Steadiness comes from holding the reins, not from denying the horses exist.
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Buddhism