Sorry for bumping a 18-month-old thread. But I believe it's an important resource, since some trans people, frustrated with "Puritan" religions, but feeling some need to develop their minds using some kind of spiritual training, might come across this very interesting thread, and thus my motivation to push it to the top again
There is an
International Transgender Buddhist Sangha. I tend to use that website as a starting point to explore things related to transgenderism and Buddhism. To put it shortly, it would be strange to "exclude"
anyone from Buddhism, but of course some schools might offer some different approaches to transgenderism.
Specifically in Mahayana Buddhism (Zen/Ch'an, and of course all Vajrayana Buddhism), it makes no sense to "exclude" anyone from Buddhism — we all have the same Buddha nature, no matter what gender or species we are (it doesn't even matter if we
believe in having a Buddha nature or not; we have it nevertheless), so it would be rather pointless to exclude transgendered people from Buddhism. Even if you wish to be an ordained monk/nun, there are some quaint rules in the Vinaya (which lists the precepts and vows) specifically for transgendered people: for instance, you are not to receive the liberation vows if you change gender three times.
One might wonder why this was made a rule 2600 years ago! Unless a qualified teacher is well aware of transgendered issues, they might shrug this rule away and attribute it to cultural issues. But the reality is actually quite pragmatic: rules for women and men are slightly different,
not because of cultural discrimination, but to
protect women (remember, even today, women are culturally seen as a "lesser" type of human throughout most of Asia. The Buddha was well aware that concerned parents would never allow their daughters to get ordination if they weren't absolutely sure that their virtue would remain intact, and this required a few extra rules to make sure they were well protected). So someone changing gender often (even today, there are few cases of people doing the switch
three times — there are a few who did it twice, though) would constantly have to start their training and their practices from scratch, which would be, frankly, rather wasteful. Changing it once, however, would not be a problem. Even on the most Puritan Buddhist schools, they will have to abide by that rule.
On the Vajrayana schools, tantric practice definitely requires a clear split between genders — it simply doesn't work any other way. So, in my understanding, if you have GID, to achieve the best results, you
should most definitely transition — specially if you're serious about your practice and wish to proceed swiftly. Otherwise, if your mind is so misaligned with your body, the practice won't work out — you'd be doing the "wrong" practice for your mind. Or, putting it in more conventional Western words, you'd be so stressed out to be "forced" to do a practice which is not appropriate for your perceived gender, that you'd have a hard time relaxing your mind and actually enjoying the practice... which is the whole point of doing it.
Obviously, I'm not a teacher, so I might be completely wrong. I would imagine that a Vajrayana teacher, aware of the issues, would be kind enough to point a trans person to a different kind of method (there are, fortunately, thousands of them) until you can get your mind and body properly aligned again. Because in Vajrayana practice, the body is not seen as "evil" or a "source of problems" — something to be rejected — as in some Theravada schools. Rather, the body participates in the enlightenment process; it's one of the required tools for that. So I feel rather confident that a good, qualified teacher, with a proper understanding of trans issues, would do their best to help someone in their transition, so that they can get back to their practice.
VeryGnawty has already said a
lot about the whole issue of a certain (mis-)understanding that people have about attachment, so I shall not comment more on that — just to reinforce what she said: Buddhists don't renounce to pleasure. They renounce to their
attachment to pleasure, which is a completely different story! The result is that a truly enlightened being cares little if they are physically male or female, and will display whatever gender is more appropriate for better helping people out. Since they have absolutely no attachment to being either male or female, they might have no qualms in transitioning, if they think that's a better way to help others.
Of course, truly enlightened beings are rare — there are certainly a few around, and we might even come across them now and then without having a clue (they certainly won't advertise!) — but, while on the journey to enlightenment, practitioners will most certainly do their best to deal with their conflicting emotions and habitual tendencies. This has some interesting consequences.
I've written a long text last December about how trans people can use Buddhist methods to decrease their anxiety and frustration levels about their condition. Roughly speaking, it means training your own mind to give a bit less importance to what you feel and think. This does
not mean to
suppress your feelings or thoughts — these are what make you a human being! A brain is made to think; a central nervous system is made to have sensations and feed them into the brain; both are natural for a human being, and "suppressing" either of them is simply nonsense (we cannot change the way we are, we can only change the way we
think we are).
