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Queer Dharma, Volume 1 edited by Winston Leyland (Gay Sunshine Press 2nd printing, 2000), 416 pages, $19.95 paperback; $50.00 hardcover. 
So many people in Western LGBT communities are seeking a spiritual safe haven, a cozy niche of acceptance away from the relentless, often ranting homophobia of the three major Middle Eastern religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Despite the valiant efforts of Christian apologists from Troy Perry to Matthew Fox and Mel White to co-opt the gay outcaste, these remain isolated experiments in impotent good will at best and patronizing the marginalized at worst. Seeking refuge in the mystical traditions of Judaeo-Christianity and Islam offers cold comfort, since these traditions are themselves marginalized and sidelined by the mainstream narratives. Consider the degree to which the Sufis have been oppressed, cast out and reviled by orthodox Islam. Given this context, it is understandable that many spirituality-yearning gays would be drawn to religions such as Buddhism. After all, doesn't Buddhism preach non-discrimination, unconditional acceptance and a peace beyond the dualities of either/or thinking? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is: yes and no. Queer Dharma delicately treads the razor's edge path between the 'yes' and the 'no.' This richly layered and varied anthology of Buddhist writings does not flinch from examining and deconstructing homophobic texts and practices within the many Buddhist traditions from the early Vinaya texts (rules for monastic discipline in Theravada Buddhism) to the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. At the same time, Queer Dharma does ample justice to the abundance of gay-positive texts and practices in the many forms of Buddhism. It may shock the reader seeking greener spiritual pastures that Buddhism has a well-established canon of homophobic discourses stretching through time from early Buddhism to the Dalai Lama. The discussion of the Dalai Lama's own limited understanding and sympathy for gay issues is handled with great sensitivity to his positive and shadow sides. After all, the Dalai Lama is seen as the great apostle of world peace and non-violence, an unthreatening and yet courageous spiritual father figure to so many Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. Yet, while acknowledging the legitimacy of the gay struggle for civil rights, he almost sounds like the good Vatican pontiff in his puritanical objection to anal and oral sex alike--NO penetration, sucking, swallowing, i.e. no fun at all! So, his gay followers are condemned to a life of wistful hand-holding, soulful sighs and (just maybe) occasional mutual masturbation! The homophobia of some early Buddhist texts (the Vinaya) is squarely placed within a discussion of an overall sex-phobic Buddhist thrust toward asceticism. Also, early Buddhism like the Christian Gospel record, is based on heavily edited textualizations of oral narratives. Thus, one doesn't know what the Buddha (or Jesus) 'really' said. More sinisterly, the 'pandaka' in these texts is a signifier with many faces--a conflated concept that mushes together gays, transgendered people and all those who are not 'real men.' In fact, the 'real man' fixation is pivotal to the condemnation of the pandaka. Underlying many of the stereotypes and finger-shaking at the pandaka is a connection that I believe is integral to homophobia across time periods and cultures. The pandaka is 'almost' a woman and women are seen as boundlessly lustful, promiscuous, unreliable, weak etc. Thus, a critical root of homophobia is a deep-structure misogyny that sites woman as the root of much evil and wants to strike out at and stamp out any perceived femininity in the male (for a more detailed discussion of this point, see Jack Nichols' Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity and Brian Pronger's Arena of Masculinity).
On the contrary, the editor Winston Leyland does a masterful job of juggling sources and texts, ancient, medieval, modern and post-modern and brings this rich plurality of perspectives to the issues. Certainly, one could argue in post-Foucauldian fashion that 'gayness' as a self-consciously political identity emerged from the struggles of many Western men and women against the medicalization and negative labeling of homosexuality that began in the 19th century. Such struggles were also directed against regimes of exclusion, oppression, bashing and forced closet silences. Of course, contemporary gay American Buddhists are particularly situated within this dialectic. On the other hand, since same-sex relationships were rampant in other cultures and in Buddhist societies for many centuries, one needs to balance modern and post-modern gay texts with more traditional gay-friendly perspectives in non-Western Buddhist cultures. Queer Dharma Vol. 1 interlaces non-Western and Western viewpoints admirably well and includes different genres of writing by Buddhist scholars, monks, AIDS survivors, gay Zen masters like Issan Dorsey and erotic poets like Trebor and Allen Ginsberg. At the same time, the book does not come off as an ill-assorted jumble of Buddhist bric-a-brac. It's well-organized into sections, interweaving the traditional and the modern with deft ease. True to the traditions of Gay Sunshine Press, Queer Dharma does not mute, censor or repress the erotic. It celebrates the gay body and the variety of ways in which it can be expressed sexually. Trebor's poetic fantasy is likely to offend sour-faced Puritans, Buddhist and otherwise: Oh scantily dressed boygod teach me your tantra I've treated a thousand cocks like lotus flowers perching myself on them like a throne Teach me your tantra call it the middle way you're the kundalini kid guiding it up the middle of me with your dorje dong your mobile eight-inched path.... sing me your song fuck me right out of being with your blessed dorje dong! Selections from 'Ode to Buddha' (Queer Dharma Vol. 1, p. 404). Trebor turns traditional Buddhist terms and Zen koans on their head. For instance, consider the famous Zen koan (insoluble absurd riddle that pushes us closer to enlightenment): "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" Trebor's variant: "I say, if you meet the Buddha in a nightclub pick him up for chrissakes!" Adventurous readers may want to play with the techniques listed in a Japanese Buddhist manual on the art of boy love (which was seen as a spiritual path). Kobo Daishi's Book lists the following as some of the ways of anal penetration: skylark rising: the ass is raised in the air like a skylark rising in the sky. Insertion is painless. always keep cut plums on hand in case you want to attempt insertion without saliva. summer moat: press the ass to the moat of your belly as you enter. The method is painless even for a young acolyte. turned-up soles: place the acolyte's legs on your shoulders and penetrate him from the front. (Selections from Queer Dharma Vol.1, p.96). In the end, Buddhist Eros is tinged with great compassion. As John Giorno says about love in the age of AIDS: "Treat a complete stranger as a lover, as good friends, as they are or as 10 years ago you might have had fabulous sex with absolute abandon with the same stranger. Now life is ravaged and we offer love from the same root of boundless compassion." (Queer Dharma Vol. 1, p.286). |
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On the gay-positive side of the ledger, Queer Dharma vol. 1 offers us a plethora of texts from Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist sources. The work does not fall into the cheap trap of assuming that gay Buddhism must be a post-Stonewall US-centric phenomenon and that gay white Buddhists in the U.S. first raised the issue of meeting ground between Buddhism and same-sex desire.