Buddhist and gay? — NewBuddhist

Contents:

• THE GAY PRECEPT: HOW BUDDHISM VIEWS HOMOSEXUALY
• BUDDHIST AND GAY?
• VIEWS ON GAY PEOPLE AND BUDDHISM?

THE GAY PRECEPT: HOW BUDDHISM VIEWS HOMOSEXUALY

Although there is no general nsens wh regard to sexual orientatn and genr inty wh Buddhism, overall the third precept is most often referenced when discsg gay, lbian, bisexual, transgenr and queer issu.

Yet a 1997 prs nference he mented that “om a Buddhist pot of view [lbian and gay sex] is generally nsired sexual misnduct. In fact, Dalai Lama has e out (exce the pun) and said that om a Buddhist pot of view lbian and gay sex is nsired sexual misnduct. So answer to the two qutns posed at the begng of this piece, I believe homosexualy should not be forbidn Buddhism, and homosexuals should not be ma to feel guilty for lovg someone of the same sex.

BUDDHIST AND GAY?

I also believe homosexualy should not be regard as sexual misnduct if is not g harm, and is lovg and nsensual. I grew up Europe and sce I am part Danish/part Turkish, I was raised wh the Abrahamic monotheistic fahs and their views on homosexualy. The robt fellow held my ey wh an tense, almost sctisg gaze, when I asked him if Siddhartha ever talked about homosexualy.

”In the time of the Buddha, there were no homosexuals, so our great teacher did not mentn anythg about this; hence is difficult to discs the subject om a Buddhist pot of view. Bee of this, a subsequent life, you might be rernated as neher a real man, nor a woman, but a homosexual _ an ‘ between’, ” he ntued. The lecturer then went on to elaborate on Thuriya’s exposn regardg why homosexualy uld be ed by bad karma:”This might sound sexist to you, but Buddhism the hight physil state one n be reborn to is that of a man.

Surely there are lots of gay people who live enjoyable liv wh plenty of material posssns, a partner they love, children they re for and the eedom to be who they really are.

VIEWS ON GAY PEOPLE AND BUDDHISM?

If gay people often are faced wh tolerance, if they are kept om achievg certa liberti life and if they stggle wh themselv bee of their preference, uld be nsired they are not at ease and unable to fd peace, ” he explaed. If I, pecially beg a straight man wh Mlim roots, was to publicly announce that homosexualy led to sufferg and was fact ed by sexual misnduct, I would be nsired a ‘gay hater’. It helps work wh the wounds of homophobia, regnizg ternalized self-hatred for the ln and dkha [sufferg] that is.

” After meetg wh gay and lbian activists 1997, he noted that the same l applied to straight and gay people alike, and that they were not part of the direct teachgs of the Buddha and th might evolve over time. In 2014, he reerated the view that for Buddhists, homosexual acts are a subset of sexual misnduct, but that this was a matter of relig teachg and did not apply to people of another or no relign.

Many Theravada and Mahayana texts, for example, refer to the pandaka, a term which, Cabezon shows, has a wi variety of meangs, enpassg “effemate” male homosexuals, tersex persons, and others who exhibed non-normative anatomil, genr, or sexualy tras. The Jataka tal [parabl om the Buddha’s past liv] clu numero homoerotic stori featurg the future Buddha and the future Ananda; addn to the tal themselv apparently beg told whout a sense of sndalons, the stori suggt an tertg appreciatn of the homoerotics or at least homosocialy of the teacher-disciple relatnship. And as the Greek mol, there were clear l and rol that need to be followed; nanshoku was not hedonism but a homosexualy that was socially nstcted.

You did somethg that isn't helpg you get to the goal of Enlightenment), aga 's a non-Abrahamic ethics system, *sometim* siar nclns, different l of you ask a random monk or follower about Buddhism and homosexualy, you won't likely get the Buddhist answer, you will get the answer of the surroundg culture (aga, bee Buddhism didn't have a lot to say about sex-- other than havg none at all would ee up time for medatg), as if you'd asked, what do Buddhist eat (well, kimchi Korea). Homosexualy the Tibetan tradn was rmed by Tibetan culture which is very different om Europe or jt about anythg we ordarily see, where they sentially followed the l to the letter-- no sex that volved orific, but between the thighs between male monks was fe bee who ever wrote the l hadn't thought about that. This appears to still be te Bhutan where the monasteri have STD problems and the ernment has been tryg to distribute (a fascatg read)Homosexualy Japan-- In the Shgon Tradn, one of the 13 Bodhisattvas, Manjri is the Bodhisattva of male homosexual love, Ref: aka Triratna-- Hugely ntroversial, the guy who found this is gay man who thought that fay life was a hdrance to spirual progrs (a mon sentiment Buddhism) and suggted that men his Sangha should actively be enuraged to have homosexual relatnships wh each other so they would feel the urge to n off and start a fay.

I suppose that sounds progrsive, where got explosively ntroversial was that some of the young men weren't gay to start wh and felt prsured to sex by a charismatic thory figure. Although the Sanscr word "sangha" ually refers to muni of Buddhist monks and nuns, we are a group of lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr. Gay Buddhist teacher Pablo Das rponds to Tmp’s electn, statg that Buddhists should stand wh the most vulnerable society.