Title: Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices
Author(s): eds. Kevin Manders & Elizabeth Marston
Year: 2019
“Preface,” Catriona Reed
The idea of suffering so easily becomes a way of resignation — resigning from responsibility, resigning from looking to see what’s possible. Like so many others, I have misunderstood and misused my teaching about suffering and about “non-self” to disavow my existence and to dismiss my desire, as if desire were inherently a bad thing. (xxiv)
Buddhism, like any other system of thought, can be used to put things in boxes, to sanitize the world, and to mute our experience of it. The genius of Buddhist teaching and practice is that it has a built-in self-destruct system, whereby whatever you think it is, it is going to turn around and disappear on you. (xxv)
A lot of first-generation convert Buddhists take the teaching of “non-self” as a kind of denial of existence. They may even welcome it. “Better that I don’t exist. I never liked myself very much anyway!” Fortunately, a more accurate and applicable understanding of this teaching could be expressed as “Everything is connected, everything matters!” (xxvi)
“Blessing: Our Bodhisattva Awakening,” Fresh “Lev” White
may we always remember, we need not wait! May we remember that we can choose peaceful thoughts in this moment, and to be love in this moment, and to include compassion in every moment — compassion for ourselves, our loved ones, our sanghas, and all beings. As the Buddha has offered us the Precepts and the Eightfold Path, and we embrace Three Gems for those who recognize gender as a social construct, not truth; those of us who understand the body is not to be clung to like an ultimate us, but instead to be used on our path to live in authenticity, in truth on our paths to freedom; even as the suffering of the world continues to be revealed, may we choose to be open to, and to cultivate for self and others, metta, compassion, and humility. (xxvii-xxviii)
“What Is a Body, Anyway?: Form, Deep Listening, and Compassion on a Buddhist Trans Path,” Finn Enke
quite apart from Avalokitesvara’s historical transition from apparently male to apparently female as Guanshiyin (Kuan Yin), there remained a question about whether this bodhisattva is articulated as male or female, both or neither. […] Guanshiyin will manifest in the form of a divine dragon if that’s what you need. Compassion manifests in all possible forms in order to reach all beings because we exist in form. It’s not that Guanshiyin is “really” a man and puts on a dragon costume, nor is Guanshiyin “really” a woman and puts on a hummingbird costume. Rather, Avalokitesvara/Guanshiyin manifests nonduality: the way that everything in the universe is present in every cell in every being, form and boundlessness together. (6-7)
The lesson for me turned out to be not that form doesn’t matter, but that it does: for this moment I have this opportunity to experience existence in this form. It is through form that I apprehend interbeing, the awareness that everything in this moment is connected to everything else just as it is and has been and will be. It is form that makes consciousness possible. (7)
I was clinging hard to the notion that I shouldn’t willfully mess with this perfectly good body. I confronted the possibility that for me, this belief was just as much a habituated story as the conventional stories that call some bodies male and some female. I wondered, can I engage this embodiment with compassion? (8)
Avalokitesvara is sometimes translated as “one who contemplates the sounds of the world.” It is said that deep listening transforms suffering because it returns us to our interconnectedness. (9)
What would it mean to listen to myself? […] How do I practice nonviolence within myself? […] In meditation practice as Thich Nhat Hanh teaches it, we don’t try to banish the difficult things that arise; we don’t try to run from them or kill them. (10)
“Soil, Shit, and Compost,” Cooper Lee Bombardier
a sangha is a siblinghood of spiritual anarchists. (15)
Meditation is not an escape — there is no escape in life from my body. My trans body’s transness is present whether I change my body or not. Transition gave me a calm in my body from where I could begin to witness the chaos of my mind. My body became a teacher when I was able to finally acknowledge it as mine. By accepting my body’s inherent transness, I had to accept my inherent and flawed humanity. I became a human being; and now human, I cultivate compassion for others from an acceptance of our shared humanity. Accepting my body as trans helped me to see how much I am like other people, not special or different, because in accepting my body I had to accept life and the fact that I was living it. (17)
