Dear Buddhalovely, I have come accross texts that state that transsexuals and hermaphrodites can't be ordained.
I can't remember eunuchs nor gays being mentioned though... Could you help me by telling me where is this information from?
Thank you
The term used in the pali texts for people who cannot be ordained is "pandaka". now, pandaka is a very vague word but modern scholars tend to interpret that as 5 things:
(1) asittakapandaka: A man who gains satisfaction from performing oral sex on another man and from ingesting his semen, or who only becomes sexually aroused after ingesting another man's semen.
(2) ussuyapandaka: A voyeur, a man who gains sexual satisfaction from watching a man and a woman having sex.
(3) opakkamikapandaka: Eunuchs, that is, castrated men lacking complete sexual organs. Unlike the other four types of pandaka Bunmi describes, these men attain their condition after birth and are not born as pandaka. Leonard Zwilling (1992:204) does not call this type of pandaka a eunuch but rather says the term describes a man who "attains ejaculation through some special effort or artifice".
Bunmi's description of opakkamika as eunuchs appears to follow a sixth type of pandaka that Zwilling says is identified by Yas'omitra, the lunapandaka, which denotes a man who has been intentionally castrated.
(4) pakkhapandaka: People who become sexually aroused in parallel with the phases of the moon, either becoming aroused during the fortnight of the waning moon (Pali: kalapakkha) and ceasing to be aroused during the fortnight of the waxing moon (Pali: junhapakkha) or, conversely, becoming sexually aroused during the period of the waxing moon and ceasing to be aroused during the period of the waning moon. Zwilling cites the early commentator, Buddhaghosa, as saying that a pakkhapandaka "becomes t emporarily impotent for fourteen 'black days' of the month but regains his potency during the fourteen 'white days', that is, from the new to the full moon".
napumsakapandaka (also sometimes called simply napumsaka): A person with no clearly defined genitals, whether male or female, having only a urinary tract. Another definition of a napumsaka given by Bunmi (1986:239)is 'a [>male] person who is not able to engage in activities like aman'. Elsewhere, Bunmi adds that napumsakapandaka are born without any genitalorgans as punishment for having castrated animals in a past life. According to Zwilling, Buddhaghosa describes a napumsaka as "one who is congenitally impotent".
(okay, im not gonna be a vet any time soon...)
In a strict sense, anyone who falls in any of these 5 categories are not allowed to be monks. The first one implies homosexuality.
It seems that Buddhism also is the first religion to recognize transsexuals and homosexuals as separate genders.
The Vinaya identifies four main sex/gender types: male and female, and two additional categories, called ubhatobyanjanaka and pandaka in Pali.The non-normative categories, ubhatobyanjanaka and pandaka, refer to different things in different sections of the Pali canon, and itis important to distinguish the distinctive nuances of these two terms.
However, another explanation:
In the case of the so-call "gay" monk who was overcome by sexual desire and could no longer restrain himself, the original word used is "pandaka".
In any case, it is really up to the abbots to screen the monks and determine if they are suitable for ordination to prevent unnecessary suffering and agony to transgender individuals. Creating more suffering for others is not the Buddhist way.
