Many people speak about sexual orientation in different ways. My understanding of this subject is a little different.
To explain it, I would first like to begin with one of the central teachings of the Buddha: Paṭiccasamuppāda, or Dependent Origination.
What is Paṭiccasamuppāda?
For someone who does not have a Buddhist background, Paṭiccasamuppāda can be understood simply as the teaching that things arise because of causes and conditions.
Nothing exists completely independently or simply because it has chosen to exist in a particular way. Our experiences, thoughts, feelings, identities, and ways of responding to the world arise through many different conditions.
The Buddha also explained an important relationship between viññāṇa (consciousness) and nāma-rūpa (mind-and-body). They condition and support one another. In the teaching given to Venerable Ānanda, the Buddha explains that consciousness and nāma-rūpa are connected in a way that allows experience and individual existence to continue.
Therefore, nāma-rūpa is not something that a person simply creates independently according to their own wishes. It is part of a conditioned process.
What do Nāma and Rūpa mean?
The word nāma-rūpa can be understood in a simple way as mind-and-body.
Rūpa means the physical aspect of our existence — the physical body and material processes. In Buddhist teaching, rūpa is traditionally explained through the four great elements:
- Paṭhavī — earth element, representing solidity and hardness.
- Āpo — water element, representing cohesion and fluidity.
- Tejo — fire element, representing temperature and the qualities of heat and cold.
- Vāyo — air element, representing movement, pressure, and motion.
Nāma refers to the mental aspect of experience. For this discussion, we can describe it through five processes:
Vedanā — feeling or the experience of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral feeling.
- Vedanā — feeling or the experience of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral feeling.
- Saññā — perception, recognition, or the process of identifying and interpreting something.
- Cetanā — intention or volition, the mental impulse that directs an action.
- Phassa — contact, the meeting of a sense faculty, an object, and consciousness.
- Manasikāra — attention, or turning the mind toward and attending to something.
These are not a permanent soul or a permanent personality. They are processes that arise and function depending on conditions.
This is important because Buddhism does not ask us to understand a person as having a permanent, unchanging essence called “me.”
Nāma-Rūpa and our sense of identity
In Paṭiccasamuppāda, consciousness and nāma-rūpa are described as mutually supporting conditions. This gives us an important way to think about human identity.
What we call “myself” is not something that exists completely independently and under our absolute control.
You and I experience ourselves as individual people, but what we call a “person” is connected with changing physical and mental processes.
Therefore, when we say:
“That person’s nāma-rūpa is like this.”
“This person is like that.”
“He is a man, but he has characteristics that society considers feminine.”
“She is a woman, but she has characteristics that society considers masculine.”
“This person is homosexual.”
“This person is heterosexual.”
“This person is bisexual.”
“This person is transgender.”
We should be careful about turning these descriptions into a permanent and unchanging identity.
From the Buddhist perspective of anattā, or not-self, saying “this person is permanently and essentially this way” requires careful examination.
Thinking about transgender experiences
This is also important when thinking about the experiences of transgender people.
Some people experience gender dysphoria, where there can be significant distress because their physical body does not feel consistent with their experienced gender identity.
We should be careful not to reduce this experience to a simple decision or a lifestyle choice.
Consider this as a philosophical question:
If the physical body has certain biological characteristics, while a person’s internal experience of gender is different, what happens when these two aspects of experience do not feel consistent with each other?
The resulting distress can be very deep.
Before dismissing such an experience as merely a social trend, fashion, or a deliberate choice, we should pause and consider the person’s inner experience with understanding and compassion.
This does not require us to claim that we know exactly why every individual has a particular experience. Rather, it asks us to recognize that human experience is complex and conditioned.
Therefore, if someone thinks:
“My consciousness simply chose this particular nāma-rūpa exactly as I wanted,”
That is not such a simple matter from the Buddhist perspective of anattā.
One of the most important things to understand is that our nāma-rūpa is not completely under our control.
We do not simply decide every aspect of our body, our feelings, our perceptions, our mental processes, or our experiences.
Does Kamma mean someone is a “sinner”?
This brings us to another very important question.
Can we say with certainty that someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity exists because of a particular wrong action they committed in a previous life?