If we are to follow the Buddha’s teachings on dependent origination, of cause and effect, the effect of my transness is not separate of me, of my body, of my mind, or of anything or anyone else. Transition was a process by which I was making peace with the fact that this is the reality of my body, rolled the stone away from the mouth of the bottomless cave of my empathy. (17)
The stuff we come to sit down with is the rich shit that we can try to squirm away from in discomfort, or that we can hang out with and tap for all of the wonderful compost our experiences provide. (18)
Some might say that figuring out I was trans would in itself be a desire to change, but to me, it is an acceptance of what I already was. A trans body that could either be accepted or not accepted, that I could choose to know or to ignore. The path of denying what I was felt more arduous and full of peril, even though the thought of changing something as radical as my physical form was overwhelming. And yet, and yet … accepting my body as trans means I accepted my body for what it was, and by accepting my body, I accepted my life, and this caused me to have so much more self-compassion, which of course continues to help me cultivate more compassion for others. (19)
I never thought I could be a Buddhist because I thought it required being something I was not, yet; I didn’t realize it asks of us to meet ourselves where we are at. […] My dear friend Anna Joy told me that all that meditating sure takes up a lot of time, but it actually gives us back all that time we’d otherwise waste on being crazy. (19)
“untitled,” Zave Gayatri Martohardjono
Some days feel effortless. Others, impossible to obey. […] I’ve learned to watch for those subtle and undeniable differences. I notice myself — throwing my weight against struggle or moving, lithe, through my own life. I’ve learned from years of cultivating mindfulness that all I have to do is watch and wait. And to remember, when I can, that there is kindness. […] I have learned not to erase myself, but to delve deeply in, with curiosity. (21)
In sangha there is space for struggle. And there is honesty about our violent world — how it has always been and will continue to be so. In sangha there is not only justice — which many take up in blindly self-righteous ways — but also compassion, patience, listening. […] My kind and harmful ways can coexist. (22)
mindfulness is about honing into specificity. Openness, nonidentification, compassion, love, nonjudgment is not about erasure of difference, but specificity of being. The politics of identity can be tricky. Understanding specificity, however, can create pathways between our experiences. […] To practice mindfulness is to dig past my assumptions about others. It is to pay attention when people show me their unique, complicated truths of identity and experience. (23-24)
“Karma Chameleon?,” Michelle McNamara
The emptiness of self-teaching led to the realization that anger and tension were not an inherent part of me, but arose from causes and conditions. When causes and conditions for a calm, open, loving being were cultivated, then that is who I could become. (30)
The practice of non-self involves undertanding that all phenomena (including the self) exist on two levels. The first is an absolute level that is said to have no inherent existence or is “empty” of inherent existence. The second is on a relative level in which any phenomenon (including the self) exists only in dependence on causes and conditions. When those causes and conditions change, so does the nature of the phenomenon. Because causes and conditions change all the time, the relative self is in a radical state of impermanence. (31)
it is only by truly accepting who you are on a relative level that you can start the process of trying to realize who you are in the absolute sense, which is one of the steps toward enlightenment. (34)
“Conduct Unbecoming: A Transqueer Experience of the Dharma,” Shaun Bartone
Foucault’s deconstructive analysis has been as much a guide through the dharma as the teachings of the elders in the Buddhist tradition. […] Foucault’s theory was that social power didn”t just control persons — it created them. Foucault’s personal ethic was to refuse to be what society forced him to be. His method of refusal was to deconstruct the social mechanisms of power/knowledge that produced particular identities or “selves.” (36)
My gender ambiguity became the portal for me to understand the dharma of not-self. Identities change, and trans identities change profoundly on multiple levels: physically, mentally, sexually, and socially. My experience of the dharma is likewise an “unbecoming.” When I sit in meditation, I actively deconstruct and dismantle the self that society expects me to be. (37)
