SuttaCentral
If you have these qualities in yourself you might perhaps rethink your criticism me for being harsh? Afterall, it’s a difficult position to be in if you judge people harshly for those qualities we actually have in ourself!
You’re forgiven. Please also forgive me .
Please continue to try to understand the meaning behind my posts.
Of course you’re right 
I’m considering that I’m too harsh because I really DON’T KNOW what to think about this situation and my posts are only about asking questions and not about giving answers. I also don’t know if I am right or wrong. Perhaps I was too harsh indeed, and I could write that in PM and that is part of harsh speech there I think. So I am deeply sorry about what I’ve did.
You’re forgiven. Please also forgive me .
Thank you for your generosity 
I of course forgive as well.
Please continue to try to understand the meaning behind my posts.
I will contemplate on them much more.
I come from country where these matters discussed are like a warzone and this subjects creates tons of conflicts (even actual violence), and I observe this political issues with very immature behaviors from both sides. Of course right winged people are much much worse, but left winged sometimes do very stupid and extremely provocative things as well. It is like both sides were actually feeding on that conflict, instead of trying to make peace with each other, and this is why I’m so reserved in taking side in this subject which in my country is very related to issue of LGBTQIA+ aswell. But I am considering it deeper and deeper so thank you for that Bhante
Dear Bhante,
I of course understand your good intentions but how it reads right now is confusing and hurtful to a group of people. The right terminology you are looking for, as Ven. @Akaliko pointed out, is ‘intersex’.
Could you please change this? Thank you!
Hello there,
I’ve wrote this in PM to Bhante Akaliko more than week ago, but I wanted to publicly deeply apologise Bhante Akaliko and everyone else for my post and my harsh speech in it, I felt and feel terrible about what I’ve wrote, and the way that I’ve put my statements. Shame on me.
I’m sorry that this post probably created some unpleasant feelings in many people, especially Bhante @Akaliko.
I hope to never commit such harsh speech again and I undertake the training of working on my right speech with much more care than before.
I could have stated my mind in totally different way and I feel really sorry about this.
After giving it more thought, on the subject, all I wanted to actually express (and I know it is just my opinion, and I really hope it will no offend anyone), is that I believe that all people should have same rights, and I treat everyone equal no matter of their gender, race, orientation etc. it is very natural for me. Human being is a human being and everyone should be treated good.
Just due to some political movements I was observing I just don’t support treating any group “extra special” due to their gender/race/orientation etc., even if they’re a minority. And I just got fearful impression that perhaps sometimes in trying to defend someone, we could go too far and in trying to protect minority we can give them special treatment instead of equal treatment, and it is something that from my actual perspective I see as not a good solution: firstly because it can make them feel superior than majority and create unhealthy psychological mechanisms, and secondly, when we give someone special treatment instead of equal treatment, the opposision starts to be really aggressive and it can backfire and create unnecessary conflicts and tensions.
I don’t say that such situation was taking place here, but just that I was worried about it could due to some my social conditioning (like reading extremist left wing vs extremist right wing discussions that were going on in my country). I also don’t say that such solutions even if they were real, are inherently wrong, because perhaps they’re good, but they do not resonate with me at this moment.
I’m no specialist on the subject, so I’ll try to stay out of discussions about this issue. Just wanted to state my mind so no one takes me against LGBTQIA+ or something, I’m just for equality, good treatment, understanding and progress for/of all. 
Hope you will forgive me my former harsh speech.
Many thanks @Invo. It takes real courage and strength to sincerely acknowledge our faults and apologise like this for our actions. And it demonstrates real spiritual growth to do so. Well done. Sadhu X 3.
May we all keep abandoning our unskilful qualities and keep growing our skillful qualities! (Me included!)
Best wishes.
My two baht on all of this is to suggest that D&D has done a pretty excellent job of being a safe space and a space where people of goodwill have assembled and expressed differing views, with a degree of good faith, patience, and understanding. That is a rare thing!
