2.jpg)
For courage and inspiration, look to this generation's teens and twenty-somethings. They are bringing to transgender the energy and visibility that was around for gay and lesbian issues in the eighties.
My experience (in answer to a question)
"Yes i think i probably do look for encouragement from ppl to be myself, gender-wise. my generation in the 70s/80s was fighting to understand and deal with homosexuality and even in the 80s there were new laws to take rights away from gay ppl. the whole transgender issue didn't exist. i did not even begin to see it until the late 90s and only then came to see myself in those terms. it is strange halfway thro my life to be able to look at this more openly. i hope this current generation of young people will make transgender mainstream like mine made being gay / lesbian mainstream"
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Transgender survival tip no. 44
Try to avoid letting the desire to be different in the future turn into anger at who and what you presently are. You are the last person who deserves anger.
***
My own experience
I have to say that I have never really got angry at not fully being able to express my gender identity (or lack of it, in my case). But I know people sometimes do and it can bring a layer of harmful effects over and above the original issue.
***
My own experience
I have to say that I have never really got angry at not fully being able to express my gender identity (or lack of it, in my case). But I know people sometimes do and it can bring a layer of harmful effects over and above the original issue.
Transgender survival tip no.8
Gender identity can be fluid. As well as not allowing other people to box you in, also don't box yourself in, at least no too early.
Transgender survival tip no. 19
Getting bashed is WRONG and not something you forget. But it will pass and you may ultimately grow in strength from it.
***
My own experience
I was at an all boys school. I was never seriously beaten up at school but got pushed around plenty. Why?
I was always competitive and did well academically, got on to some school sports teams, etc. That sort of positive drive was seen as ok. I was also willing to defend myself physically.
But I refused to go along with the macho aggression that some wanted to dish out. On that score, it was black and white. Either you were the on the side of violent stength - or at very least pretended to go along with it - or you didn't. In which case you were regarded as a legitimate target. I didn't go with it and suffered the consequences.
I have seen the same dynamic operate in institutions, not least in all-male offender institutions. It seems almost innate; and hard but not imposible to counter.
***
My own experience
I was at an all boys school. I was never seriously beaten up at school but got pushed around plenty. Why?
I was always competitive and did well academically, got on to some school sports teams, etc. That sort of positive drive was seen as ok. I was also willing to defend myself physically.
But I refused to go along with the macho aggression that some wanted to dish out. On that score, it was black and white. Either you were the on the side of violent stength - or at very least pretended to go along with it - or you didn't. In which case you were regarded as a legitimate target. I didn't go with it and suffered the consequences.
I have seen the same dynamic operate in institutions, not least in all-male offender institutions. It seems almost innate; and hard but not imposible to counter.
Transgender survival tip no. 4.
TG requires self-expression. Self-expression may require courage. We sometimes need to build our courage and expression slowly, bit by bit alongside each other, intertwined even.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Physical empathising?
Sometimes I can feel in my body the emotion behind what someone is saying before I can understand their words. E.g. constriction, numbness, euphoria. What is that about?
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Three Pillars of Zen
"The Three Pillars of Zen" (Kapleau Roshi) in its 25th anniversary edition from Anchor / Doubleday in 1989. Green cover - anyone remember it? I see Kapleau Roshi has since died. I have never been to the Rochester Zen Center or any other zen centre but am glad to see it survives. http://www.rzc.org/html/abc/roshi_kapleau.shtml
Knowing nothing
See trees, see people,
see water in the pond.
All there is to know is
that I know nothing.
see water in the pond.
All there is to know is
that I know nothing.
Bodai-shin
JM:
I think bodai-shin is just the same as (or short for) Anokutara-sanmyaku-sanbodai-shin. Seems to me that, apart from 'shin' which translates 'citta', this must be just transliteration from Sanskrit into Japanse of annatura-samyak-sambodhi-cittaAnonymous
Comment:
Dogen says they are different.
JM:
Yes I guess you are right, Dogen does distinguish. In fact he says at the start of the Gakudou-youjinshuu, "Some say that bodhi-mind is the mind of annatura-samyak-sambodhi.....These people do not understand bodhi-mind, moreover they recklessly slander it." Mmm must look into that more...
I think bodai-shin is just the same as (or short for) Anokutara-sanmyaku-sanbodai-shin. Seems to me that, apart from 'shin' which translates 'citta', this must be just transliteration from Sanskrit into Japanse of annatura-samyak-sambodhi-cittaAnonymous
Comment:
Dogen says they are different.
