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2003
Reflections on a meeting with the Venerable Shi Ming Yi
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Led
by my friend Kelvin Wong, five of us met with the Venerable Shi Ming Yi, a
Buddhist monk, the evening of 17 August 2003. The Ven Shi heads the Ren Ci
Foundation, a Buddhist charity organisation, and is also currently the
secretary-general of the Singapore Buddhist Federation. He is highly respected
in Singapore generally.
Soon after Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's comments appeared in Time Magazine, the Straits Times asked him for his views on homosexuality. Ven Shi said, "People have different likes and dislikes. Of course, as a religion, we do not think that homosexuality is right. But we should still respect them and try to help them as much as possible. We would extend them a hand of compassion." (See the article Employing gays in civil service a 'tiny step forward') Kelvin and I were baffled at the statement that as a religion, homosexuality is not considered right. We knew that nowhere in the Buddhist scriptures was there any mention about homosexuality, and Buddhist teachings about sexuality generally weren't skewed towards heterosexism, if one stripped away cultural overlays. So Kelvin wrote him a letter (co-signed with a few others), to which the Ven Shi was kind enough to return a phone call. He readily agreed to a meeting and a week later, there we were face to face. This is not a report of the meeting, but some thoughts that I had during the meeting and soon after.
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'Only reflecting the popular opinion of the Chinese-speaking' -- Ven Shi Kelvin began by recapitulating the statement made to the Straits Times. The Ven Shi replied immediately, confirming that Buddhist scriptures said nothing about homosexuality. "It doesn't say it's right; it doesn't it's wrong." He explained that what he said to the newspaper was because he was reflecting the general opinion of Buddhists in Singapore, who were mostly Chinese-speaking and who felt that homosexuality was somehow unacceptable. Parents would not look kindly upon their children being gay. Consequently, he explained at length that that was probably the best he could do. He felt that it was not realistic to move an entire body – the Buddhist congregation – except by tiny little steps. If he had put out a radical, purist, gay-friendly one, he would have been shunned by other monks and Buddhist opinion leaders. More hardline ones would have disavowed his statement and issued sterner ones. And he would lose what leverage he had to gently move Singapore Buddhists to a better understanding of the issue.You have to agree he does have a point, but then it begs the question, is he really doing anything to move Singapore Buddhists forward? And my conclusion, after listening to the entirety of what he had to say is: very little.
We have to give it to him that he always spoke of homosexual orientation in neutral tones. He referred to the matter as one of personal likes and dislikes, and he volunteered his opinion that it's probably something one is born with. He also mentioned in passing that it's impossible in many instances to tell who is gay who isn't. I felt it was good that we were in conversation with someone who at least didn't dispute the starting basis and facts.
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But
unfortunately, he tended to speak in terms of counselling the
individual, and I assumed he meant the gay individual. His point was:
it's not for anyone to tell you how to live your life; you have to work
out who you are and what you want first before you can plot your life
journey. He pointed out that one of the most fundamental teachings of
Buddhism was to be aware of one's self and to have an understanding of
one's impulses.
I didn't think it was satisfactory that any discussion about homosexuality started and ended with the gay individual. I and other participants tried to point out that the issue was not the person himself but the general negative environment that caused problems to the individual, and that religious leaders had a duty to be careful about what they said, because people looked up to them. Their words help create the environment. We discussed at some length about the pressures families applied to gay individuals to conform, and how these pressures led to a lot of unhappiness. The Ven Shi completely agreed that indeed the pressures to conform or to keep up appearances often lead to much misery. Worse, he added, third parties, such as the children, have been hurt as a result of such actions, e.g. when the marriage breaks down. Seizing that, I tried to make the point that if he recognised that that was the case, then there must be an obligation upon those who created or applied those social pressures, to reflect upon their actions. How could we excuse actions when we knew that these actions had hurtful consequences on others? As an analogy as I asked: how can bystanders seeing a group of people taunting someone to jump to his death not feel a moral responsibility to do something about the taunting?
I'm afraid we didn't get very far on this point with the Ven Shi. He seemed to resist the idea of social responsibility to speak out against prejudice. He kept coming back to how at the individual level, he could be counted upon to be fair and open-minded when dealing with specific cases. I didn't doubt that he would indeed be so. But he seemed to reiterate repeatedly that he could not speak out on a more global level. He explained, in response to another question, that the older Buddhist monks he had met in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and other countries were not accepting of gay persons. On the other hand, the younger set of monks and lay leaders tended to have very diverse opinions. Separately, he mentioned that the Chairman of the Buddhist Federation, an older monk, had told him he should not be responding to the press on this issue. The suggestion seemed to be, "don't get involved." Ven Shi felt constrained by the relatively unreformed attitudes in the Chinese-speaking community who made up the bulk of the Buddhist followers here. He said what he felt they wanted to hear, moderated as much as he could by references to compassion. I think my message got through, because as I spoke, I could see a flash of perception on his face, and also, because after that, he seemed a mite less defensive about his real position. Still, it stunned me a bit to think that religious leaders who are supposed to have spent a lifetime thinking about issues of morality, immorality and amorality, need to be reminded by me that there is the middle ground of amorality. I wonder now how many people think like that: that if anyone stops saying homosexuality is wrong, he must surely mean it is right. Thus one mustn't stop saying it is wrong.
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Not quite Buddhism, but Chinese Buddhism I said earlier in this essay that Buddhist teachings about sexuality generally aren't skewed towards heterosexism, if one strips away cultural overlays. What came through loud and clear was that Ven Shi wasn't ready to strip away the cultural overlays. In fact, his words were based more on the cultural overlay than on pure Buddhist teachings, and to my disappointment, he seemed to consider that fair and proper. Here again, another participant remarked to me after the meeting, its funny how the Ven Shi kept saying the Chinese are conservative, meaning they are not tolerant of homosexuality, and imply that such attitudes are traditional to the Chinese. In fact, it's well known that these are relatively modern attitudes, brought in by Western (therefore Christian) influences. Near the conclusion of the meeting, we tried to explore some overarching issues. One of the five participants asked the Ven Shi his opinion about situations where Buddhist scriptures, 2,600 years old, do not address modern issues. To what extent should Buddhism innovate to respond to modern issues? I had a related question – is there a strong tradition of intellectual enquiry in (Mahayana) Buddhism? I don't think we got any real answers to this, which left intact my suspicion that Mahayana Buddhism lacks an intellectual element to help it respond to the modern world. The emphasis was on form, worship, self-development and charity – the spiritual side. What is missing is the concept of social justice, which are very evident in Islam and many branches of Western Christianity. This concept of social justice requires a religion to first be comfortable with the idea of making judgements, because without making judgements, how is one to know what is just and what is unjust? Well, Christianity and Islam are judgemental if nothing else, but also, in Christianity, adherents take inspiration from the way Jesus was said always to have worked for the downtrodden. Buddhism's tradition is quite different. It tries very hard not to make judgements about the way the secular world is ordered. Its main thrust is to escape from temporal miseries, by developing the self and doing good works. Compassion without judgement. It's been remarked that the promise of social justice partly explains why Christianity and Islam continue to make inroads into the older religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism. These religions have a tendency to merely advise the powerful to be merciful and the weak to accept their fate. Christianity and Islam offer better answers to the weak and powerless, and their leaders feel it within their remit to speak the truth to Caesar.
Ah, but then, what kind of "truth"? © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
Addenda
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