With practice, however, one can learn to deal with what we think and what we feel. And even if we're not "truly enlightened", we can at least achieve a point where our thoughts about ourselves don't stress us out. We will
still feel those thoughts and emotions (in fact, because we have learned to pay better attention overall, those thoughts and emotions might even be felt more intensively!). But we will not feel
compelled by them; we learn that we have a
choice to act upon them.
And, for many transgendered Buddhists, this can simply mean to go ahead with transition and don't worry too much about what happens afterwards. For others, it means that transitioning (or not!) might not be ultimately so pressing, so stressing, so filled with anxiety. This can become rather important for someone who just realized late in their life that they are transgendered, and are in the middle of an emotional roller-coaster: they might feel the urge to transition, but, on the other hand, since there is so much to lose, they might also stress out about the whole idea — and feel their emotions jump crazily from one extreme to the other: "I
must transition or I'll get crazy!" and "If I go through transition, I will lose
everything in my life, and
that drives me crazy too!". With enough meditation practice, one will see how these two extremes are just exaggerations, and how the strong emotions tied to each extreme are nothing more than our own thoughts, to which we give an exaggerated importance and attribute too much "reality". In fact, neither extreme is "ultimately true", but it was just our own mind which fabricated them. Once we realize that, well, then we don't need to act in a conditioned way. Sure, we will still feel the strong urge to transition, but we can be rational about it: take measures, plan ahead, work towards transition in a step-by-step way, without anxiety about what will happen. And we might still feel the fear of rejection, of financial problems, of future discrimination and so forth, but all those fears will be just seen as being expectations of a future that doesn't exist yet, and given less importance: we will pay attention to them, if and when they actually become true (i.e. we will be aware of discrimination when it happens; but we won't spend sleepless nights in fear that we might get discriminated, and postpone transition because of that — and having to deal longer with the urges towards transition because we're postponing everything!).
What I've always repeated on my own article (and elsewhere) is that Buddhist techniques aren't "magic". It's not as if you joined a secret tennis club and immediately become a tennis champion the moment you join. These methods and techniques take a long time to learn and to master, and, like everything in our lives, they require training. Think about how many hours you had to learn to apply makeup so that it looks great on your face — neither too much, nor too little — but eventually you reach a point where makeup becomes natural and is done without fear of "doing something wrong" or anxiety of "taking too much time". Once you've mastered the technique, you just do it, and that's all there is to it. The same happened with pretty much everything we've learned — from tying our shoelaces to reading and writing; from riding a bike to driving a car. We start with small steps, where everything seems to be difficult, but by training every day, eventually it becomes "instinctive" and we just laugh at how silly we were at the beginning, because
now it's so easy to do.
Buddhist meditation works precisely like that. At the beginning it seems impossible to deal with our strongest emotions and deepest thought. For a transgendered person who sees the whole transition as the single most important event in their lives, which consumes all their energy and time in thinking about it, which causes endless pain, fear, frustration, anxiety, worries, and depression — even the idea of someone saying that "it's just a thought; we can learn to deal with it" might seem... well, a blasphemy. Or lack of respect. Or a claim from someone who has absolutely no idea what they're really talking about.
But the truth is that it's not really much different from learning to drive a car. For most of us, after the first driving lesson, we will believe that it's impossible to learn so many things at the same time, paying attention to so many details, knowing what to do in so many different situations. We might say, "driving is not for me; I will never be able to learn it; I'm just not a 'driver type', it requires a special talent". But if we persist and train more and more, we'll soon be laughing at how easy it becomes with training. Sure, it might take a few weeks for some — or years in my case! — until we're comfortable with driving. But once we've mastered it, we can tell others, who have just had their driving lesson, that we have gone through that, and understand what they feel, and explain them that the more they train, the easier it will become — because it will become
natural. And once we master driving it can become an
enjoyable activity. It's just us that are exaggerating the difficulties because it's all so new to us.