Nothing is fixed or permanent; nothing can be pinned down for long; everythign is impermanent; everything changes. This experience of profound impermanence is common to queer and trans people. It is the pattern of our lives; it is our lived experience. And it is one of the gifts that we have to share with the greater sangha. (38)
Trans people suffer, in particular, from transphobia, in this sense, from the denial of our experience of gender nonconformity, fluidity, and transformation. Transphobia is nothing if not a mortal fear of the emptiness of identity, of the impermanence of self. (39)
Some of my sangha friends have said there is no such thing as “queer dharma.” I said, sure there is — there’s at least a queer experience of dharma. Dzogchen Ponlop likes to say that Buddhism is like pure water; if you put pure water in a certain container, it takes shape and color of that container. For instance, when Buddhism entered Chinese cultural, it became Chinese Buddhism; when it entered Japanese culture, it became Chinese Buddhism; when it entered Japanese culture, it became Japanese Zen Buddhism; when it entered American culture, it became American Buddhism. So why isn’t it also true that when Buddhist dharma enters queer culture, it becomes queer dharma? Why refuse that? Is it because queer culture is not a worthy vessel or container for Buddhist dharma? Is it because queer culture is about desire? About forms of sexuality and gender that are divergent, perverse, and intentionally chosen, rather than forms that are normative, that one is “born into”? What happens when the pure water of Buddhism gets poured into a queer container? (40)
Shakyamuni hit the road. The first thing Buddha did was liberate himself from every secure relationship, every privilege circumstance in his life. Buddha was all about taking risks. He dove headfirst into the turbulence of uncertainty, impermanence, and change. He experimented with every kind of spiritual experience and questioned everything. That he also found enlightenment in the process almost goes without saying. Of course, how could he not? He realized the relative truth that nothing is solid, that everything changes, thus realizing emptiness, which is the ultimate wisdom of Buddha-nature. (41)
“Trans Is Home: Banci and All,” Bk (Brian Otto Kimmel)
Being trans for me means being alive to each and every moment. So let me be home in trans identity if it helps me to feel alive, to live courageously and daringly in the world. Let me be home in trans if it helps me to embody the qualities of a Buddha in this life. (45)
“Gender and Emptiness,” Cypress Atlas
The experience of being nonbinary is an experience of emptiness. It is an assertion and a recognition of the inherent “nothing” that is beneath the concept of gender in and of itself. Gender is simply a concept and, like all concepts, it lacks any kind of inherent existence. (55)
“Uppity Apostate Transgender Monk Questions Transphobia and Sexism in Buddhist Monasticism,” Santino Vella
Although my monastic aspirations were sincerely motivated by compassion and a desire to transform the deeply inculcated violence that embedded itself into my psyche, as a transgender person, there was something distinctly comforting about the thought of retreating into the amorphous androgyny of monastic garb. (58)
Although Buddhist attitudes toward gender arose within the particular sociohistorical context in which the Vinaya was written, attempts to challenge attitudes that seem out of step with modern times have often been unsuccessful. (60)
The notion that being born female or gender-variant is inferior is a socially constructed belief reinforced by their negative treatment in an intolerant society. The Buddha gave his followers license to question authority and tradition and test it against one’s own experience; archaic attitudes toward gender established during the time of the historical Buddha are appropriate for such discursive scrutiny in modern times. (61)
For Buddhism to retain its relevance in the modern world, it is necessary to examine and adapt attitudes that reinforce gender discrimination through the exploration of Mahayana scriptures on emptiness that refute ossified cultural conditioning. […] the reification of essentialist assumptions about gender is antithetical to core teachings on equanimity and emptiness within the Mahayana tradition. (62-63)
“Queer Radical Dharma: Individual and Social Liberation, or: Gracefully bumbling along the path and finally finding my clear voice,” Sasha Strong
only a fully awake person can truly fathom the intricate causes and conditions that arise as experience and the universe. In our contemporary situation, that complexity is manifestly apparent in human technological and cultural conditions. It is an acceleration of the historically situated conditioned aspects of our consciousness. (68)
