Queer Dharma

Queer critique, queer practice: embodied teachings for healing from trauma and social injustice. Jacoby Ballard provides an empowering and affirming guide to embodied healing through yoga and the dharma, grounded in the brilliance, resilience, and lived experiences of queer folks. Part I deconstructs the ways mainstream yoga perpetuates queer- and transphobia and other systemic oppressions, exploring the intersections of yoga, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual violence. Ballard also addresses the trauma--complex, vicarious, historical, and collective--perpetuated against queer communities. In response, he offers tools for self-compassion, tonglen, lovingkindness, and grounding, and helps readers explore questions like: What is trauma? How is it a product of injustice--and how can healing it create justice? The world won't stop being homo- and transphobic, so how do I encounter that in a way that does the least harm? How do we love what is uniquely trans about us? What are affinity groups, and why do we need them? In part II, Ballard offers a queer-centered, fully embodied, and equity-rooted practice with meditations, practices, and sequences for processing and healing from trauma individually and in community. He explains concepts like lovingkindness, letting go, compassion, joy, forgiveness, and equanimity through a queer lens, and pairs each with corresponding meditations, practices, and beautiful line drawings of queer bodies. Enhanced with stories from Ballard's personal practice and professional experience teaching yoga in schools, prisons, conferences, and his weekly Queer and Trans Yoga class, A Queer Dharma is a guidebook, reclamation, and unapologetically queer heart offering for true healing and transformation.

Voices of Gay Buddhists Over 35 writers are featured in this pioneering book discussing how they integrate their gay sexuality and spirituality. Illustrated.

Queer critique, queer practice: embodied teachings for healing from trauma and social injustice. Jacoby Ballard provides an empowering and affirming guide to embodied healing through yoga and the dharma, grounded in the brilliance, resilience, and lived experiences of queer folks. Part I deconstructs the ways mainstream yoga perpetuates queer- and transphobia and other systemic oppressions, exploring the intersections of yoga, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual violence. Ballard also addresses the trauma--complex, vicarious, historical, and collective--perpetuated against queer communities. In response, he offers tools for self-compassion, tonglen, lovingkindness, and grounding, and helps readers explore questions like: What is trauma? How is it a product of injustice--and how can healing it create justice? The world won't stop being homo- and transphobic, so how do I encounter that in a way that does the least harm? How do we love what is uniquely trans about us? What are affinity groups, and why do we need them? In part II, Ballard offers a queer-centered, fully embodied, and equity-rooted practice with meditations, practices, and sequences for processing and healing from trauma individually and in community. He explains concepts like lovingkindness, letting go, compassion, joy, forgiveness, and equanimity through a queer lens, and pairs each with corresponding meditations, practices, and beautiful line drawings of queer bodies. Enhanced with stories from Ballard's personal practice and professional experience teaching yoga in schools, prisons, conferences, and his weekly Queer and Trans Yoga class, A Queer Dharma is a guidebook, reclamation, and unapologetically queer heart offering for true healing and transformation.

Over 35 writers are featured in this pioneering book discussing how they integrate being gay and their spirituality as Buddhists.

This ground-breaking and eye-opening book examines the intersections of religion and same-sex desire, from St. Augustine to Hinduism to contemporary LGBT and queer culture. Queer Religion provides a systematic and detailed overview of the challenges and issues that the intersections of religion, same-sex desire, and gender variance have generated, both now and in the past. It focuses upon the development of these areas of overlap through three distinct historical periods: modern religious history, LGBT liberation movements, and the emergence of queer theory and analysis. This two-volume collection of eclectic essays investigates the experiences of queer people and religion, providing a broad, unique, and invaluable analysis of this important cultural and theological encounter. As a group, the contributors offer brave insights and diverse perspectives on a variety of topics dealing with religion, same-sex desire, and gender expression. Some of these essays are explicitly historical in focus or scholarly articles, while others provide autobiographical viewpoints and personal reminiscences. This book provides a comprehensive look at the queer dimensions of religious practice and belief—essential reading for religious scholars; those within the LGBT community; and anyone interested in human spirituality and sexuality.

