Gender & Buddhism

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AngelOfHarmony000
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Re: Gender & Buddhism

Post by AngelOfHarmony000 »

PadmaVonSamba wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 6:32 pm What is your gender when ordering a pizza?
What is your gender when throwing away the empty box?
Does it even apply?
That’s your gender when meditating.
What matters is the attitude that you engender.
That was a really clever play-on-words! Thank you for that point, I agree
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Gender & Buddhism

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

AngelOfHarmony000 wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 6:38 pm
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 6:32 pm What is your gender when ordering a pizza?
What is your gender when throwing away the empty box?
Does it even apply?
That’s your gender when meditating.
What matters is the attitude that you engender.
That was a really clever play-on-words! Thank you for that point, I agree
Yuk yuk yuk :jumping:
EMPTIFUL.
An inward outlook produces outward insight.
Fortyeightvows
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Re: Gender & Buddhism

Post by Fortyeightvows »

mutsuk wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 5:31 pm
Ayu wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 4:19 pm A translator (Tibetan to German) once told us that "Bodhisattva" in general is any gender. It must not be a he. Can be a she as well with equal likelyness.
This makes me assume that gender is of no import for Bodhisattvas.
According to Monier-Williams and all skt dictionaries, the genre is masculine. Only with a long a would it become a feminine but I don't think it is in dictionaries...
in spanish do they say bodhisattvo ?
Fortyeightvows
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Re: Gender & Buddhism

Post by Fortyeightvows »

AngelOfHarmony000 wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 6:35 pm
Fortyeightvows wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 12:51 am
Fortyeightvows wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2020 11:57 pm

Look up the story of Soreyyā
Here is the story on page 31 of the pdf
https://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/ ... ends-2.pdf

Here is an academic article about the story on page 12. there are also some color illustrations on page 416
http://iriab.soka.ac.jp/content/pdf/ari ... (2019).pdf
Thanks for that resource, I appreciate it! I read through that story and found it very intriguing, and it had some great points about changing gender within one incarnation
Glad you found some use for it.
I think there is another similar story but I haven't been able to remember it.
maybe someone else remembers?
SilenceMonkey
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Re: Gender & Buddhism

Post by SilenceMonkey »

I used to practice a lot of taichi and baguazhang, both are martial arts with roots in daoism that work with certain energies. I found the energies of different forms of qigong and energy work shifted my emotions, sometimes to the point where I felt substantially different. When practicing taichi a lot, I actually felt very feminine. (yin feeling) Some arts would make me more aggressive and manly. I've come to the conclusion that gender is fluid and changes with the energies and emotions. But most people haven't had experiences where working with energies shifted their subjective sense of who they are, so for a lot of people it feels more fixed.

On top of energies and emotions, there's all this conceptual stuff... cultural conditioning, labels, etc. That influences the expression of the feelings. Ultimately, it's just thoughts... they evaporate like smoke. And the energies also lose their individuality as one progresses in meditation. I think if one meditates on emptiness and the concepts begin to fall away, this is especially so... Because the concepts and the ignorance holding everything together will disappear. There becomes less need to assert your individuality in any way... male, female or whatever.

Sometimes it helps thinking of the saying, "You're not a human being having a spiritual experience. You're a spiritual being having a human experience." Imagining oneself as a deva taking form in a human body.... Some devas have male and female individualities (albeit much less than us). Some devas are beyond that, living in higher form realms and formless realms. They've transcended such things.

And the Buddhas and great Bodhisattvas are capable of emanating in whatever form they wish in order to benefit sentient beings... I think the more evolved a being is, the less these things really matter.

Everyone is living in their own dream... story... illusion... And they insist it's who they are, that it's all real one way or the other.
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Hazel
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Re: Gender & Buddhism

Post by Hazel »

Keep in mind that being non binary is no more illusory then being male or female. It's really easy to use the teachings as a means to demonize ones own identity, especially if that identity is atypical. In reality it is always healthy and important to have a sense of who you are, in other words to know yourself and to treat yourself kindly armed with that knowledge. There is a conventional self and it is not evil to recognize this, even if it exists only conventionally.

I am a transgender buddhist, by the way.
Happy Pride month to my queer dharma siblings!

What do you see when you turn out the lights?
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