My meditation practice created a container for me to work with these big feelings and sort through them. Having confidence in basic goodness or Buddha-nature was a profound platform, the sky and the bedrock that supported this journey of healing and self-discovery. (70)
there is no bodhisattva vow without social and political engagement; otherwise it is just empty words. […] Part of what is needed is contemplative practice, to recall our energy from its identification with thought-forms, emotion-forms, and habit patterns that bind in thrall, apparently separated from our spontaneously present true nature. Part of that is community practice, to care for and support one another in transforming the prevailing social conditions that bind us, obscure our vision, and separate us from effective political action and loving community. These are the two wings of the bird. (71)
“Growing to Know,” Chance Krempasky
A dear friend of mine says that recovery is like walking up an escalator that is going down; if you stop working for one moment, you’ve lost ground and you’re liable to end up back where you started. I learn through my dharma practice about the energy, effort, and determination that I need to keep moving on up. (78)
“untitled,” Luna Rangjung Yeshe
To know one’s gender is an act of self-recognition […] Countless opinions exist about diet and fashion. Clear and simple messages, however, come from bodily feelings that one sees only through direct experience. (85)
What do androgyny, spirituality, and insanity have in common? They involve the blurring of boundaries, or the dissolution of boundaries. […] Is not death also the same? It is a crossing over, a being in between, dissolving boundaries. One who lives at the border has no home. One who has crossed over cannot live, except as a ghost, a mystery, a kind of madness. And yet on the other side there is life. (92)
“Yellow Poppy and an Aniccagender Heart,” Lu Lam
Gender identity arises from a myriad of causes and conditions. Just like the weather, each time a gender may arise is true. For example, when a sunny day turns gray, it’s not said that the sunny day was not real because most of the time it’s gray skies. Gender can be expressed for a multitude of reasons. Gender can be expressed to liberate, fulfill cultural roles, be of service, and/or stay safe. An aniccagender heart is a deep listener, living by a sense of intimacy with life, with an autonomous heart. (112)
“Working with Nothing: Being Trans and Buddhist in North America,” Elizabeth Marston
I made some “mindful changes.” I transitioned. And suddenly, the doctrine of not-self made perfect sense. It worked the other way! My urge to manage the symptoms was not selfless; it was an identity project. I was holding onto positional goods, worth their weight in lead. (133)
In adulthood, transition is often expensive, grueling, and incomplete. Not just incomplete for this or that reason, but uncompletable, never to be completed, even doomed. Not everything can be changed. […] There will always be that something about you. Not everyone will appreciate that something. It’s in this dark night that the doctrine of the not-self shines. (133)
Your self — 99 percent story and expectation by weight, just like everyone else’s — it isn’t real either. It is not. Even the one I found contorted inside: she is also unattainable, unreachable, unreal. But so is the one who carried her; the worldly person and the inner person belie one another. Both selves are stories. Both are not. Meanwhile, trans futures are iffy things. It’s best to plan loosely, ready to extemporize. So we have no past, no future, and non-self. We have nothing to work with. We are lucky indeed, are we not? (134)
“When Duality Falls Away: Gender, Self, and What’s Beyond,” Adhamh Roland Hoeltzel
When the circuit of my experience is open rather than self-perpetuating, its true nature can be revealed. The judgments and stories of other people become reflections of a mind caught in confusion. The stories I hold about myself are observed as arising from causes and conditions and are no longer “me.” Intense, painful sensations contain glimpses of ease. The empty nature of experience reveals itself, and there is even the possibility of an okayness always accessible beyond circumstance. (141)
“Becoming Whole Just to Let It Go,” Kevin Manders
the books aren’t the practice, the CDs aren’t the practice, the podcasts aren’t the practice, and even the inspiring talks with others aren’t the practice. […] As great as all these things are, they play a supporting role in the practice. It’s as if I used them as an escape for two years because doing the real practice was too difficult and too painful. (163)
