I decided to investigate Buddhism and sexuality for my Master’s thesis because, for years, the topic had been slowly infiltrating my life. I’d heard stories from dharma friends about their sexual ecstasies, traumas, and everything in between while they were on retreats, in residential practice, or sitting alone on their cushions. Still, nowhere in the temples, centers, podcasts, or books we were all consuming did it seem like sexuality was being addressed, at least not in the way people were actually living it.
Being a single woman trying to date, I couldn’t ignore sexuality in my dharma life, yet somehow, it felt like all of the authority figures in my religion could. Friends who had spent time in residential practice at Zen monasteries had told me about a rigid silence and refusal from teachers to talk about sex, which left them feeling more shame, repression, and physical and psychological pain about their sexuality than when they had arrived at the monastery. Others shared that their lives were becoming increasingly bifurcated between their non-sexual self at their dharma center and their sexual self in non-dharma contexts. In these conversations, it seemed like not only was this area of peoples’ lives being neglected on their dharmic path, but their confidence and faith in Buddhism was being affected. The only teachings they could identify about sex or sexuality were either the third precept, “I undertake the course of training in refraining from wrong-doing in respect of sensuality,” or traditional meditations to combat lust, such as visualizing a desired one’s body decomposing. These teachings on sexuality felt so broad and out of context that they completely bypassed the cultural contexts and nuances these practitioners were grappling with. Where were the conversations about body shame, sexuality, and sensuality as a form of intimate connection, how to work with sexual repression, and how to transform our bodily sensations into causes for awakening?
“It became clear we are hesitant to walk into the fire of sexuality because sex is powerful, often seemingly inextricable from delusion, it can be harmful, and it can be intoxicating. That’s all true, and the question remains—do we not trust the dharma to hold this, too? “
I wanted to talk to lay, convert western dharma practitioners like the ones I’d practiced alongside for years to try to find answers to the questions: Is sexuality being addressed in western convert Buddhist spaces? Where is it being addressed, and how? Where is it not being addressed, and why? These questions are what drove me to conduct field research with lay Buddhist participants from Zen, Tibetan, Insight, secular, Triratna, Vajrayana and those who identify with multiple traditions. Through a series of 46 interviews, it became clear that some people are forced to reckon with their sexual bodies when they sit down on the meditation cushion more than others. Some interviewees talked about how they carry the weight of sexual trauma into their practice. Others talked about how they exist in bodies that have been sexualized by society to such a degree that sex can’t be ignored, seeking refuge from that feeling in their practice. One Black man explained how, in western culture, his body was perceived as sexually dangerous.
Queer and trans people, in particular, especially those of color, don’t have the same luxury of transcending their bodies in a meditation practice as the average “sexually normative” practitioner can. As a straight cis woman, talking with queer and trans Buddhists was an education in the depth of exploration around sexuality already being done by these practitioners. The sentiment that dharma practice was about embodiment was true for many queer and/or trans participants, to a significantly higher degree than straight participants. One participant stated, regarding the process of gender transitioning, that many Buddhist concepts are “not a hypothetical concept [anymore]… I can kind of intuitively understand them differently because it’s in my body.” Another participant explained how their gender transition has primarily been about embodying the Buddhist concept of non-duality.
Because my sexual and gendered body has so squarely fit into what the external world tells me is “real,” I’ve never had to reckon with the fact that, just like everything else, my sexual body has no inherent, unchanging existence. Some of these queer and trans Buddhists shared about how, since their bodies don’t fit into the socially approved mold, it has served them as a powerful dharma gate on their paths.
Two Perspectives
Two primary viewpoints emerged from my work. First, the view that our bodies and bodily desires are to be transcended in the name of the third noble truth, viewing our sexual bodies only as causes for clinging attachment and must be transcended to achieve moksha or liberation from suffering with no further attention paid to the topic. Second, the view that to gain freedom from clinging and attachment, a thorough and careful reckoning with our sexuality is critical. These views do not disagree so much on the ends as they do on the means. The latter conveys that, as lay Western Buddhists, we must explicitly address sexuality to find liberation. In contrast, the former conveys that lay Western Buddhists are too concerned with sexuality already and that sexuality should simply be eliminated to achieve liberation without additional attention being given.
