I am a transgender person, a Buddhist monastic, and a social justice worker — not a scholar, researcher, or academic — writing now to share with the Buddhist and queer Buddhist communities the peculiar relationship I cherish between my queer self and Buddhist self.
I hope to simply convey some of my thoughts and emotions regarding Buddha as my teacher, dharma as my guardian, and sangha as my guide.
The Meaning of Queerness in Society
As Buddhists, we devote significant study to the “conventional truth” and the “ultimate truth.” In the Buddhist presentation of reality, the world itself is conventional, and this conventional world keeps producing conventions or norms which, depending on geographical, cultural, and sociopolitical contexts, differ across the globe. However, one thing common across the world is that all societies live by certain norms, mostly enforced by the powerful and dominant of that society.
Our society has been structured as a hierarchy, everyone’s position in its framework well dictated. This hierarchy operates in the confines of race, gender, caste, class, religion, ethnicity, and so on. Power is neatly distributed, and everyone is expected to live within the confines of this framework. This structure and system has been developed to this form and shape through generations of control, policing, and violence, and these tools are used very efficiently to this day to maintain it. One such visible example is the patriarchal institution of family. Although it has undergone significant change over the years, thanks to feminist movements across the globe, it is today an institution that exerts power in many societies controlling women and children, who are under the “protection” of its male head.
Marriage and progeny are examples of such norms that are highly regulated and enforced and commonplace across world cultures. Cisgender men and women who either refuse to get married, or decide not to have children after an acceptable marriage within their culture, will face respective consequences. These range from losing standing in society, being considered deviant, and being disowned by the natal family. In some cases, particularly that of cis-women, the result could be physical violence.
Though “queer” is a label used today for people of diverse sexual and gender identities, anyone who does not fit into the society’s mold of “normal” may be considered queer even if they would not identify as such. In this scope, it is not just lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and asexual folks who embody queerness; many other folks do so in their contexts and lived realities. Essentially, this means anyone who fails to comply with current norms may be excluded by the mainstream world and deemed unworthy of respect.
The existence of LGBTQIA+ folks disrupts this arrangement, enraging the “normal” in the world. Beyond queer folks in terms of gender and sexuality, cis-women who refuse to marry, inter-religious, inter-racial, or inter-caste couples, married couples who choose not to have children, people in non-monogamous relations, non-normative sexual practices, and so on all challenge the status quo.
Anyone who fails or refuses to fit into the “normal” mold can be said to embody queerness — challenging the world order, the power it holds, questioning its notions and beliefs, eroding its structures and systems, redefining desire and the very notion of existence.
This queerness threatens and scares the mainstream and its power. To protect against this, the so-called “normal” among us continue to engage in inhuman practices. For three millennia, the caste system in India has determined who gets to live what kinds of lives based on the caste community they are born into. People born in dominant castes exercise control over lives of people born in oppressed castes by determining almost every aspect of their living. It was the constitutional interventions introduced by Ambedkar that started changing things, little by little. People from oppressed castes began accessing education, employment, and other resources that were denied to them for centuries. But even today, the presence of oppressed-caste people in places of education, employment, public places and so forth is met with discrimination, abuse and violence. In educational institutions persistent casteism forces many to drop out or die by suicide. People who marry outside their caste are murdered in the name of honor killings. “Normalcy” is maintained by ensuring that everyone remains in their designated space without crossing any lines; otherwise they are met with brutal consequences.
Buddha is Queer
According to many common presentations of the Buddha’s life, he was born Siddhartha Gautama into a royal family, destined to be a ruler. Different encounters with suffering moved him to the urgency of finding answers to resolve this suffering. Gautama encounters old age, sickness, and death, and that displaces him from his life — metaphorically and, eventually, literally. Being born into a family of power and privilege and with a prediction that he would rule the world if he chose to, considering how we all would think with such power and resources at our disposal, Siddhartha Gautama should have championed authority, power, or socialist or communist approaches to find freedom from suffering.
One might argue that these are just Buddha’s skillful actions, and even if they seem queer, that doesn’t make Buddha queer. But what makes a person queer, if not their thoughts, choices, actions? Isn’t queerness embodied through these?
However, the Buddha chose not to seek answers to address suffering within the very system that inflicts it. Nor was he going to rely on worldly power to remove suffering. Both of these would be “normal” and likely human responses; we want to fix any problem by either fixing the system, creating a new system, or securing ourselves from problems and difficulties by accumulating power.
For Buddha, these “normal” choices were not choices at all. He instead sought answers outside these systems and habitual instincts, engaging with a sense of inquiry and questioning. Thus, his approach was questioning — and queer!
As he continued on his path, performing severe ascetic practices for six years, with five devoted followers who considered him a great ascetic, he did not lose sight of his inquiry. He abandoned the ascetic path once he’d realized it was not the way. Unlike many of us who might eventually conform for the sake of respect and acceptance, he refused to give into conformity. That is queer again.
After attaining buddhahood, he chose to engage with the world, share his learnings and realizations, and help beings experience the state of awakening he had attained. His hopes — for a world that seemed unprepared for what he had to offer — were also queer.
We see queerness too in many of his actions, such as the ordination of Upali, an oppressed caste person, before his natal family cousins, in which he made Upali senior to them, skillfully destabilizing the notion of caste supremacy. In another case, he receives Amrapali, a courtesan, with an openness that people like her are generally not met with in the world. And he established an order of both ordained and lay sangha, with both to be respected and learned from.
