Gay monks

Finding ourselves in history, for better or for worse, reminds us that we have one. There is no clear position. We find a mixed tapestry that includes stories of acceptance and persecution as well as examples that are problematic or offensive to modern Western sensibilities.

Conflicting statements by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama have reflected this ambivalence. Here we are! First, and I think least interestingly, there are various levels of injunctions against male-male sexual behavior. Buddha is often portrayed as a male figure, such as in this painting from a monastery in Laos.

Japanese Buddhism probably had the most fully developed form of same-sex eroticism— nanshoku— that endured for hundreds of years, beginning in the s and fading out only in the 19th century, under the influence of Christianity. But to me, just the visibility of the pandaka is encouraging.

But there is much to be gained from the effort. And if we have been stigmatized, well, as Cabezon notes, that is hardly comparable to how queer people have been treated in other religious traditions. The history of queer Buddhism does not always paint a rosy picture.

Resources Rainbodhi: GAY BUDDHISTS Tibet tends to be a less homophobic country

Other rinpoches have disagreed and fully affirmed gay and lesbian lives. Within the earliest monastic texts such as the Vinaya (c. We can see the different ways in which gender and sexuality were understood across time and cultures, and we are reminded that sexual and gender diversity has always been a part of human nature.

Third, there is a fair amount of male-male homoeroticism in Buddhist textual history. Later, the Buddha allowed the.

These relationships—sometimes called bi-do the beautiful way or wakashudo the way of the youth —were pederastic in nature, often between an adolescent boy probably aged 12—14 and a young man aged around 15—20and thus not role models for contemporary LGBT people, but a queer love nonetheless.

Where are we among the Dogens and Milarepas and Buddhaghosas? Often we find ourselves only when we are being persecuted; we have to read in between the lines of our interlocutors, trying to reconstruct a lost past. This is not, of course, a question limited to Buddhism.

While books can be and have been written about this subject, here I will limit myself to four examples that demonstrate the breadth of queer experience throughout Buddhism. Yet when queer people interact with the dharma, there is often gay monks missing: visibility.

By and large, the pandaka is not depicted positively. In the Theravadan monastic code, for example, sexual mis conduct between monks or novices was no more egregious than any other sexual misconduct, and did not warrant additional sanctions.

4th century BCE), male monks are explicitly forbidden from having sexual relations with any of the four genders: male, female, ubhatovyañjanaka and paṇḍaka; various meanings of these words are given below. Despite headlines about a powerful “gay lobby” within the Vatican, and a new Pope promising reform, the Catholic Church’s gay cardinals, monks, and other clergy inhabit a hidden netherworld.

Inhe reiterated the view that for Buddhists, homosexual acts are a subset of sexual misconduct, but that this was a matter of religious teaching and did not apply to people of another or no religion. This same-gender sexual activity is treated with less concern than instances of monks who are accused of having sex with women outside the monastery.

It helps us work with the wounds of homophobia, recognizing internalized self-hatred for the delusion and dukkha [suffering] that it is. Everywhere, queers have been erased from history.