Essay: DIY Trans Buddhism

 DIY Trans Buddhism

by Olivia Logan West

My introduction to Buddhism, and Eastern thought came through a Western lens. As a young psychology student I craved a deeper understanding of both my own experiences and those of others. Why I craved that deeper understanding, I didn’t know. It felt like an innate urge, as if I was robbed of a secret understanding that might contextualize the strange experience of thinking, feeling, moving within a body. My inquiries were challenging and often left me feeling more lost in a hunger to know. I looked toward adjacent fields, namely philosophy, and began taking what undergraduate courses were immediately available. I cycled through courses like Ancient Philosophy, American Philosophy, the Philosophy of Sex and Love, until I found myself in an online, “Eastern Philosophy,” course, where I finally perceived a feeling of relief, that I’d touched that secret I’d craved for so long. 

    It was the first time I was exposed to the concept of, “non-self,” via the Buddha’s teachings. At first, this was a terrifying concept for me. How could a young person, fully ingrained in the notions and practices of masculinity while secretly craving the body and experiences of a woman, know and practice the idea of no-self? I was trapped in a paradox. If neither my current experience, which felt illusory, nor the, “truer,” self I felt within so deeply, were objectively real, then what was left for me? Operationalizing philosophical or moral thought is extremely difficult and I’d never before felt the need to enact a concept I’d learned. I never internalized Plato’s ideas of the split body lovers into my notion of modern dating or romance, but the concept of no-self enraptured me and I so desired to live my life without a notion of fixed self. 

    Now, I identify as a lay buddhist, which perhaps is a controversial notion. While I don’t feel the need to warrant my beliefs, I only mark that spirituality involves creativity, and the way teachings function for one illusory self may not function well for others. My system of Buddhist thought is my own and yet I do not seek to discredit nor fault more organized forms of the practice. I had to understand no-self for myself, in my current time and culture. This is an extremely difficult task for a Westerner. Buddhism and its core teachings adapt to the cultures they are practiced in. This is why we see so many forms and practices from Mahayana to Zen. In a disenfranchised Western world where ancient teachings are now being funneled through modes of empiricism, capitalism, and leftover ideals and presentations of Western religions, it can be difficult to know how Buddhism aligns for a young American queer. 

    My initial attempt at practicing no-self was to attempt to eradicate both my then current understanding of myself, a young man coming of age, and my secret self, a young woman trapped in the black box deep within my skull. I humbly began a meditation practice seeking a calmness wherein I could forget the hunger that divided me into fearful shards. It didn’t take. I oscillated between conviction and commitment, versus despair and self-loathing that culminated into self-soothing with alcohol or mind numbing levels of consumption. Neither selfish practice (which I believe this early method was) nor self medicating could push away  my discomfort with the false self, nor could it quiet the angry femme within. My attempt at no-self via mindfulness left me more trapped in desire. 

    Perhaps I had misunderstood the Noble Truths. First, that suffering inevitably exists. But no, I’d acknowledged and recognized the suffering that I’d yet to call gender dysphoria. Second, that suffering is caused by desire and greed. I strived so dearly to know my greed. I believe I struggled most with the third Noble Truth: that the cessation of suffering comes from the letting go of desire. I was stuck there, unable to let go, unable to see or acknowledge the Fourth Truth: The Middle Path wherein one may find balance and the cessation of suffering through the eightfold Path: right action, right speech, right view, right mindfulness, right livelihood, right concentration, right effort, right resolve. None of these practices came easily when I could not let go of my desire to exist as a feminine entity, in a feminine body. 

    It was a horrible experience of paradox, one that I deeply misunderstood. In my eyes, my practice became hypocritical. I acted and strived for right mindfulness and action, yet secretly desired another state of mind, another way to act. Self and gender are so interlinked as social constructs they are hard to parse apart. The term, “social construct,” is often overused to the point of abstraction, but is a truly powerful term when taken pragmatically. Time is a social construct. Two clocks, set to the same mark, one placed on a table and another on the floor will run at different times if left alone long enough. Why? Because of the effect of gravity on our perceived time. Money is a social construct. It is the illusion that paper can represent valued goods and services. Yet I do not live my life saying, “time and money are social constructs so I must eradicate them from my experience in order to feel relief from the pain of hungering after more time and more money.” In the culture I live in, I cannot exist without some freedom of time and some access to money. Self and gender are also social constructs. There is no organ in my body where Olivia can be found. I cannot describe her by my DNA. There is no written law of the universe that says we must practice femininity, masculinity, or androgyny, in any prescribed way. A day is different on earth than it is on mars. Additionally, these illusory yet powerful entities are nearly inescapable and my younger self was attempting the inhuman task of living without self or without a desire for gendered presentation. 

    On Right Action, which one was right for me? To live my best attempt as an individual constantly striving to let go of, “taboo,” desires, or to engage with myself in a new way, one that involves seeking a more adapted form of being. I challenge the notion of no-self. It is a paradox that cannot be removed from experience no matter how hard we try. I think perhaps we seek to know true-self, kinder-self, adapted-self, as practitioners of Buddhism. 

    There’s an old Buddhist parable. I heard it for the first time at Oregon Buddhist Temple, ironically enough from a young Trans Woman, guest speaking on ideas similar to the topic of this essay. She attempted to educate the congregation on queer identities so that the temple might be a safer place for all participants. The parable she told: Someone is shot with an arrow. They don’t remove it. Instead, when looking at the wound they ask, “Why? Who shot me? How could such violence occur?” This line of questioning seems an absurd misunderstanding of the notions of reducing suffering. True cessation is to remove the arrow. A truer self is one that is capable of existing without the burden of the wound. The arrow must be pulled. This is analogous to much more than gender dysphoria but in my own experience it was deeply profound. I was asking ridiculous questions, “Why do I have these desires of womanhood? How did they come to be? Am I sick? Will I be rejected by my family, my culture if I…” - if I pulled out my arrow. Buddhism does not ask us to abandon conventional wisdom, but when faced with the taboo of oppressive cultures, conventional wisdom, such as removing an arrow, seems a radical, near impossible ideal. At the time I had begun my transition but I had done so with the paradox still ingrained and I felt wrong, that transness somehow undermined my spirituality. The story of the arrow helped me see that the simplest way of removing my suffering was to rip out my arrow. I breathed deeper that day. 

    There is another hypocrisy I had placed on myself. It seemed I’d forgotten that every practitioner of Buddhism I’d met or read about still practiced gendered self. Why then should my own gender identity then invalidate my own practice? It never did. I don’t mean to say that this was a notion verbalized towards me as discrimination. No community member ever told me that my queer identity was a thorn in my understanding of Buddhist teaching, but it was something I’d internalized from existing as a Western trans woman that I then projected onto my personal spirituality. 

    Gender and self are inescapable, but the arrows and wounds they carry can be removed and sutured if we are brave enough to pull out the shaft, tearing the flesh, so we might stem the bleeding. We may never know where the arrows came from originally, but it is useless to lay wounded in an impossible attempt to live mindfully ignorant of mortal wounds.