Happy Pride Month. June always reminds me to give thanks for those who made my life easier by coming out when it was difficult, and reminds me of my responsibility to come out so that it gets easier. This is the latest update to a story I first shared when I was in high school. The situation in the US has changed dramatically since then, but the current situation in Japan reminds me very much of those days just before same-sex marriage was legalized in the US. I think it's an important time to come out in Japan, so I'll also be posting this article in Japanese.
I grew up strictly Roman Catholic in Omaha, Nebraska. While some of the strictness came from my parents and teachers, most of it came from inside myself. I thought very early that I wanted to be a Catholic priest, following in the footsteps of saints and family members who devoted their lives to God and the service of others. While I genuinely loved everything to do with church, I wonder whether my interest in the priesthood was partly a kid's way of explaining away his lack of interest in girls.
Puberty hit hard and fast, and I quickly realized that what seemed like an obvious vocation was complicated by an attraction to men. This was something I didn't even admit to myself; determined to continue on my path to the priesthood, I tried my best to ignore this frightening and dominating new aspect of myself.
But neglected dogs turn mean. Repressing my feelings just created a tremendous dissonance between my interior and exterior life. Shame and insecurity seeped out as judgment and sanctimoniousness toward others, and outbursts of rage and even violence that must have seemed inexplicable to those around me. When I acted on these feelings, the dissonance became almost unbearable. At times I considered suicide.
In my second year of high school I confessed this part of myself, in detail, to a deacon at my church. A member of a now-suppressed order of charismatic monks and nuns, he immediately suggested that my feelings were caused by demons, and recommended a week long silent retreat at their compound during which I would undergo “deliverance ministry,” a kind of informal exorcism. Remembering some of his questions, I wonder whether he was battling the same “demons,” and how close I came to becoming a victim of clerical abuse.
The exorcisms, unsurprisingly, didn't take. Just when all hope seemed lost, a progressive theology teacher at my high school assigned an article in class by an alumnus named Bill Glenn. In his article he shared how he realized he was attracted to a boy in his class, how he felt different and terrified of being discovered, how he spent years in formation to become a Jesuit priest, and how finally, the year before his ordination, he heard a speech by the great activist Harvey Milk that inspired him to come out as a gay man. Perhaps more importantly, he shared that the subsequent years were ones of happiness, community, and experiencing the love of God. It was the first time I had ever considered that my sexual orientation was something to be cherished rather than struggled against. I only needed to hear it once for the message to strike home.
The next day, I got into a car accident. Thankfully no one was hurt, but it brought the fragility and unpredictability of life into clear view. There wasn't any time to waste. I immediately started coming out to my friends and family. My friends were incredibly supportive, and remain so to this day. Though it caused strain between my parents and me at first, over time we learned to accept one another and now have a positive, supportive relationship.
Soon after, I realized that there were other parts of Catholic teaching that didn't accord with my personal experience, and left the church. After an initial period of staunch (and no doubt very annoying) atheism, I encountered the Beat poets and was immediately enthralled by their incredible freedom of expression in literature and life. It seemed the perfect antidote to the years of repression to which I had subjected myself. Their writings led me to study and practice Buddhism, which is why I came to Japan eight years ago.
I spent most of my college life and my first several years in Japan mimicking the free-love approach of the Beats, and I think this was an important part of my growth. I gradually realized, though, that compulsive indulgence creates just as vicious a cycle as repression. Buddhism teaches that this dynamic goes just as much for straight people as it does for queer people like me.
It also teaches that there are infinite methods of liberation for people of all capacities and dispositions. The complexity of the universe means that there is no “one size fits all.” I am currently a Shingon priest of foreign birth undergoing training in Japan, and am engaged to a man whom I met in Shikoku - certainly not a common situation! Its uniqueness means that the path forward requires a lot of bushwhacking, but I trust that this is yet another dharma gate being offered to me out of the compassion of the Buddhas, suited exactly to my needs and capacity.
Commenting in favor of a recent law on promoting understanding of LGBT people in Japan, the head of the Koyasan Shingon Sect wrote, “There is a concept in Shingon called 'Universal Buddha nature', which means that every person has the qualities by which they can become a Buddha. Even so, people have unique personalities, and areas in which they are skilled and unskilled…Trust between people comes from accepting this diversity. It is exactly this kind of society that Kōbō Daishi set as his goal, a Pure Land in this very world called the Secretly-Adorned Land.”
This vision of diversity is reflected in the mandalas enshrined in Shingon temples: the beings depicted, though they range from the angelic to the grotesque, are all equal emanations of the enlightenment of the universe itself, and all exist in a relationship of mutual love and veneration. The infinite expressions of humanity are jewels in the Buddha's crown. The Buddhist path, summarized by the Buddha as “Avoiding evil, doing good, and cleansing the mind” is available to everyone. It's okay to start wherever you are, exactly as you are.
May all beings be well, may all beings be happy, and may all beings be free.
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