These are just some of Buddha’s actions that defy the “normal”, question the status quo, and, as such, can be understood as queer.
Now, one might argue that these are just Buddha’s skillful actions, and even if they seem queer, that doesn’t make Buddha queer. But what makes a person queer, if not their thoughts, choices, actions? Isn’t queerness embodied through these?
Centuries after Buddhism was practically erased from the geographical landscape it had been born and flourished in, Babasaheb Ambedkar, the “untouchable” and architect of the Indian Constitution, took refuge in Buddha and presented Buddha’s teachings as an answer to the oppressed caste communities, a means to break away from the Hindu caste system. The majority of Indian Buddhists, even today, are Ambedkarite Buddhists who keep their faith in Navayana Buddhism, the new vehicle of Buddhism proposed by Ambedkar. This is just one historical example of Buddha as an inspiring teacher who challenges norms and questions power, thus destabilizing the status quo and queering the world!
I will now dare to stretch this argument a bit further: to think of Buddha as a queer person, not just in terms of non-normative actions but in his sexuality and gender identity, too.
In the Great Praise of the Twelve Acts of Buddha, Nagarjuna writes:
By skill in means, to conform to the conduct
Of the world, and for avoidance of
Blameworthiness, you ruled at court,
Possessed of female retinue—homage to this deed.
Since first reading it, this verse caught my attention, and I continue to think about it even today. Nagarjuna is not simply praising Buddha in these verses, but communicating with a larger audience about Buddha’s deeds and explaining their context in some way. The way I read and understand this particular verse is that it implies that Buddha, as Siddhartha Gautama, conformed to worldly conventions because that was the skillful thing to do, not because he had a firm belief in them or he unquestioningly subscribed to them. In a sense, Buddha conformed to worldly conventions when it was needed and also defied them when that was the way ahead on this path. Essentially, he did what needed to be done in pursuit of enlightenment. Even if the presentation of Buddha’s life is cis-gender and heterosexual, he did not conform to them.
How do we know for sure of his sexuality and how he perceived and experienced his gender before becoming a Buddha? How can we be so sure that historical narratives, sanitized and shaped by the dominant narrative, did not erase any other aspects of his life before becoming a Buddha? And certainly, how can a Buddha, after enlightenment, be categorized into the confines of one sexuality and one gender? To become free of assuming mind and see Buddha beyond the confinements of cis-heteronormativity is required for us to embrace our Buddhist practice open-heartedly, and also helps us relate with those already liberated from such assumptions about oneself and others.
Thus, for me, Buddha’s queerness is evident in his very existence; it is for us to shed our assumptions and prejudices, move beyond our comforts to be able to see it, recognize it, and acknowledge it, realizing freedom and joy.
Dharma is Queer
Dharma, the word of the Buddha, requires us to reorient ourselves to the world differently; it inspires us to look beyond what seems to be the truth. It urges us and encourages us to closely examine what we believe in. It helps us deconstruct popularly accepted views and notions and renounce those that do not hold truth in the face of rational analysis.
In the Kalama Sutta, also called Buddha’s Charter of Free Inquiry, Buddha says:
“Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, ‘The monk is our teacher.’ Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,’ enter on and abide in them.”
Thus, Buddha advises not to accept anything just because it is from scripture or tradition or your teacher, but to investigate and verify it before accepting it. Dharma is to be realized by one’s experience, unlike most things in the world, which we accept because of popular belief or other dictates.
Similar to queerness, dharma does not rely on power and authority; it cannot be enforced by any such means. Both queerness and dharma do not exist in power but in freedom of inquiry and experience. As they both run counter to popular beliefs and notions, they both share a commonness of questioning in their journey.
People sometimes ask me why there are not many Buddhists in India. Historically speaking, one can list a range of sociopolitical reasons that almost erased Buddhism from India. And its limited presence in regional languages, scarcity of resources, and other practical reasons are hindering its revival. I believe that in any society that is rooted in conventions unquestioningly — a society that is deeply entangled with its conventions, finding comfort in the familiarity of those conventions — employs habitual violence to protect them. If the queers who challenge the worldly conventions threaten society so much, how can it be open to dharma which demands a deeper questioning of conventions?
Toppling the conventional world is not the agenda of dharma, but certainly not settling in conventions is, and constantly investigating, analysing, and shaking up conventions is.
Dharma helps us move towards a non-dual view of reality, whereas Queerness facilitates a non-binary understanding of the world.
Queerness is embedded in the dharma, and dharma enables and nurtures queerness in its true sense.
Can Buddhist Sangha Not be Queer?
As Rita Gross wrote in Buddhism Beyond Gender, “Buddhism was simply too profound to let the patriarchs have it without protest.” Dharma is too precious to be gate-kept by people of certain (privileged) identities, and by all means, that gatekeeping should be considered non-virtuous. In the same work, Rita goes on to say, “Buddhism requires a feminist reconstruction.” This is required for us to recognise the queerness embedded in Buddhism.
Ignoring the queer aspect of Buddhism is like attempting to see the stars and moon without seeing the sky.
One can be queer without being a Buddhist, but can one be a practicing Buddhist without being queer? One of the practices to engage in to be a Buddhist is not to abide in conformity. As Buddhists who take refuge in Buddha, dharma, and sangha, how could we not go against the grain of the mainstream world?
