Debating a monk is dukkha

Have you ever tried to point out to a monk that he just might be full of shit? It’s not an easy thing to do, because let me tell you, some monks are very adept at turning the tables and making you out to be the problem, that it’s your delusion operating here, not theirs.

I stumbled into such a debate after seeing a post on the Heartland Singapore Facebook page. It was referring to a post at buddhavacana.net, which appears to be a message board. There are other, blog-like pages on this site, but it doesn’t appear to be very active. Anyway, you can read my heresy by following the link I provided.

The gist of this began with a question emailed to the monk administering the page: “Can a gay person be ordained as a monk/nun?”

Bhante Shi Chuanguan replied with this: “Heterosexual men and women have to transcend their heterosexual desires if they are going to be ordained. Similarly, gay person can be ordained as a monk/nun, as long as this person can transcend this inclination.”

Me thinks I detect a double standard here.

As an aside, the Venerable Ashin Sopaka had a very pithy comment on the Heartland Facebook page, to which I will return later. But my response on the forum was to say I thought the answer provided, as well as an answer provided by another presumed monastic, was drawing a distinction between straight people seeking ordination and gays seeking ordination, that each was to be treated differently.

The Bhante said that straights had to “transcend their heterosexual desires,” while a gay person had to “transcend this inclination.”

This inclination? So the straight person need only renounce his or her sexual desires, while the gay has to renounce being gay? In other words, renounce his or her sexuality. What’s up with that?

You can read my entire reply on the message board, as I waxed very eloquent and pontificated like a true queen in heat. Perhaps that was a bit rash, because Bhante replied and suggested that, “Your inference that there is such a prejudicial idea is what is prejudicial.”

Moi? OK, OK, you can read my reply to that bit of obfuscation, because clearly this Bhante wanted to paint me the ignorant dualistic thinking bitter fag and a poor victim of all that nasty hate in the world, which, I would point out, often begins with narrow-minded and atavistic interpretations of religious doctrine by Paleolithic thinkers such as him. But I digress.

What I want to do is now return to Ashin Sopaka’s comment on the Heartland Facebook page. Ashin Sopaka succinctly points out that apparently the requirement to enter the monastery and seek ordination is to already be an enlightened being. Doesn’t the requirement that a gay first “transcend this inclination” mean that one must have renounced all notion of self, which can only be achieved upon enlightenment?

Seems to me that all the monastic code requires is that the monk or nun abstains from any form of sexual activity. That living in a monastery is the venue through which a monk or nun practices the doctrine to eventually transcend all fabricated notions of identity, whether they are sexual or otherwise. What “inclinations” remain in the unenlightened mind is irrelevant to anyone else in the monastery, as it is the duty of the monk or nun to peel back the layers of delusion and clinging within his or her own mind to ultimately attain freedom.

I’m sure Bhante Shi Chuanguan is a very wise man and knows his Dhamma pretty well. But his understanding of gay people, in my opinion, is no better than your average homophobe.

Update: I am pleased to say that Shi Chuanguan replied to my comments in a manner suggesting that we are coming together to a closer understanding.

Speak with a calm, bright heart

Perhaps you are aware of recent news out of Singapore where a Christian evangelical group produced and published a video with an interview of a man who allegedly was a Buddhist monk and had converted to Christianity. I say allegedly because what the man says about his experiences as a monk is extremely suspicious. But I am not writing specifically about that. John over at Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt has a post that includes the video clips produced by the Lighthouse Christian group in Singapore, as well as news about the Pastor Rony Tan’s apology for the video’s content.

What I want to bring to everyone’s attention is a brilliant response written by the National University of Singapore Buddhist Society that was published in the Kent Ridge Common, the student publication at the NUS. It’s an excellent point-by-point retort to what was asserted by the Rev. Rony Tan; brilliant because it was made in the spirit of the Buddha’s teaching found in the Brahmajala Sutta. I strongly urge anyone to read the response, but I particularly suggest those who are new to Buddhism, or who are curious, to read it.

