Rev. Danny Fisher

Not long ago, I posted about a piece our friend James Shaheen, editor and publisher of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, wrote for The Huffington Post. The subject was “Gay Marriage: What Would Buddha Do?” Today, another friend and past interviewee, Jeff Wilson, responds to James’ post at the Tricycle Editors’ Blog.

Jeff’s post, entitled “Homosexuality, Marriage, and Religion in Tibet: An Endlessly Complicated Situation,” offers some fascinating history about homosexuality in Tibet, and makes this supremely important observation:

…Trying to understand where someone else from another culture is coming from (both for gay rights advocates and the Dalai Lama himself) can be a truly daunting task, requiring much humility and willingness to continually reflect on how little one actually knows about the details of the other’s background circumstances. There’s really only one statement we can make with full accuracy about studying Buddhism and its traditional cultures, whether it be political protests by monks in Burma, same-sex relations in Tibet, or Japanese priests chanting sutras in a bar: things are always more complex than we realize them to be.

Read Jeff’s entire post here.

Both Jeff and James talk about some of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s comments about homosexuality in their piece. I wrote a lengthy post on this subject in response to a reader question some time ago. Read it here.