René Rivera shares the direct expertise of nonself he found alongside his gender journey as a trans man.
Picture by Vince Fleming.
I grew to become a person at 48 years outdated. Fifteen years right into a devoted each day follow within the Buddhist Perception custom, I started my transition. My follow offered me with a singular perspective on the direct expertise of gendered id and its relationship to the self as I launched into this gender journey, offering me with a profound instructing on nonself by direct expertise.
The Buddha taught that there are three traits, or marks, of existence: impermanence (anicca), struggling or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and no self or nonself (anatta). This third attribute of anatta is typically described as selflessness, vacancy, or the absence of a hard and fast, everlasting, or unchanging self. On the most simple degree, there lies a paradox in which there’s each a “self” and likewise “no-self.” This attribute of anatta factors to the notion that the self is consistently altering and that there isn’t a fastened self that we are able to discover in our direct expertise. His Holiness the Dalai Lama frames this paradox like this: “No-self means we wouldn’t have a self that’s unbiased, singular, and everlasting. However this doesn’t imply denying the existence of self. Self is there. No person can deny that.”
In these instances of assaults on girls and transgender folks’s bodily autonomy, there may be nice urgency to discover these truths.
My very own gender journey has allowed me to instantly expertise the teachings of nonself, offering me with the proof that there isn’t a fastened self — that the self is consistently altering. I’ve additionally uncovered an extra paradox in my very own direct expertise: gender each exists and doesn’t exist.
Rising up, I used to be labeled as feminine by my household and by society, however I by no means felt notably female. From the age of three, I knew that I solely wished to put on “boy’s” garments and play with vans and instruments. For so long as I can keep in mind, I all the time had a robust masculine id, nevertheless it was someplace in between—neither male nor feminine—the place I felt most snug.
My gender, particularly the way it was perceived by others, deeply impacted my day-to-day expertise from a really younger age. As early as kindergarten, women wouldn’t let me use the toilet. This was a really actual expertise based mostly on the way in which my gender was perceived, which had very actual repercussions on my well-being, at the same time as a small youngster. This expertise prompted me to run away from faculty. Gender and the expectations that got here with it on the best way to act, costume, and be a sure method had real-world results on how I skilled the world and life itself. These implications adopted me, particularly in gendered areas, similar to restrooms, which grew to become a continuing stress in my life till I started my transition.
As I started my transition and hormone alternative remedy, my direct expertise allowed me to see the ways in which gender really didn’t exist. As my physique started to alter, I discovered myself asking: “Do I really feel male?” My voice deepened, and hair began rising in new locations — and falling away in others. My muscle tissue modified, and my pores and skin grew thicker. Throughout my standard body-scan follow, I seen these altering sensations and stayed with them, asking myself again and again: Does this really feel male? The reply was all the time no. There was nothing that I might establish in my sensations that I might distinguish as “male.” I found that inside my physique, I couldn’t find gender wherever. As I skilled my thoughts and physique altering, I remained current with the adjustments, acknowledging and accepting them on a moment-to-moment foundation. I spotted that for me and my physique, gender was not strong, not finally actual.
Regardless of this internal realization, my outward expertise and the way others perceived me was drastically totally different. Simply the change within the tone of my voice through the first months of hormone remedy was sufficient for others to learn me as male. Folks had been now not confused or alarmed by my gender. For the primary time, I might journey with out being patted down by the TSA. I might use the toilet in peace, unchallenged. Out of the blue, folks began to giggle extra at my jokes. They’d step apart to offer me area on the road or in line. I skilled not simply cisgender privilege, but in addition male privilege.
By way of my very own gender journey to my present id as transmasculine, or a trans man, my direct expertise has pointed again and again to the paradox of nonself. The bodily and tangible outward change in my gender as I moved by the transition from a gender non-conforming feminine to male profoundly modified my day-to-day expertise. But internally, the intangible emotions and sensations I remained conscious of alongside the way in which had been finally genderless. Sure, there was pleasure and luxury in a physique that felt extra congruent with my id, however I nonetheless couldn’t discern a direct bodily expertise by my senses that felt definitively male or gender-specific to me.
My expertise of gender, particularly as I transfer by the world perceived by others, could be very actual. On the identical time, as my expertise of self shifts moment-to-moment, it’s not. As a queer, trans particular person of coloration, my id is essential to me. My complete life, the way in which others have handled me has been an impact of who I’m, my id, and who they understand me to be based mostly on these traits. Within the face of this, what does it imply to say there isn’t a self? Because the Dalai Lama says, we can not deny there’s a self. However I do know by a few years of follow and bringing my moment-to-moment consciousness to my altering physique that this sense of self is consistently altering
In my very own follow, I’ve skilled many moments the place my sense of self turns into only one small node or intersection of consciousness inside a fantastic internet of consciousness. The small sense of self, or “I” merely drops away, and that, too, is a direct expertise of nonself. The self remains to be there, nevertheless it’s held inside the consciousness that the majority of what exists isn’t solely past the self, however past our potential to understand with our personal senses, together with the thoughts.
As Lama Rod Owens writes in his e-book Love and Rage, “Because the prism breaks the daylight into the colours of the rainbow, so too do my id places break these religious teachings into strands of knowledge.” I imagine that our particular identities and lived experiences are the trail to knowledge. In my very own case, my id as a trans man offers me consciousness of the conditioning round gender within the tradition we reside in. Gender might be the water we swim in, so pervasive that we don’t all the time really feel it engaged on us. How we converse, stroll, sit, smile or don’t smile, and make eye contact categorical our gendered conditioning continuously. My very own expertise of the pressures to adapt to gendered expectations and the methods I merely couldn’t conform have allowed me to see this conditioning clearly, and thru that, deconditioning arises.
Once we skip over these experiences in our perception or consciousness practices, we are able to bypass and miss nice truths. I imagine that everybody, no matter their gender, can carry consciousness to how they’ve been conditioned as gendered beings and discover some awakening inside that consciousness. In main teams by practices that carry mindfulness to our gendered conditioning, I’ve seen such moments of waking as much as the ways in which gender is constructed. In seeing this, we could possibly see the ways in which self and id are each linked and likewise distinct.
In these instances of assaults on girls and transgender folks’s bodily autonomy, there may be nice urgency to discover these truths. No matter our gender, bringing mindfulness to our gendered expertise on the planet can function a path to knowledge and understanding of nonself, permitting us to awaken to its fact.