Religion is a touchy subject in Singapore (the photo is of a statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore). The city-state is ethnically and religiously diverse, with a population made up of Chinese, Indian and Malay people, as well as a significant white European population. There are Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Taoists. The city has a history of ethnocentric conflict that was successfully managed by its founding father, Lee Kuan Yew and his People’s Action Party.

I follow a gay Buddhist discussion group on Yahoo! that is based in Singapore called Heartland where the issue of Christian evangelicals comes up occasionally. Christian proselytizing and efforts to convert others is very aggressively done in Singapore; I have read reports (unverified I admit) of evangelicals making the rounds in Singapore hospitals where they move in on a dying Buddhist and scare them into converting on their deathbed. If an individual’s family is present, some resistance may be mounted to the conversion effort, but if the sick and elderly patient is alone, he or she is reportedly often scared into conversion, renouncing their Buddhist faith.

Much of the discussion at Heartland has been about formulating a skillful response to these conversion efforts. So when the video from the Lighthouse organization in Singapore surfaced, it unsurprisingly annoyed many people, particularly Singaporean Buddhists and Taoists. Whether the Rev. Tan’s public apology is sincere is debatable, but it is worth pointing out that the apology was prompted by the Singaporean government demanding he make one. As I said, the peaceful coexistence of the various ethnic and religious groups in Singapore is a major concern of the government.

Let’s talk about sex

Despite the temptation to be puerile, and goodness knows I have the capacity to be as campy as the next person (no promises here either, I might let something slip), the topic of sex is particularly important to lesbigay practitioners. The issue of right versus wrong sexual behavior – or more specifically skillful versus unskillful – is relevant to all Buddhist practitioners regardless of orientation. But it’s particularly important to gay and transgendered Buddhists because for our breeder brethren, sexuality per se is not the relevant issue. For us, however, it is.

As an aside, there has been a lot of debate, particularly within the Theravada monastic community, regarding the ordination of women. Arun at Angry Asian Buddhist has chronicled much of this, and at Sujato’s Blog, you can read more detail about the recent flap prompted by the ordination of women in Australia. The subject has also been drawing great interest in the gay Buddhist Yahoo! e-mail list Heartland. A debate like this, despite the discomfort it may create, is important to have. It provides an opportunity to not only examine the Buddha’s teachings about these things, but to evaluate how that teaching may have become staid, or even turned into a dogmatic principle that may constitute Wrong View. As the Buddha taught the Kalamas, just because something is a tradition doesn’t mean it is skillful or leads to knowing the truth.

A similar discussion about homosexuality is just as important; however, this discussion has largely been limited to the gay Buddhist community, which presents the danger that this discussion will be perceived by the larger straight community as simply being the queers trying to justify their abnormal behavior. Such a situation is paralleled in the Christian community where Christian gays are put into the rhetorical position of having to defend their sexuality against those who smugly point to biblical passages that unmistakably condemn same-sex activity, while at the same time ignore other passages that have been interpreted to be irrelevant in modern society.

It’s not a debate when all one side does is sit back and reply with the childish, “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Yet the same sophomoric response is frequently encountered by gays in the Buddhist community as well. And there is a supreme irony in all of this that seems to escape many Buddhists, particularly those in positions of authority. These individuals point to the Tipitika to justify the position that same-sex activity violates the Third Precept as if they are saying, “See there? It is written!” (Although they frequently and misleadingly point to the Vinaya, which specifically addresses behavior in the monastic community, not the lay community) We come back to the teaching of the Kalamas, when the Buddha said not to rely on something as being true simply because it is written. But somehow, this is ignored because we’re talking about the Buddha’s teachings here. How convenient that these alleged “scholars” forget that the Buddha didn’t write anything down. His teachings were oral. They were written down later, and he wasn’t around at the time to provide editing. The Buddha knew that someday, everything he said would be written down, and because not all monks hold Right View, some of those transcriptions would be erroneous.

Complicating the matter is culture and its misunderstanding. For example, many Westerners have a perception that Thai society is accepting of homosexuality. This simple view fails to appreciate that just as in American society, there are urban versus rural sensibilities. And what happens and passes as acceptable in Bangkok or Phuket isn’t necessarily acceptable in Satun or Phayao. Even in locations like Phuket, much is taken for granted by Western tourists. I can remember seeing the local Thai men staring at the European women sunbathing topless on Patong Beach, but the Thai men weren’t ogling these women. Their stares held contempt for women who were showing disrespect for the local culture by carrying on as if they were at a nude beach in a Berlin park.