JM:
Yes I guess you are right, Dogen does distinguish. In fact he says at the start of the Gakudou-youjinshuu, "Some say that bodhi-mind is the mind of annatura-samyak-sambodhi.....These people do not understand bodhi-mind, moreover they recklessly slander it." Mmm must look into that more...
They are all the same
Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Adyashanti, Mooji - many forms, one truth.
No material
Abiding nowhere, neither in reality nor in unreality, does not provide much material for speeches.
Compassion in zen
How de we reconcile the bodhisattva precept of bringing all sentient beings to enlightenment with Buddha’s statement that: "no bodhisattva who is a real bodhisattva cherishes the idea of an ego entity, a personality, a being or a separated individuality"? [1] If there are no separate beings, who is there to bring to enlightenment. And on the road to enlightenment, which if either has primacy: wisdom or compassion? Or is this just semantics?
According to Master Han Shan, when a bodhisattva has the thought that there are innumerable living beings, the doubt will soon arise as to whether it is ever possible to bring all of them to enlightenment. As told in the Diamond Sutra, it is to cut off this doubt in Subhuti’s mind that Buddha teaches the apparently contradictory [2] :
“All living beings are led by me to the final nirvana. Although immeasurable, uncountable and unlimitable numbers of living beings are thus led to the final nirvana, it is true that not a living being is led there." [3]
In the course of a sentence or two, Buddha seems to be replacing one profound teaching with an even more subtle one.
Buddha is saying that the doubt arises because the bodhisattva, seeing so many living beings, does not realise that they are all already in the state of ‘suchness’ or - more easily grasped – that there is no such thing as an ego. Yes, in the mind there is, but not in reality. And as it is the idea of an ego that leads to the idea of a personality, a being and thence to the idea of a separate life, no one who hold these false ides should be called a bodhisattva.
So why introduce the bodhisattva precept in the first place?
My guess is that while decreased ego can lead to greater compassion for others, such as they are, compassion and seeing things from another's viewpoint can help to reduce ego, the more fundamental goal. Deepening an understanding that everything is one undermines the separation of self from other. And how can 'the one' not have compassion for itself, by which time the concepts of 'compassion' and 'one' are becoming redundant. There are as many paths to enlightenment as there are apparent individualities to be dissolved.
So a budding bodhisattva is introduced to the need to bring all beings to enlightenment, but only as a means to an end, the end being wisdom and enlightenment. But a more mature bodhisattva needs to see that in reality there are no such beings to enlighten. Everything points to wisdom rather than compassion as the essence of enlightenment, though all merge in the end.
Yasutani Roshi's instruction to a student seems to support this . "In the deepest sense, even the Bodhisattva Kannon might be said to be attached to compassion, otherwise he would be a Buddha, free of all attachments. ... A Buddha is compassionate, but he isn't obsessed by the desire to save others." [4]
So: teaching people to build compassion and the desire to bring all others to enlightenment is a means to an end, a provisional teaching like most other teachings.
[1] The Diamond Sutra, transl. Price & Wong, Shambala Classics, Boston, 2005, page 19
[2] The Diamond Cutter of Doubts - A Commentary on the Diamond Sutra, by Master Han Shan, reproduced in Ch'an and Zen Teaching, Volume 1, Lu K'uan Yu, published Samuel Weiser, 1993, pp. 161-163
[3] ibid, page 161, quote abbreviated
[4] 3PZ, page106
According to Master Han Shan, when a bodhisattva has the thought that there are innumerable living beings, the doubt will soon arise as to whether it is ever possible to bring all of them to enlightenment. As told in the Diamond Sutra, it is to cut off this doubt in Subhuti’s mind that Buddha teaches the apparently contradictory [2] :
“All living beings are led by me to the final nirvana. Although immeasurable, uncountable and unlimitable numbers of living beings are thus led to the final nirvana, it is true that not a living being is led there." [3]
In the course of a sentence or two, Buddha seems to be replacing one profound teaching with an even more subtle one.
Buddha is saying that the doubt arises because the bodhisattva, seeing so many living beings, does not realise that they are all already in the state of ‘suchness’ or - more easily grasped – that there is no such thing as an ego. Yes, in the mind there is, but not in reality. And as it is the idea of an ego that leads to the idea of a personality, a being and thence to the idea of a separate life, no one who hold these false ides should be called a bodhisattva.
