I was in Toronto yesterday and picked up the book "Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender" by Jose Ignacio Cabezon ([link]). This is something I am particularly interested in, especially how Buddhist philosophy can support 'an end of gender'. Gender, like any identity we cling to, restricts us in various ways and can prevent us from experiencing reality as it is. Buddhism (in particular Zen Buddhism?) encourages us to dissolve all these identities throug meditation and other practices. This particular book (at first glance) seems to look at a primarily at the historical and present attitudes (concerning sexuality and gender) within various Buddhist groups. What I am even more interested in, however, is the potential that Buddhism has within its philosophy to end these identities and categories that do result in a lot of discrimination. (Race, gender, you, me, person, chair, cat, etc). Discrimination, perhaps not so coincidentaly, also means simply noting differences. Buddhism, as ancient a philosophy it is, has the potential to be radically postmodern (and in some ways, for many people, it already is).
I have read some of "My Gender Workbook" by Kate Bornstein ([link]) where ze talks about in positive influence Zen Buddhism has had on hir because of the way it can help one realize the 'true nature' of these identities (like man woman gay straight etc) - artificial divisions we create and would be best off forgetting about ;).
Concerning this future for Buddhism, I am interested in the book "Buddhism After Patriarch: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism" by Rita M. Gross ([link]). Quoting on of the reviews on amazon.ca (see link), "Rita Gross badly wants a tradition she can respect, is nervous because the women's spirituality movement makes mistakes, does not want the full responsibility of reinventing ritual so it respects her. She stops short of calling Buddha on his big mistake, his failure to fully transcend gender, in practice as well as in theory".
So this is something I eventually want to write about, but I'll have to do some reading first. And I'll have to dig out my Buddhist philosophy books to refresh my memory on what the Buddha really did teach.
-mekyla
