| Karen Kreb�s Opening Statement |
| My faith in Zen Buddhism has been very important to me as I slowly make the transition from Ken to Karen. While I spend most of my time totally confused as to what I'm doing and I am not really qualified to teach anyone anything about Zen or Buddhism, I will try to pass on what I know and believe about how my religion affects my status as transgendered. As my knowledge is scant and I'm just a beginner in Zen, please forgive anything that is not exactly accurate.
The Buddha taught that conventional life is marked by dukkha or as this Sanskrit word is often translated, suffering. It can also be translated as unsatisfactoriness. Nothing in this life is permanently pleasing and even the most pleasurable things in life are marked by suffering as they will come to an end sooner or later. This is the teaching of impermanence--an important concept in Buddhism. The Buddha also taught the law of karma � or cause and effect. Everything a person does affects her karma either positively or negatively. There is no escape from responsibility for your thoughts and deeds. However, karma is not fate and is not set in stone. A person can change her future karma by her present-day actions. Karma proves that there is justice in the grand scheme of the universe: that there is no condition which is not deserved. These two teachings form the basis for the Four Noble Truths. Simply put, they are: There is suffering. There is a cause of suffering There is release from suffering There is a path that leads to release from suffering. The Buddha taught that craving, based on ignorance of reality, was the root cause of suffering. It is desire for sensual pleasures that fuels the endless rounds of rebirth in this land of suffering otherwise known as Samsara. A person gets attached to things in conventional reality and misses out on that which makes up ultimate reality. It is this attachment to things, people, places and ideas that lead to an endless stream of existences in one of the six realms of Samsara. With this said, we can proceed to how my faith helps me to endure much suffering. I haven't put an end to grasping for pleasure. That is nearly impossible. My past is done and I don't have to suffer through it again. Still, it is useful to look at. I was very lonely as a child. I didn't fit in with the boys because I wasn't one of them. I didn't fit in with the girls because they saw me as a boy. My greatest desire was to be a girl. This had to be violently suppressed as my parents taught me that being a girl was bad. Still, I'd pray to the Christian god I was brought up to believe in every night to wake up in the morning as a girl. Naturally, I was disappointed and started to doubt the existence of this god. When I reached adolescence, my desire to be a girl met up with my attraction to them. This was in its own way very confusing. There was a tendency for others to see me as effeminate and probably gay, even though I had no interest in guys. This forced an even greater suppression of my female side. In private, I fantasized about being a girl. In public, I became somewhat mean and angry. I lost all faith in religion as some of my worst enemies were among the so-called faithful. As I reached adulthood, I had nearly completely suppressed my conscious desire to be a woman. However, I could not change who I was inside. It was this conflict that shaped much of the misery that made up my life. It was not until I was 41 years old that I realized both the depth and cause of my suffering--I had been living a lie for most of my life. I had started my practice of Zen for about a year before I admitted to myself my true nature. I had been without a spiritual rudder for most of my life. Zen helped a lot with my ability to see into the reality of my conventional life. Through mindfulness and meditation, I reached back and saw why I was so miserable for so long. Through Zen I was able to see and let go of the attachments that bound me to my life of misery. It helped only as long as I was able to let go. When I came out, I wanted it all right now: women's clothes, hormones and SRS. But with being out, came the bashing. The ignorant and the bigoted thought that my being a woman meant that I was attracted to men and therefore, gay. Most of them didn't understand or even want to. They were content with their prejudices. I quickly went back into the closet, but not back into my misery. I was ill-equipped to deal with the level of hate that I experienced. My practice made it easier to deal with the hiding in plain sight. I was content to know the truth about my true nature in conventional reality and that eventually I'd be able to realize my life-long dream. When I sit Zazen (Zen meditation), I am able to let go of my attachments to how this life "should" be. Freed of these I can accept my true nature and the situation that I'm in. No longer am I bothered much by the lack of acceptance and the prejudice I experience. I can accept that I can�t transition while I'm a prisoner. These things are real in a conventional sense, but in ultimate reality don't matter. Seeing the larger scheme of things through zazen and mindfulness practice helps me to let go of these sources of misery and put an end to my suffering. Karen |
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