identity is important during one’s practical, everyday life, but in the bigger picture on the Buddhist path, it’s not. […] trying to understand this was not an intellectual endeavor, but it was one that had to be fully experienced in the body. (165)
I am also learning through the dharma to not hang on to my trans identity so tightly. Ajahn Chah said, “If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.” […] Knowing ourselves fully and authentically, and accepting ourselves just as we are, gives us the space to start to release the sense of self. (166-167)
“On Meditation, Gender, and the Gravity of Being,” Aeva Black
Now that I am hormonally changing the sex expressed within this body, and the world is seeing me as a different gender, I still know that “I” am not changing, for there is no inherent “I-ness” here! (174)
“A Lotus Dependent upon the Mud,” Jacoby Ballard
an overlooked component of oppression is mourning our losses again and again […] All of humanity shares the experience of suffering, and so in touching my own, I unite with humanity. (178)
heartbreak led me toward learning to trust individual people, not categories of people, and to accept difficult people in my life as opportunities to learn wisdom and compassion. [… It was] an invitation to move past our judgement of harm created and to use wounds to connect more deeply to ourselves and the world. (180)
“On Transitioning,” C. E. Giyu Gillis
When I read the precept of right livelihood, I knew at my core that living my life as anything other than who I am would be to break the precept. Right livelihood is to not waste one’s life. (202)
nothing [is] lost when we recognize both interdependence and also the differences in front of us. Transitioning is eternal. It’s more than moving from one gender to another, one identity to another. Our self shifts in space and time constantly. Our bodies grow and decay. The events around us transition into other things. Our sorrow transitions into happiness, and happiness into sorrow. What we call “self” is not a permanent definition, but an evolving language. (205)
Not knowing is to engage with your life without fixed ideas and attachments to self. This moment-by-moment practice allows room for the unknown to arise, which in turn can create space for the honoring of multiple gender expressions in sangha spaces. If we abandon what we believe we know to be true about gender, then we create shifts that welcome transgender bodies and experiences into our sanghas. (206)
“A New Normal: Is Estrogen an Entheogen?,” Jane Whittington
Estrogen is for me both profoundly liberating and profoundly unsettling. If I found more support for such a claim, I think I’d be inclined to see estrogen as a powerful entheogen, some sort of sacrament. (217)
my experience of transness feels like a sort of awakening, but an awakening to mystery, to things no longer making sense, to problems no longer soluble, to inchoate urges and cravings, to things going off in all directions at once. There’s a tremendous joy here, and a tremendous complementary sense of, well, confusion. (219)
if I can argue that estrogen for me has entheogenic qualities, its power is not so much in waking me up as in bringing that edge of insanity closer, blurring the boundary between the substantial and insubstantial, fucking, basically, with my head. (221)
“‘Abandon Any Hope of Fruition,’” Zoyander Street
“Abandon any hope of fruition” allows me to channel my anger and disenchantment into healing, redirecting that tense energy into a temporary sense of openness and calm. (224)
Depression can feel like a kind of protection. I do not know what will happen if I leave the house and try to get things done, or if I send that email and try to get a project off the ground, or if I write this essay and try to speak to a personal truth that isn’t necessarily beautiful and dignified. Depression is waiting and hoping. Often, it is waiting and hoping that the perfect idea will suddenly dawn on me, and I will know exactly what to wear, exactly what to say, exactly how to compose this piece of writing. Depression is a desire to be protected from the raw, acute sensation of not getting the desired result. This is how abandoning hope becomes a part of managing depression; it lets me act without knowing what it will happen. It lets me write an essay without knowing whether I’ve really said what needed to be said. (226)
The hope of fruition is a great motivator […] Yet it’s also a terrible curse that causes us constant misery, because deep down, the things we truly crave — that perfect sense of security, confidence, and love — cannot be found anywhere other than in the present moment. Although we have kept our eyes on the horizon this whole time, the horizon has never gotten any closer. (227)