Absorbing all of these reflections tore at me more than I had anticipated. I’ve practiced Tibetan Buddhism for my whole adult life, but in the process of this study, no matter how neutral my intellectual stance was, my body gave me a visceral experience of the fraught and rocky territory I was entering. My heart would race and my cheeks flush as old friends and mentors warned me, in simple and straightforward terms, that overemphasizing sex in Buddhism is dangerous, and they cautioned me not to fall off the path. They shared the belief that sexuality, including sexual desires, activity, and sexual identity, simply wasn’t an issue for “true dharma practitioners.” Some expressed exasperation and worry that dharma spaces were being overrun by social issues related to sexual orientation and identity — a.k.a. “the newest string of things we grasp at.”
But clearly, not talking about it isn’t working. This study found that, with very few exceptions, sexuality is not being addressed publicly in Western Buddhist spaces. However, approximately ninety percent of participants believed it was important for sexuality to be discussed in Buddhist spaces. Buddhist practitioners are engaging in thoughtful and nuanced explorations of sexuality on their own and with their peers, but they are seeking help and guidance in contextualizing these explorations in a Buddhist framework. They pointed to compassion and love, self-acceptance, skillful action, and ethical boundaries, expanding awareness, cultivating embodiment, developing sacred rituals, and addressing fear as dharmic themes related to sexuality and their desire for their Buddhist teachers, elders and leaders to help guide them in their exploration.
Breaking the Silence
I believe that a willingness to allow sexuality into the conversation is the only way forward because, left unchecked and unexamined, we will only perpetuate a damaging negative culture of sexuality that has already caused much harm. All the interviewees expressed a desire to change the current societal norms of sexuality, which they viewed as either too promiscuous, too repressive, or both, to one more aligned with their Buddhist views. Some interviewees said that they liked Buddhism because it felt non-sexual, sexually irrelevant, or, for some, sexually liberating. Some of the participants expressed that sex itself held such a minimal and unimportant role in their lives that it was not compelling enough to address dharmically. The fact that sexuality is not addressed in Buddhism was part of the appeal, at least at the beginning. This view reflected a kind of “opt out” perspective in reaction to the western culture of sexuality. One participant described dharma spaces as a sort of refuge from the sexuality of the larger cultural context “partly because I treat it as a place apart from sexuality.”
This sense of safety offered by the absence of sexuality in a largely unspoken way provided comfort to some people in contrast to the culture from which western convert dharma practitioners emerge. The danger of disrupting this place of refuge for people by introducing the topic of sexuality is, for some, not worth the risk. But almost every view of sexuality from these Buddhists was inseparable from its response to the alternative—a pervasive sexual culture dominated by and imbued with Christian values. It seemed clear – whether it came in the form of the desire to escape a sex-obsessed climate or in stories of the ways repression and shame had caused sexual trauma or harm – that, for many of these participants, Buddhism offered not so much an enlightened way to understand and practice with sexuality, but an escape from the alternative, which they found significantly painful and confusing.
While some participants were satisfied with the alternative sexual culture that Buddhism offered them, many people who’d come to Buddhism hoping for a more values-aligned spiritual or religious experience than they’d grown up with felt disappointed in their chosen tradition when it came to sexuality. While Buddhism may have offered them a respite from a more painful culture of sexuality, what they almost exclusively encountered in Buddhism was silence on the topic. In this way, my experience mirrored that of my interviewees. I had started this project hoping to unearth Buddhist views of sexuality that I’d missed in my personal experience and in the stories I’d heard from friends. Instead, the overwhelming consensus was that the honest, nuanced, and direct engagement with life’s many complexities that we’d appreciated so much about our Buddhist traditions seemed to leave out this significant and fraught topic altogether. Instead of figuring out how to engage sexuality on the path, we were being implicitly told to leave it off the path. As one participant asked, Do we not trust the dharma enough to hold this, too?