I also believe that many white Buddhists fail to appreciate the influence Confucianism and Taoism has on East Asian society and thought. Recognizing the fact that homosexuals exist and not harboring any outward ill-will for them does not equate with acceptance. Some of my Chinese friends who live in Asia tell me that they would never out themselves to their parents because the consequences would be swift and severe: the thinking with their parents is, “it’s OK that I know gay people, but if my son were gay, I would abandon him in a second!” The pressure on many of these individuals to marry and sire children is tremendous; failure to do so continues to bring shame on the family.

So it should come as no surprise to Anglo American and European Buddhists that the Dalai Lama hedges in his response to questions about his view on homosexuality, or that many well-known monks from both Theravada or Mahayana traditions tell gays that it’s OK, but you should remain celibate because gay sex violates the Third Precept, speaking as if they were Christian Evangelicals who say “love the sinner but hate the sin.” Nor should we be surprised by how the fruits of kamma are brought into this discussion by those who explain being born gay is the result of kamma, with the implication that it was some wrong act in a previous life that caused this.

We ought not be surprised by any of this, but that does not mean that such views are Right View; and in the case of kamma, even if it may be Right View, that does not mean that we ought to view our current condition as a punishment.

So how should we apply the Third Precept to our lives as lesbigay people? And what did the Buddha say about sexuality? My attempts to answer these questions shall be in another blog post.

Part 2 of this post can be read at zenfant's home for dirty Dharma.

Eel-like wriggling

I participate in a Yahoo! group called Heartland, which is a gay discussion group based in Singapore. The reason I joined Heartland is that I’ve found the Dhamma discussion there much more stimulating than at the other Yahoo! Buddhist groups, or Buddhist discussion groups elsewhere on the Internet. I find a lot of “eel-like wriggling” going on at so many of these groups that I feel sorry for someone who is new to Buddhism and thinks he or she can learn something about it by following these discussions.

But there’s some “eel-like wriggling” going on at Heartland as well as participants ponder what it means to be a “real Buddhist,” or whether concepts such as “right” and “wrong” are relative terms that vary based on individual perspective.

This recent discussion led me to find the Brahmajala Sutta (DN 1) because I knew it contained the Buddha’s description of a reaction presented by some folk who hear his principles: The Buddha identified this response as taking the form of four types of ambiguous evasion.

“Uh, gee, I don’t know if that’s true, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I can’t say it’s not true because I just don’t know.” Such slippery evasiveness recalls for me the title of a Ministry album, “The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste.”

Anyway, while reviewing the Brahmajala Sutta, I was surprised to see how comprehensive it was. And it was also interesting to note that this teaching was directed toward monks. It’s really important to be clear on what audience the Buddha was speaking to when reading the suttas. Sometimes I think people respond with “eel-like wriggling” because they think they’re expected to master everything that was said in the sutta in their mundane lives. When they hear of things like “dependant co-arising,” they blanch, not realizing that there’s plenty in the Buddha’s words that is much simpler and easier to follow, like how to live a life that does no harm, and how to avoid being a slut on the circuit.

But the recent discussion on Heartland had my mind ready for all the other things the Buddha covered in this sutta.

For example, the Buddha cautions against becoming angry toward those that may criticize him, the Sangha or the Dhamma; rather, the response should simply be to point out where the errors are and correct them.

At the same time, the Buddha cautions that if someone praises him, the Sangha or the Dhamma, the monks should not swell with pride.

For those of us in the gay community, this is a very difficult axiom to follow. Much of what we do is focused either on the loud proclamation of our presence – We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it – or shouting down those who conjure falsehoods about who we are – you’re a homophobe. We at times resort to these knee-jerk slogans with such rapidity that sometimes we fail to hear something that might actually benefit us. We’ve played the role of victim so well and for so long that it’s the only role we know. In fact, we know it so perfectly that we even play the part with each other.