Queer Eye(s) on the Precepts | New York Insight
at New York Insight
New York, NY and Online
More Info / Registration
A five-session course taught by Leslie Booker, Jay Michaelson, and Jacoby Ballard.
The Five Precepts form the basis of Buddhist ethics in the Insight tradition. But the way they are sometimes written, taught, and understood can be challenging for queer people navigating identity, sexuality, gender, and different forms of community. In this series, we’re going to take a queer-informed, non-apologetic, and participatory dive into the precepts, which after all as part of a 2500-year-old tradition developed in different cultural contexts from our own. How might queer folks navigate the precepts in ways that promote awakening, compassion, justice, and fulfillment? How do we engage with texts in which, as Adrienne Rich put it, our names mostly do not appear?
There will be a half-day retreat mid way through the course, and we’ll also have the opportunity to meet in small groups and with a teacher in between the monthly sessions for support to deepen our personal understanding and to cultivate spiritual friendships. Ultimately, we hope to arrive at multiple ways of navigating ethics and community together. (And since we take an expansive definition of queerness, you’re welcome to join if that word speaks to your experience.)
Descriptions for each class session appear below. You are welcome to sign up for the full course, or for individual sessions.
Class 1 – Protecting Life (Tuesday, Feb. 17, 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET)
Beyond “not killing”, what might it look like to protect life and cultivate non-harming (including non-self-harm) in our violent, oppressive and extractive society?
Class 2 – Cultivating Generosity (Tuesday, March 17, 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET)
How can queer communities cultivate generosity, mutual aid, and collective care in a society built on commerce (and theft)? How might this be expressed in creating cultures of belonging?
Class 3/Half-Day Retreat – The One about Sex (Saturday, April. 18, 10:00am – 1:00pm ET)
What does it mean to engage in sexual relationships ethically? How do queer relationship structures and practices – including polyamory, kink, open relationships, asexuality, and periods of celibacy – fit within the precepts? How do we lovingly navigate relationships with exes and former lovers in often tightly-knit communities?
Class 4 – Skillful Speech (Tuesday, May 12, 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET)
What does “right speech” look like in communities where accountability is important, in which conflict is not abuse, and yet where harm can still be done by harmful or hurtful speech, by gossip, or even by idle chatter?
Class 5 – What is an intoxicant? (Tuesday, June 16, 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET)
Queer people have a wide variety of relationships (often fraught) toward substances. What might healthy relationships to substances look like? What forms of substance use block the heart from belonging to one other, and what might empower it? Other than substances, what intoxicants might we encounter in our lives (e.g. dating apps, social media)?
Registration and more information are right here.
