Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, turns 90 this week – a milestone that’s reigniting hypothesis over his eventual successor.
Whereas the Dalai Lama is the face of Buddhism to many individuals the world over, he’s truly the top of only one custom inside Tibetan Buddhism referred to as the Gelug college.
Tibetans consider the Dalai Lama to be the manifestation of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, and the “one who hears the cries of the world”.
Avalokiteśvara is prayed to throughout Asia, and is called Chenrezig in Tibet, Guanyin in China, and Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan.
A statue of Avalokiteśvara.
Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is an individual, or a mythic illustration of an individual, who denies themselves enlightenment till all beings can obtain enlightenment. Avalokiteśvara seems to dwelling beings in no matter type may finest save them.
Though Avalokiteśvara originated in India as a person, they are often depicted as both a person, lady, or non-binary being. This gender fluidity has led to them being revered as a trans icon within the West.
I’ve spent the previous 5 years investigating the lives of queer Buddhists in Australia. As a part of this analysis, I’ve surveyed and interviewed 109 LGBTQIA+ Buddhist Australians.
The phrases of those people, and my very own expertise as a genderqueer Buddhist individual, reveal how the Dalai Lama emerges an an unlikely inspiration for people sharing a trans and Buddhist id.
The Huge Buddha is a big bronze sculpture positioned close to the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island, Hong Kong.
Joshua J. Cotten/Unsplash
Letting go of binaries
By way of my work I’ve discovered LGBTQIA+ Buddhist Australians are usually reluctant to reveal their queer identities to their Buddhist communities, and could also be advised to stay silent about their identities.
For some, Avalokiteśvara’s gender fluidity has been necessary for reaffirming each their queer and Buddhist selves.
One Buddhist trans lady, Annie*, advised me Guanyin had particular significance for her. Annie spoke about Avalokiteśvara travelling from India to China as a male, earlier than “transitioning” to the primarily feminine presentation of Guanyin over centuries. Annie stated:
I pray to her usually and infrequently discover I get a response. In fact the enlightened state is past all method of worldly binaries, together with gender, and is immensely necessary in letting go of binaries in my journey in direction of enlightenment.
Walter* has had an extended fascination with depictions of Avalokiteśvara that “showed ‘him’ looking effeminate and handsome, with a cute moustache […] A little bit homoerotic, a little bit provocatively gender fluid, as seen through my eyes”.
Walter provides:
An amazing many individuals in several cultures, throughout historical past, worship these figures. Intelligent how this determine can morph right into a radical trans! All of us wish to really feel comforted, secure and saved from struggling.
As queer Buddhists, we flip to to Avalokitesvara to really feel “comforted, safe and saved”.
One other interviewee, Brian*, advised me a couple of Tibetan invocation follow he did with a senior Tibetan monk, through which he encountered Guanyin:
[She] took my proper hand and handed some form of energy into it. She by no means spoke to me however simply returned the best way she had come. I used to be given some form of present, that’s all I do know.
Since this expertise, Brian has “always felt a strong connection to the feminine through her”. He has a particular Guanyin altar on his farm.
You’ll be able to’t be what you’ll be able to’t see
Some Buddhists deny Avalokiteśvara’s queerness.
Asher*, a genderqueer Buddhist I interviewed, advised me a couple of trainer who stated to them, “there was absolutely no way a gay person could be enlightened”.
Asher retorted:
What about Kanzeon, the bodhisattva of compassion, who has manifested as each female and male and, within the tales from Japan, has had erotic relationships with monks?
The trainer dismissed this, replying, “those are just stories”.
A black statue of Avalokiteśvara exterior a Japanese temple.
Wikimedia, CC BY
In her 1996 e-book Transgender Warriors, trans activist Leslie Feinberg writes: “I couldn’t find myself in history. No one like me seemed to have ever existed.”
Equally, Annie evoked the assertion: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
I, too, expertise this must see myself as a genderqueer, non-binary practitioner of Zen Buddhism. It was solely via doing these interviews with different queer Buddhists that I got here to understand Guanyin, a trans icon, is a statuette which adorns the altar of the Buddhist group I belong to.
Figuring out Avalokitesvara could also be depicted as a person, lady, or non-binary being lets us queer Buddhists know we exist – and have at all times existed – inside Buddhism.
Regardless of being a cisgender man who has been considerably inconsistent in his assist of queer individuals, the Dalai Lama, because the manifestation of the bodhisattva of compassion, is a doable non secular hyperlink between immediately’s queer Buddhists and centuries-long traditions of gender transition and fluidity.
*Names have been modified.