Dealing with any other of our frustrations and anxieties is exactly the same thing. At the beginning it seems ludicrous to believe that just learning properly how to observe our own thoughts will help out in lessening the sense of frustration or even depression about our transgendered situation. And the "beginning" can actually take a long time (unlike driving lessons, which, after a few, are enough to give us plenty of confidence to let us believe that we can actually learn to drive!) — just because frustration, anxiety, existential angst and so forth are overwhelming feelings to which we're so used to that it seems impossible that they're not "a part of us". So, recognising those emotions as they are — merely thoughts that we're constantly reinforcing — is not easy. It's actually very hard to do so! That's why it takes a lot of time to learn to deal with them.
But, eventually, after a while we might start noticing some differences. I can only give my own example. I'm not even sure if I'm a transsexual or not; I seriously suspect that I'm a "suppressed transsexual" (a crossdresser who makes an effort not to think too much about transition, except in dreams), but I have no medical evaluation about that condition, so I don't really know. Nevertheless, as a crossdresser, I feel the constant urge to get dressed. When I cannot, for some reason (almost always because someone — either my wife, my friends, etc. have "suddenly" come up with something that prevents me from having some time free for me), then obviously I get very frustrated, and even quite angry — or hopelessly sad. But even when I finally managed to dress, I was aware that I could only enjoy that feeling for a few hours — then I had to undress, pack everything, and who knows how many days I had to wait to get dressed again. This obviously made me very frustrated. In some extreme cases, it was so frustrating that I didn't even dress when I had some time free — because dealing with the frustration of getting undressed again was simply too much. In other cases, I just stayed awake for as long as I could, often watching the sun rise, and only then, collapsing with sleep, I would finally undress and go to bed... shedding a few tears in frustration for not being able to stay awake a bit longer.
I'm sure that many of you have gone through similar experiences.
Well, after a few years of daily practice, there was one day when I actually noticed that I wasn't so frustrated as usual when starting to undress. I just observed how great that day/night had been and how much I've enjoyed it. But now the day was finished — why spoil all the fun I had being dressed and focus only on the frustration of having to undress? It seemed a bit stupid. I
had a great time. Those memories would last a few days for sure. I
did enjoy myself. So why spoil that feeling? So it was with a smile that I finally hit the bed, enjoying the pleasure of those still fresh memories.
And a few months later, when I had everything planned to have another session, my wife, with pinpoint accuracy, told me that I had to "sacrifice" my crossdressing day because she wanted to go shopping for food. Usually this made me feel furious at her, and then, afterwards, push me into frustration nearing depression for a few days. But that time neither of those things happened. I just thought, well, I have no control over what happens over my life. So what? I'm supposed to enjoy spending time with my wife (after all, that's why we stick together!). Sure, shopping for food
precisely on the exact time I had set apart for crossdressing is frustrating — but that's just because I view crossdressing as "more important" than shopping for food. Or even "more important" than spending some time with my wife (even if most people wouldn't think that pushing trolleys through aisles is not the perfect date!). Well, isn't that just having the wrong priorities in my life? I could always dress on a different day. Allowing my foul temper to rise and being angry at my wife would just make her angry, too, and she might throw up a tantrum and make my next days miserable. Would that be worth all the trouble? Of course not. I certainly didn't exactly jump to it with enthusiasm and eagerness, but just agreed and remained silent. That way, no harsh words were exchanged. Since I refused to vent my anger and frustration at her, she had no reason to pick at me. The dressing was postponed, and the next time I had a bit of time free, I just enjoyed it even more — because at least I didn't have to deal with a furious wife, but just with a tolerant one. This was just so much more reasonable.
