Sometimes any kind of sex is sexual misconduct.
I remember taking refuge from a young Geshe fresh from Dharamsala who explained the specifics of sexual misconduct to me, and it clearly was the most uncomfortable part of his job—a celibate monk advising a much older woman on how she should and should not have sex? What he told me was straight out of Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, a text based on one by Atisha (which makes it nearly 1000 years old). For lay people, the basis of sexual misconduct is “any wrong orifice, or, all orifices except the vagina; any wrong time, such as when the woman is pregnant or during one-day vows; at any improper place, such as before one’s guru or near a stupa; any wrong partner, such as one’s own mother or father.”
The prohibition for ordained people is fairly generic. It says “all sexual activity becomes sexual misconduct,” and it describes the “deed” as “two organs coming into contact.” Yes, there is room for interpretation here, and yes, where there is a loophole, human beings will crawl into it and get sweaty.
And so I asked Geshe-la the obvious question: “What about gay sex?” Once I explained what that meant, he responded just as His Holiness did: “Don’t do it.” And I shrugged my shoulders and understood his answer for what it was: 1) as few words as possible on an uncomfortable subject; and 2) another aspect of their cultural history that the lamas are eager not to lose—regardless of how archaic it is–given all that they’ve lost already.
And that’s pretty much the end of the conversation as far as I am concerned. But James Shaheen, author of “Gay Marriage: What Would Buddha Do?”, believes His Holiness the Dalai Lama ought to have a more enlightened response to this question. And it’s not that he believes the Dalai Lama is homophobic: It’s just that he’s the Dalai Lama—i.e., he ought to uphold civil rights more explicitly.
I understand why Shaheen raised the question. . . . I just wish he hadn’t. Because what came next on the Tricycle blog was a lesson on the sex lives of Tibetan monks. And just what did this have to do with Buddhism? Well, Jeff Wilson’s point is that we should not presume to understand others without knowing something about the culture they’re part of. Knowing that gay monks were part of the accepted culture in Tibet, then, apparently gives us a larger context with which to interpret His Holiness’s response, since via the “Drombo” system, homosexuality—if not a form of gay marriage–had already been sanctioned.
What got lost in a conversation that has done more harm than good to the Dalai Lama was any discussion of how we might use the information provided in these posts to improve our practice. The obvious answer? Perhaps it’s time we re-examined our commitment to “right action” to make sure we aren’t taking advantage of “loopholes.”
Because you see, I can’t indulge in the semantic game that no vow is broken if “penetration” does not occur. I’m just a simple old lady who believes that for a monk, sex is sexual misconduct.
