Here he rejoices, hereafter he rejoices; one who performed meritorious deeds rejoices in both existences. He rejoices and greatly rejoices when he sees the purity of his own deeds.
Translated by Daw Mya Tin, M.A
A few years ago I was in a Buddhist study group and the notion of purity came up. For me, purity was quite wonderful. It evoked the sense of renewal and rebirth. All your defilements and faults would be burnt away and only your natural radiance would be left. Quite wonderful. However, the leader of the study group disagreed.
He was a middle aged gay man, I guess in his early fifties at that point. He would have been brought up at a time when being gay was very much not OK. In the 1970s and 1980s words associated with being a gay man were bandied around as insults by children and teenagers. The word gay itself was an insult; a prefix to any noun to twist its meaning into abuse. I’m not going to pretend to know what it must have been like to have been a gay teenager in that environment, but I can appreciate that it must have been a hard time, a very hard time.
So the study group leader wasn’t much taken with purity. For him it evoked shame. A reminder of a time when he was seen as something very much less than pure. Notions of purity would have meant not being gay, not acting on your heartfelt desire, suppressing the very essence of who you were. Purification was not a good term for him and he was kind enough to explain to us why.
I been very fortunate to live at a time when peoples attitudes towards the LGBTIQ community has radically changed for the better. Not perfect but better. LGBTIQ is now in the mainstream and the hatred and abuse has been pushed into the shadows, still lurking but it’s no longer an acceptable way for the majority to behave. Perhaps now, the notion of purity can be reclaimed.
Or perhaps not. Sadly, I feel that there will always be groups of people who are made to feel shame for who they are. They will always be people who are insulted and abused for being no other than themselves. There will always be groups of people who are made to feel impure