Obviously I
was both angry and frustrated. But by being able to choose
not to say anything, and not triggering a round of word warfare with my wife, that day passed without any arguments. Obviously I wasn't exactly radiating joy and happiness — but at least I wasn't acting upon my frustrations. I wasn't "suppressing" my anger, I was just determined not to let my anger drive my actions. I'm pretty sure my wife knows very well that she has thwarted my little moments of enjoyment, but I refuse to let these become a source of heated discussion. And, by doing that as part of my mental training, I found out that it becomes easier with time. I just learned to accept those feelings and emotions, and also learned that I don't need to act according to them. With time they will also become less strong. The urge to crossdress is stronger than ever before — like with any other CD, the intensity of that urge grows with time, as we get more used to it — but, on the other hand, the frustration about not being able to dress when
I want has decreased dramatically. And, perhaps more to the point, the anger at my wife for her impossible timetable which deprives me of all free time has also decreased — I learned to understand better her own priorities, and to accept that my crossdressing urges are not a priority at all for
her. Why should it be? She definitely tolerates it, but it's not as if it's something that is enjoyable for her, or useful in any regard for her. So, being able to view things from her point of view, I lessened my anger, but also my frustration. Just by noticing that two people who share so many things together view
this thing in completely different ways has shown me that the urge to crossdress is not something that intrinsically exists by itself: it's just something that I create in my mind, even if I'm not truly aware of it. For me, it
looks like it's part of myself and that I cannot do anything about it; but that's not really true. I most certainly
can do something about it. At the very least, I can change the way I deal with my anger and frustration.
I should point out that I'm not a good practitioner! If I were, I wouldn't be writing posts about my frustrations and ranting to other CD friends about how, once again, my wife thwarted my plans (which she does in 70% of all opportunities to dress; 20-25% being taken by other people who also request my little spare time). I certainly feel the anger and frustration, just as before. But I'm much better at dealing with it. It's not my wife's fault for not being so excited about my crossdressing as I am; she has just a different viewpoint. By having learned that, I was able also to learn a lot about myself — namely, that I'm not so patient as I thought I was
But I can become better at being patient. It pays off. The less angry my wife is about my crossdressing, the more opportunities I've got. The more often I indulge in her tiniest wishes, thus acting according to her priorities, the more she is willing to respect my own priorities. The more I understand my own urges, the better I understand why she is so unreasonably worried about me getting "spotted" wearing women's clothes in public (which makes her curb my wishes to spend some time out with some CD friends). Her own worries are as "unresonable" and "irrational" as my crossdressing urges — which I obviously think differently about. But I'm learning to think differently about it.
Very slowly. But it works
Eventually, at some point, I will be able to feel absolutely zero frustration about my crossdressing urges. When that happens, crossdressing will just be pure pleasure. I will be perfectly aware that those days will be rare and completely satisfied about that. I will be also completely aware that I cannot dress more than a few hours — sometimes 6, sometimes 10 — but eventually I will have to undress and go to sleep, and that is simply how things are: it's pointless to feel sad or frustrated about something that has to finish: everything must finish at some point, after all. And, conversely, eventually my wife will also lessen her own worries about my crossdressing, and allow me to go out more. Possibly even considering transition at some point; but both her and myself just need to become better at dealing with our own emotions and feelings. This just takes time, but it's not impossible.
And perhaps at that time I might even be able to transition just to be able to better help other transgendered persons, and, drawing from my own experience, teaching them the very same techniques that allowed me to deal with everything, step by step. This is a bit what those groups of transgendered Buddhists are doing right now. Many have transgendered meditation teachers who have gone through this process. At the point where transitioning or not transitioning was pretty much the same for them, they asked themselves: what will be more helpful for other transgendered people? For some of them, the answer was that by transitioning, they will be better able to give a good example of how the techniques work, since they will be able to form a closer bond with them, as they share something in common. There are a few old sayings in Buddhist writings explaining that a teacher will appear when the students are ready; and that Buddhist teachers will appear in whatever form is better for the students to develop confidence in the methods. I can very well imagine that a transgendered teacher will have it much easier to explain Buddhist methods to transgendered students: it's just that they can see the example they've set, see how Buddhism doesn't reject anyone, and that it's no big deal being transgendered or not — we can all learn the same methods and achieve the same results, no matter who we are or how we look like.
A good Buddhist teacher has no personal interests; all the interests they have is to help out their students. To do so, they will employ whatever methods are best to develop their students to their fullest potential. If they have transgendered students who need some encouragement that it's "all right" for transgendered persons to learn Buddhist methods and techniques, then I have no doubts that a good teacher who is also transgendered will have no qualms in transitioning. Not because they "want" or "need" it, but because they will know that this is the best way to develop the confidence of their students, by setting an example.