This is a serious question.
We should be very careful about using the Buddhist teaching of kamma to label someone a “sinner.”
Even if we assume that some experience in a person’s life may have causes connected with past kamma, that does not give us the right to turn the whole person into a permanent label such as:
“He is a sinner.”
“She is a sinner.”
In Buddhism, kamma is not a permanent identity. That’s why it is different from Abrahamic religions.
The Buddha’s teaching is concerned with actions, intentions, causes, conditions, and results. It is not simply a system for labeling human beings as permanently good or permanently bad.
There is another deeper question here.
If you were not the person you are now in a previous life, how can you guarantee that you will always be exactly the same person in the future?
At the very least, one needs to become a Dhammānusārī, a person who follows and investigates the Dhamma.
But as a person develops understanding of the Dhamma, they also begin to move away from the idea of a permanent self.
The important point is this:
You did not become “you” through an independent, permanent self making every choice from outside the conditions of life.
The consciousness and mental-and-physical processes that we experience are conditioned and constantly changing.
The character you are living with today can change tomorrow.
When we begin to understand this deeply, we begin to understand the meaning of anattā, not-self. This understanding is part of the path toward Sotāpanna, stream-entry.
Therefore, from the Buddhist perspective, there is no need to create the idea of a permanently fixed “sinner.”
For this reason, whether someone is homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or transgender, we should think very carefully before using kamma as a reason to label that person a “sinner.”
Then, should we apply the same reasoning to everyone?
If we say:
“This person has this nature because of past kamma,”
then we should ask whether we are prepared to apply the same reasoning consistently to other differences in human life.
Was a poor person born into poverty because they committed some wrongdoing in a previous life?
Did a person whom society considers to be from a lower caste become that way because of wrongdoing in a previous life?
Does a person with a physical disability have that disability because of something they did in a previous life?
Should we say the same about people with different abilities, circumstances, and needs?
We should be very careful with such conclusions.
If we can look at people with physical or mental differences with kindness and compassion, why can we not show the same compassion toward people whose sexual orientation or gender identity is different from our own?
Where is the Buddhist compassion?
Here I want to ask a question.
Where is our compassion when we call ourselves Buddhists?
Where is our empathy?
The Buddha did not determine a person’s human worth according to their birth, caste, physical body, or social label.
Therefore, if we use someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity as a reason to look down on them and call them a “sinner,” we should ask ourselves:
Are we really acting according to the Buddhist principles of anattā, compassion, and non-harming?
We cannot completely know another person’s kamma.
We cannot know with certainty what happened in another person’s previous lives.
Therefore, saying to someone,
“You are like this because you committed this particular wrong action in your previous life,”
is a very serious statement to make in the name of Buddhism.
See the difference, but do not label the person
When discussing sexual orientation from a Buddhist perspective, there can be separate discussions about Vinaya, kāmacchanda (sensual desire), kāmasukha (sensual pleasure), cetanā (intention), relationships, and kamma.
Those are important subjects.
But they are not the same question as a person’s sexual orientation.
A person’s sexual orientation is not the same thing as their entire moral value.
We should not combine these two things and treat them as one.
Buddhism teaches us to understand how things arise through causes and conditions. It does not teach us to attach a permanent self to them by saying:
“This is me.”
“This is mine.”
“This is my permanent nature.”
So before we label someone in society as a “sinner,” let us ask ourselves how much we really know about that person’s life.
We do not know another person’s kamma.
We do not know another person’s past.
We do not know another person’s inner suffering.
Therefore:
See the difference, but do not label the human being because of that difference.
A final request
The next time you are about to exclude someone, discriminate against someone, or look down on someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, pause for a moment.
Ask yourself:
“Am I doing this from the compassion taught by the Buddha? Or am I placing my own social labels onto Buddhism?”
Think before you stigmatize.
Think before you discriminate.
Think before you call someone a “sinner.”
Because Buddhism reminds us to let go of the attachment to:
“This is me.
This is mine.
This is my permanent nature.”
Then, when we look at another human being, may we look:
Not through attachment, but through understanding;
Not through judgment, but through compassion.
— Your monastic brother (Tan Pi),
Bodhichitta Bhikkhu