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- Title
BORDER CROSSINGS? QUEER SPIRITUALITY AND ASIAN RELIGION: A FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT.
- Authors
Marsh, Victor
- Abstract
As constructed by conservative religious discourse, homosexuality is antagonistic to spirituality, but in this paper I suggest how marginalised subjectivities might be liberated from toxic, homophobic discourses by 'border crossing': seeking out tools from other cultural traditions to access knowledge resources that can support the urgent inquiry into the nature of the self precipitated by its bruising encounter with institutionally entrenched homophobia. Since the 1960s many men in Western countries have looked 'East' for answers to their metaphysical concerns, counterbalancing what is often assumed to be the one-way process in which 'the West' exerts influence upon 'the Rest'. The subjective repositioning that takes place through such practice occurs not just in cultural spaces, but also within the zone of conscious awareness loosely called the 'mind' as it recovers its roots in a transcultural zone of being/not-being. For the purposes of my discussion I separate the term 'spirituality' from 'religion'. I see 'religion' as a sociological phenomenon, entailing inclusion in/exclusion from socially and politically valourised faith communities. I enlist the Zen Buddhist koan: "What was your face before your parents were born?" to deploy a usage of 'spirituality' as concerned with a searching enquiry into the nature of being, with an emphasis on empirical praxis rather than belief. From such an approach the construction of the personal self produced by political, social and linguistic constructs is radically re-configured, and the non-dual nature of these Asian approaches might allow for an accommodation of spirituality and sexuality.
- Subjects
ASIA; SPIRITUALITY; RELIGION; HOMOSEXUALITY; BORDER crossing
- Publication
Gay & Lesbian Issues & Psychology Review, 2007, Vol 3, Issue 2, p97
- ISSN
1833-4512
- Publication type
Article