To me, a part of what is great about the EBT / Forest tradition is that this approach is a departure from traditional Theravada, and a chance to truly educe and study what the Buddha’s true intent on issues of importance is. What’s being done here is not to validate old “fire and brimstone” rules, laws and views, but to really take a hard look at the ancient texts and determine their meaning and intent, and then to go beyond that an determine how these texts can be correctly applied to our Path today. I am not aware of any other forum where such a broad discussion of important issues in this Dhamma and Vinaya Path can be discussed so openly, with such wisdom, and with such a relative degree of respect for differing opinions.
I work in a profession where people disagree, advocate and argue opposing views, in a controlled environment. One aspect of this kind of exchange is the hope that some form of truth and justice arises. We have to be able to be expressive, open, and disagree.
In terms of how to approach difficult questions of Vinaya, I always go back to something that Bhikkhu Bodhi once said about these issues, when the Vens. Thanissaro/Analayo exchange was occurring over Bhikkhuni ordination. Ven. Bodhi stated to the effect that when there is a dispute over Vinaya or a rule, that one should always err on the side of the most compassionate view. If we always view an issue with the idea of not “what does the rule mean?” but, what might this Vinaya rule or precept mean when viewed through the most compassionate and wise lens,? we might then arrive at a perspective that matches the wisdom and nuance of the Buddha’s Dhamma.
There’s already enough “bible thumping” and “fire and brimstone” in Theravada already. Let’s take this EBT and Forest perspective, and use this online assembly of good and compassionate minds to really suggest the wisest and most compassionate way forward on issues such as the thread of discussion, above. This whole thread, to me, proves how valuable and important D&D is to 21st century Buddhism, and the potential for some circles within the EBT /Forest tradition to carve out its own wise and compassionate path, entirely consistent with the Dhamma/Vinaya.
Is the rule for them to join the sangha of their sex, or their gender?
For those of us who want to try and get our terminology sorted, I found a useful site (and checked in first with Ven @Akaliko that it’s acceptable. 
)
It’s the Comprehensive* List of LGBTQ+ Vocabulary Definitions and since the owner of the site says that the list of terms gets updated it will helpfully/hopefully be useful for a while in this changing area. 
One thing worth noting is that “trans” can be short for a number of different terms - transgender, transition / transitioning, transexual are all different, and there are still more trans- words on the list. So we need to write it with thought, and when we read be sensitive to the possible intention of the writer. 
My only response to this is caution:
You appear to be a white male, presumably heterosexual, as am I, and therefore we have little to no actual accurate perspective on this issue by virtue of our privilege being raised in the dominant culture of our respective countries.
Right now, bigotry and discrimination exist, and are still deeply entrenched in our political, social and cultural systems - and so there is no such thing as “special” rights for any minority. Granting “equal” rights actually feels “special” to some because we aren’t used to it.
In the USA we had the BlackLivesMatter movement, which to some seemed like elevating people of color above whites - when in point of fact, it was demonstrating that black lives are being taken by racist police at a rate higher than that of white lives. Not BETTER than, but EQUAL to, but also needing to be treated as “special” because right now they’re NOT equal.
I find the “equal not special” argument to be based in a type of ignorance of the actual reality of the world, one used mostly by straight white males who think that racism and bigotry no longer exist and therefore we don’t even need to have this discussion.
Is this because he did out of effection? It’s the same as the other rule of touching woman with lust. So if a monk doesn’t have effection there is nothing wrong right?
In the Chinese theravada vinaya commentary I was reading that is about what you have down there. It’s written as they believed down there can change if you do bad etc in that case you need ordain as Nun. I found Weird believe
I would like to express my gratitude to this forum, and all of its members for their kindness and sensitivity to this most controversial issue of gender variations in all of its expression.
Yet I do find it unfortunate that Buddha, like Christ [if there was such a person] did not have a Trans person, or variation thereof to expound upon. So it seems that in many cases, and to many Buddhists, we are lumped together with those other ‘undesirables’ as lesser people not deserving of inclusion…
So in which Sangha would they have to ordain in then?
How can one discern between early and later rules in the Vinaya?
To be honest, I agree that that can be a very real problem.
According to the Dhamma-Vinaya, beings are subject to the laws of the universe regardless of whether they are born into majority and minority social groups.
