#shaun bartone

[gatheringbones]

shaun bartone, from conduct unbecoming: a transqueer experience of the dharma, from transcending: trans buddhist voices, edited by kevin manders and elizabeth marston, 2019

[praelectio]

We know, perhaps more profoundly than heterosexuals, that there is no fixed “self,” that all facets of identity are ascribed, learned, performed, negotiated, discarded, transformed, and mutable.

Conduct Unbecoming by Shaun Bartone, in Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices

[praelectio]

I relish the idea of deploying a queer post-modern dharma to deconstruct every binary of the human condition, all of which are socially constructed, none of which are essential.

Conduct Unbecoming by Shaun Bartone, in Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices

[praelectio]

My gender ambiguity became the portal for me to understand the dharma of not-self. Identities change, and trans identities change profoundly on multiple levels: physically, mentally, sexually, and socially. My experience of the dharma is likewise an “unbecoming.” When I sit in meditation, I actively deconstruct and dismantle the self that society expects me to be. “Meditate and destroy,” as Noah Levine says.

Conduct Unbecoming by Shaun Bartone, in Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices

[everyday-experimentations]

Queer-as-chaos is an un-identity. It is an identity that never stabilizes, never solidifies. It is a dynamical identity that constantly shifts changes and evolves over time. It is a relational identity that changes with one’s relationship to others and ourselves. There is always some stable, functioning ‘me’ that relates to the world, but the characteristics of that ‘me’ changes with psychic growth and relational development.

Shaun Bartone

[everyday-experimentations]

Anthropologists tell us that the human species is evolving more rapidly now, in the physical sense, than at any point in its evolutionary history. Yet much of the adaptation that humans undergo is driven by culture; we adapt primarily to culture, not nature. In short, I propose that if the human population is evolving through adaptation to a culturally constructed environment, then queers change the cultural environment to which they are adapting.

Shaun Bartone