So why introduce the bodhisattva precept in the first place?
My guess is that while decreased ego can lead to greater compassion for others, such as they are, compassion and seeing things from another's viewpoint can help to reduce ego, the more fundamental goal. Deepening an understanding that everything is one undermines the separation of self from other. And how can 'the one' not have compassion for itself, by which time the concepts of 'compassion' and 'one' are becoming redundant. There are as many paths to enlightenment as there are apparent individualities to be dissolved.
So a budding bodhisattva is introduced to the need to bring all beings to enlightenment, but only as a means to an end, the end being wisdom and enlightenment. But a more mature bodhisattva needs to see that in reality there are no such beings to enlighten. Everything points to wisdom rather than compassion as the essence of enlightenment, though all merge in the end.
Yasutani Roshi's instruction to a student seems to support this . "In the deepest sense, even the Bodhisattva Kannon might be said to be attached to compassion, otherwise he would be a Buddha, free of all attachments. ... A Buddha is compassionate, but he isn't obsessed by the desire to save others." [4]
So: teaching people to build compassion and the desire to bring all others to enlightenment is a means to an end, a provisional teaching like most other teachings.
[1] The Diamond Sutra, transl. Price & Wong, Shambala Classics, Boston, 2005, page 19
[2] The Diamond Cutter of Doubts - A Commentary on the Diamond Sutra, by Master Han Shan, reproduced in Ch'an and Zen Teaching, Volume 1, Lu K'uan Yu, published Samuel Weiser, 1993, pp. 161-163
[3] ibid, page 161, quote abbreviated
[4] 3PZ, page106
It's not the words
It is comforting that reading around ch'an and zen, Tibetan Buddhism and advaita for a number of years leads to a realisation that they have the same underlying truth. The gaps between the texts, the teachings and the practices can seem insurmountable at first. Even Buddha "never used words on a fixed basis"[1].But eventually all of these can be read interchangeably.
[1] The Diamond Cutter of Doubts - A Commentary on the Diamond Sutra, by Master Han Shan, as in Ch'an and Zen Teaching, Volume 1, Lu K'uan Yu, published Samuel Weiser, 1993
[1] The Diamond Cutter of Doubts - A Commentary on the Diamond Sutra, by Master Han Shan, as in Ch'an and Zen Teaching, Volume 1, Lu K'uan Yu, published Samuel Weiser, 1993
Sunday, October 25, 2009
What if your psychodynamic counsellor is crap?
From me, who is pro-psychodynamic counselling...What if you think your psychodynamic counsellor might be not very good? What if you raise it with her and – because s/he is psychodynamic – she ALWAYS turns the question around, back onto your own psychology? If the issue is the client’s, that’s fine in principle, though it might not feel fine to the client. But what if the client has a point? Who is the counsellor accountable to? It must be one of the only paid-for services left in the modern, customer-oriented world, where the regulator explicitly allows the provider to turn all queries back on the ‘customer’, indeed structures the service so that that is the only option. Sure, the counsellor might get supervision, but the client has no way of knowing what is discussed. And the odd time the client might get to see the notes, s/he might find the issue presented very differently to the supervisor, heavily filtered by the counsellor. A strong client might just walk. A less insightful or less confident one might feel the counsellor must be right and think the problem is with themself. Isn’t there an inherent danger here?
No-gendered
Someone asked me how bi-gendered is different from no-gendered. I imagine it like this. If you take the society-constructed boxes labelled 'male' and 'female', then a BI-GENDERED person can't, or refuses to, live in just one of them, so lives in both.
To people who believe in the boxes, a NO-GENDERED person may appear to be living in both boxes, just like a bi-gendered one. But to the no-gendered person the boxes never existed in the first place.
To people who believe in the boxes, a NO-GENDERED person may appear to be living in both boxes, just like a bi-gendered one. But to the no-gendered person the boxes never existed in the first place.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Blue high heels
Where did she come from? Blue high heels tottering over the road bridge, short skirt in a force seven autumn breeze. She is half-smiling to herself, like she can see the incongruous-ness.
Homeless
I have a very old US army parka, may be from the 50s even. It was a life saver when i slept rough briefly in the 80s. So many times I have stored it or thought to bin it or give it the charity shop (but who would want it?) It seems I cannot get it out of my life. We are destined to be together. Someone will chuck it out when i die and wonder why i kept such a battered old thing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
