Buddhism and Sexual Orientation - Chinese Buddhism

Chinese Buddhism

About Buddhism and homosexuality in China, scholar A. L. De Silva writes, "Generally the attitude has been one of tolerance. Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit missionary who lived in China for twenty-seven years from 1583, expressed horror at the open and tolerant attitude that the Chinese took to homosexuality and naturally enough saw this as proof of the degeneracy of Chinese society."

Venerable Hsing Yun, one of the premier figures in contemporary Chinese Buddhism, has stated that Buddhism should never teach intolerance toward homosexuality, and that people should expand their minds.

Marriage is an institution that reflects the values of the society that supports it. If the people of a society no longer believe that it is important to be married, then there is no reason why they cannot change the institution of marriage. Marriage is a custom. Customs can always be changed. We can find the same core point in this question as we have in others—the ultimate truth of the matter is that individuals can and should decide for themselves what is right. As long as they are not violating others or breaking the laws of the society in which they are living, then they are free to do what they believe is right. It is not for me or anyone else to tell them that they must get married if they want to live together. That is their choice and their choice alone.

The same analysis can be applied to homosexuality. People often ask me what I think about homosexuality. They wonder, is it right, is it wrong? The answer is, it is neither right nor wrong. It is just something that people do. If people are not harming each other, their private lives are their own business; we should be tolerant of them and not reject them.

However, it will still take some time for the world to fully accept homosexuality. All of us must learn to tolerate the behavior of others. Just as we hope to expand our minds to include all of the universe, so we should also seek to expand our minds to include all of the many forms of human behavior.

Tolerance is a form of generosity and it is a form of wisdom. There is nothing anywhere in the Dharma that should ever lead anyone to become intolerant. Our goal as Buddhists is to learn to accept all kinds of people and to help all kinds of people discover the wisdom of the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha. —Hsing Yun, Buddhism Pure and Simple, pp. 137–138

Hsing Yun is a bestselling author throughout the Sinosphere, as well as an advocate of Humanistic Buddhism, an approach to reform Chinese Buddhism to match the needs of contemporary laypeople. As such, his views may not be wholly reflective of the older Buddhist views in China.

An example of an older view in opposition to homosexuality is given by the traditional master, Hsuan Hua, an important figure for Buddhism in both China and the United States. Master Hsuan Hua stated that homosexuality "plants the seeds that lead to rebirth in the lower realms of existence". In his commentary on the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters, he described homosexuality as behavior caused by confusion, as the product of sexual desires.