I bring up the topic in this thread: "Left-Wing, Western Liberalism" and "Early Buddhism" - #76 by SeriousFun136
Even though I do think there are parts of left-wing/liberal philosophies that are biased towards minorities on the basis of their minority social status as opposed to promoting fairness on the basis of the development of their views and actions, I think the right-wing/conservative philosophies also make the same mistake of being biased towards majorities on the basis of their majority social status as opposed to promoting fairness on the basis of the development of their views and actions.
There is evidence that many liberal philosophies provide band-aid solutions to such problems, such as say affirmative action, but conservative philosophies often just lazily sit there and watch injustices go on without making any attempts to address them, say by wanting to scrap affirmative action but not actually replace it with any actually better measures.
It seems worth remembering that Siddhartha was born into the highest social group during his time, but he went on to form a religion that did not bend and defer to the traditionally established religious institution at that time (brahmanas), nor the perhaps more “liberal” group (sramanas) of ascetics as he was often perceived to be, but instead provided an actually effective, valid solution to a real problem that was a true middle way, which is what I think you were trying to get at too.
We distinguish between the rules of the patimokkha, and rules that are either derived from the patimokkha, or are independent.
There is strong evidence that most or all of the patimokkha rules are early (namely, that they are very similar in all schools), but the derived rules must have evolved later (because they are derived!). How much later is hard to say. The process of adding derived rules may have begun in the Buddha’s life, but it certainly continued long after.
Hi @Rosie you might be interested in these stories:
A Japanese trans woman who is a nun has set up a LGBTQ friendly temple in Kyoto
Shozenji Temple openly welcomes the LGBTQ community and was started by Soshuku Shibatani, the first transgender nun in Japan. Built based on the belief that gender distinction doesn’t exist before Buddha, and that all should be able to live as themselves, this safe space is friendly to all.
There are trans nuns living in Thailand in communities. Here is one venerable who has over 180 000 followers on Facebook.
And another Venerable, below. They run a meditation centre, which seems very well supported by the community. They have over 14 000 likes and more than 23 000 followers on Facebook, which might not mean much to some of you, but indicates interest, acceptance and support.
!I think it’s important when we have these conversations to remember that the situation of acceptance is always changing and that we should never have hard, fast ideas that certain things are impossible in this world. The parts of the Buddhist world we usually look at might not reflect the diversity out there! So it’s important to tell these stories.
I have included the photos here especially to remind us that these discussions are actually about PEOPLE. And we should remember that fact when making comments, especially out of respect and kindness towards the trans and non binary people who use this site. These people are not a “them” but rather are a part of “us”.
Did anyone answer this question?
If a transexual being wished to join the Sangha, is the part of the Sangha that they join be on the basis of their biological sex or their gender identity?
I think it is important to make an distinction between those who claim a Buddhist social self-identity and those who try to act in accordance with the Dhamma-Vinaya.
The former often seem influenced by cultural norms that often go contrary to Buddhism.
The latter are probably trying to rid themselves of such biases and misunderstandings.
Thank you so much for this clarification. But what do the EBT’s really say?
With Metta!
I think the EBT’s largely treat all beings not necessarily as “equals,” but seems to reject the notion that such assessments of inferiority and superiority can be made on the basis of their external background or social status (for example, on the basis of the caste that one was born into).
I do think that they do acknowledge that beings can be inferior and superior based on their level of mental development/views/actions/attainments of Nibbana - but these are all on the basis on what one can control: the views one holds and the actions that one does.
I.e. it does not depend on external background factors that one happens to be experiencing at any given time (race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, etc.) - although these maybe be influenced by one’s views and actions.
For example, developing generosity is said to lead to a higher likelihood to being reborn into a wealthier family or respecting/venerating those to the degree that they should be respected/venerated could lead to a higher likelihood of being reborn in a higher caste/high social status family, etc. But even in such cases, the actions are worth more than the results, because both unhappy and happy outcomes (except Nibbana) are considered to ultimately still be a part of “dukkha” or sadness, i.e. not unconditional happiness/Nibbana.
Sorry but I posted my reply in the wrong place. In response to your kindnesshttps://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/which-tradition-to-follow/3518/51?u=rosie