Fortunately, lots of people do. They may not learn about it in public dharma talks (though some do; shout-out to Lama Rod Owens) or in dharma texts (though some do; see works by José Ignacio Cabezón), but these practitioners have brought their own wisdom deeply and transformationally into their sex lives and their sexual bodies. People spoke about the importance of specific dharma practices like insight meditation, which can offer training to “expand awareness of what I experience on a sensual level.” Ultimately, a number of participants shared the sentiment about wanting to normalize sexuality as part of the human experience, while others emphasized the perspective of sexuality as sacred, as something that should be engaged with very thoughtfully and carefully and ideally with ceremony. For these practitioners, the dharma is rich with possibilities for individual and collective spiritual growth, which can include sexuality.
Participants also spoke about why they believe this work is vital for healthy dharma practice, both on deeply personal and collective levels. Some people are directly seeking help regarding embodiment. A number of people wished to harness elements of their experience of sexuality in their spiritual lives, further emphasizing the theme of connection. Others desired their dharma practice to help them overcome fear and overwhelm about their own sexual minds and bodies. Most of the time, queer dharma practitioners were the ones who offered particularly nuanced theories due in part to the convergence of queer philosophy and Buddhist practice. Contemporary queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz states, “Queer futurity does not underplay desire. In fact it is all about desire, desire for both larger semi-abstractions such as a better world or freedom but also, more immediately, better relations within the social that include better sex and more pleasure.” There are strong tensions here: between past, present, and future; between an existing culture of sexuality and an emerging new culture; and between traditional Buddhist views of desire and sensuality and modern Western queer views. The coming together of queer theory and Buddhist practice in the lived experience of queer dharma practitioners thus challenges and expands Buddhist encounters with sexuality that give rise to new possibilities for Western dharma practitioners. As one queer participant stated, “If the Buddha offered these teachings as a path to end suffering, to alleviate suffering, and people with specific embodiments of specific gender and sexual identities have been able to translate, practice, and embody the dharma in a way that allows them to relieve their suffering, I think it’s important that that be shared.” Unfortunately, the vast majority of this work is being done in private, and the insights being generated are often also kept private. Rarely are these kinds of nuanced conversations about sexuality being addressed by the people we rely on and trust the most to guide us on the Buddhist path – our teachers.
Can the Dharma Hold This Too?
If, as practitioners and teachers, we were more equipped to walk into the fire of sexuality with the same grace and skill as perhaps we deal with anger or other emotions, what kind of wisdom could arise? Through my interviews, it became clear we are hesitant to walk into the fire of sexuality because sex is powerful, often seemingly inextricable from delusion, it can be harmful, and it can be intoxicating. That’s all true, and the question remains—do we not trust the dharma to hold this, too? I’ve become a little bit obsessed with that question, not because I’m sex-crazed or think that sexuality is the key to liberation, but because I can’t stomach the idea that such a major part of the human predicament would be sidelined from the dharma path, especially when it’s a central theme in so many peoples’ suffering and joy.
After doing this project, I believe that the dharma is, in fact, plenty strong and big enough to hold and even support our sexuality because individual people are figuring it out and developing tremendous methods for sexuality on the Buddhist path. But because the western culture of sexuality is so ingrained in the soil in which Western Buddhist views on sexuality are cultivated, we risk perpetuating the same culture if we don’t consider the topic carefully. Due to Buddhism’s already relatively conservative position on sexuality, without directly grappling with it from a socially contextualized and pedagogically thorough Buddhist perspective, our current western messages of sexuality will simply fill in the void of silence left on the topic.
Lay western convert Buddhists come from a western culture of sexuality that feels to them repressed, shameful, and dualistic, and they are increasingly calling for new and more spiritually grounded ways of understanding and engaging sexuality. Therefore, western Buddhism has an opportunity to develop new, theologically sound, culturally responsive, and skillfully graduated methods for incorporating dharma teachings and practices of sexuality into Buddhist communities. I believe this is an important task for this subgroup of Buddhism as new generations of Western practitioners with increasingly spiritually rich understandings and demands of sexuality enter and form Western Buddhist communities. If this is not done, I believe the absence of such teachings will become increasingly stark and the possibility that practitioners will lose confidence in the Buddhist path’s ability to cultivate liberation in all areas of life may increase. However, these participants showed that wise, compassionate, and liberatory transformation is possible by skillfully engaging the topic of sexuality in dharma practice.