Find out how the tension between LGBT studies and queer theory exists in the classroom, politics, communities, and relationships LGBT Studies and Queer Theory: New Conflicts, Collaborations, and Contested Terrain examines the similarities and differences between LGBT studies and queer theory and the uneasy relationship between the two in the academic world. This unique book meets the challenge that queer theory presents to the study and politics of gay and lesbian studies with a collection of essays from leading academics who represent a variety of disciplines. These original pieces place queer theory in social and historical contexts, exploring the implications for social psychology, religious studies, communications, sociology, philosophy, film studies, and women's studies. The book's contributors address queer theory's connections to a wide range of issues, including the development of capitalism, the evolution of the gay and lesbian movement, and the study of bisexuality and gender. Many scholars working in gay and lesbian studies still question the intellectual and political value of queer theory. As a result, queer theory has often been concentrated in the humanities, while gay and lesbian studies are concentrated in the social sciences and history. But this has begun to change in the past 10-15 years, as documented by the 12 essays presented in LGBT Studies and Queer Theory: New Conflicts, Collaborations, and Contested Terrain. LGBT Studies and Queer Theory: New Conflicts, Collaborations, and Contested Terrain includes: historical notes on LGBT studies and queer theory some continuing tensions between LGBT studies and queer theory doubts about whether queer theory can lead to social change an analysis of the current state of “proto-fields” of LGBT studies and queer studies in religion concerns that queer theory’s "erasure of identity" feeds into late capitalism an analysis of variability in social psychologists’ studies of anti-homosexual prejudice an exploration of the commodification of queer identities in independent cinema how and why the category of bisexuality has been marginalized a historical review and assessment of recent bisexual theory a case study of Provincetown, Massachusetts an investigation of the interarticulation of race/ethnicity and gender a case study of the struggle to introduce LGBT studies in the curriculum at West Chester University and much more LGBT Studies and Queer Theory: New Conflicts, Collaborations, and Contested Terrain is an essential read for researchers, academics, and practitioners involved in exploring multifaceted aspects of LGBT Studies and Queer Theory and their points of convergence and divergence.

Igniting a long-overdue dialogue about how the legacy of racial injustice and white supremacy plays out in society at large and Buddhist communities in particular, this urgent call to action outlines a new dharma that takes into account the ways that racism and privilege prevent our collective awakening. The authors traveled around the country to spark an open conversation that brings together the Black prophetic tradition and the wisdom of the Dharma. Bridging the world of spirit and activism, they urge a compassionate response to the systemic, state-sanctioned violence and oppression that has persisted against black people since the slave era. With national attention focused on the recent killings of unarmed black citizens and the response of the Black-centered liberation groups such as Black Lives Matter, Radical Dharma demonstrates how social transformation and personal, spiritual liberation must be articulated and inextricably linked. Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah represent a new voice in American Buddhism. Offering their own histories and experiences as illustrations of the types of challenges facing dharma practitioners and teachers who are different from those of the past five decades, they ask how teachings that transcend color, class, and caste are hindered by discrimination and the dynamics of power, shame, and ignorance. Their illuminating argument goes beyond a demand for the equality and inclusion of diverse populations to advancing a new dharma that deconstructs rather than amplifies systems of suffering and prepares us to weigh the shortcomings not only of our own minds but also of our communities. They forge a path toward reconciliation and self-liberation that rests on radical honesty, a common ground where we can drop our need for perfection and propriety and speak as souls. In a society where profit rules, people's value is determined by the color of their skin, and many voices—including queer voices—are silenced, Radical Dharma recasts the concepts of engaged spirituality, social transformation, inclusiveness, and healing.

In this second volume, gay men write indepth about how they integrate their sexuality and Buddhist practice. Includes articles, essays and photos. Sequel to the best selling volume one which is also available.