Heartland

This article was sent to me many years back when Heartland just started. I have managed to look it up and got permissions from Alan to publish this.

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Why Do Gay Men Practice Together?

by Alan Oliver-The Gay Men’s Buddhist Sangha

Many people over the past eight years of gay practice have asked why we believe it is important for gay men to practice together. There are many other Buddhist centers and traditions in the world so why create a separate practice environment for gay men? This is a healthy question which raises important issues of dualism, separation and interdependence. I believe the following seven reasons help to explain why gay men choose to practice together.

1. Affinity groups with similar interests, backgrounds or visions have been a common model for people to create meaning in their lives. By knowing on multiple levels what your fellow practitioners have experienced and by sharing common life experiences you have a powerful base of understanding to work with and learn from. This can be a significant source of insight and growth. Women’s groups, African-American groups and Jewish groups are just three types of affinity groups that have proved worthwhile and successful.

2. When gay men practice together they have the opportunity to directly apply Buddhist principles to gay situations that have a familiar ring to many of us. The possibilities of this level of specificity when applying Buddhism to life situations is not present in many practice environments. The situation at times is worse than that when actual discrimination or homophobia is present in the Buddhist Center you are attending. A gay practice group enables us to fully integrate our lives and our practice in a very direct way with no need of apologies for bringing subjects such as casual sex into the discussion.

3. To study Buddhism often involves some level of homeleaving because Buddhism asks you to take a fresh look at your persona and the conditioning that you experienced growing up in your culture. Gay men experience homeleaving directly when they move out from the assumed heterosexual norm to be their own person. This outsider’s point of view is helpful as you rediscover, from a fresh point of view, Buddhist teachings. The principle of “Don’t know mind” may have more support in general in gay groups where the experience of having to rethink your whole life is common.

4. As gay men explore Buddhism and apply it to their experience, they have an opportunity to create or reshape forms of practice, ceremonies and develop new written and spoken formats. This in turn enables the gay community to customize what looks like the exotic or Asian practice so that the “gateway” to Buddhism is easier to open and access by a western gay community. This may not be so desirable or easy from a gay Asian standpoint since there is a closer match between the modern Asian culture and the traditional Buddhist culture. Although some gay men do very well by following the norms of practice of the Asian Buddhist traditions, others will want to use their redefining skills and instincts to create vivid and challenging new ways to practice.

5. Practicing together also allows a critical mass of intention to be brought together so that it can be presented more broadly to the gay community as an option that could help gay men live their lives with less suffering. This is a Boddisattva position in that there are others to help besides yourself. As Buddhists we vow to save all sentient beings so it seems appropriate that some attention be given to those with which we share a common bond. When a gay sangha mobilizes its resources to do this, it can have a powerful positive effect on individuals as well as the community as a whole. A distinction must be made between conversion which we don’t advocate and providing gay men with useful tools that they can use to reduce suffering.

6. There is something to be said for reclaiming our historic roots in Buddhist tradition. There is enough evidence of same-sex attraction among monks and among people in Asian Buddhist cultures that shows we were there at the beginning of Buddha’s teaching. This may help us as we make our participation known among Buddhist traditions. We need to be represented at the table of dialogue and practice when Buddhists get together to shape the course of the continuous unfolding of the Dharma. The paradox is that we are always in the state of letting go or surrendering our differences and becoming one with all Buddhists and all sentient beings.

7. The argument is often made for following one tradition, but they are all children of a common source and message. Don’t we enhance the richness of our practice by joining in gay groups that incorporate insights from all Buddhist traditions? They are all mirrors reflecting back to the common source. The diversity is rich and fulfilling. We have the opportunity in our gay practice groups to incorporate, integrate the great insights from everywhere including new insights of our own. That is a strength, not a weakness and in the fires of that process there will emerge the Buddha’s message fresh and whole as it occurred to him under the Bodhi tree.

About the author. Alan Oliver currently is living in New Jersey, in the United States, and works with an international Buddhist action group called The Asloka Global Network. For the past 5 years he lived in Bangkok and worked for the World Buddhist University. He has worked with Gay Buddhist groups in San Francisco in the 1990’s and is open to questions and dialogue about Buddhism and how Gay’s and Lesbians can benefit from studying and using core Buddhist teachings. He can be reached at-alanasoka AT gmail DOT com. Check out the Network at www.asokaglobal.net.