Thailand’s senate passed the landmark Marriage Equality Act in June 2024 that would see the kingdom go on to become the first nation in Southeast Asia to legalize marriage for LGBTIQA+ couples, and the third in Asia.* In September 2024, the bill was forwarded to the royal palace for endorsement by Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who formalized the new law.** This groundbreaking legislation finally came into effect this year on 22 January. Social activists have hailed the move as a historic step for equal rights, marking the culmination of years of advocacy for marriage equality in Thailand.
One of the key figures in this painstaking—and ongoing—process of social reform is the committed Buddhist activist and member of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB), Nachale Boonyapisomparn, better known to most by her nickname Hua. As a member of INEB, in particular its Sangha for Peace project, Hua has been a prominent and outspoken agent for change and social equality. She speaks truth to those in authority and is an active participant and leader in the ongoing dialogue toward manifesting an inclusive society that values the equality, safety, and well-being of all.
INEB is a global network of individuals and organizations who are committed to promoting and working toward building compassionate societies, environmental sustainability, and world peace. INEB emphasizes the importance of developing an ethical, Dharma-based approach to its work, and encourages its members to work collaboratively and respectfully with individuals and organizations based on a foundation of shared values and aspirations.
INEB’s Sangha for Peace is a regional project aimed at promoting interfaith harmony and addressing the challenges of rising religious and ethno-nationalist conflict in South and Southeast Asia. Supported by funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Sangha for Peace works to address challenges and problem-solving by equipping stakeholders with the knowledge and tools needed to enhance regional engagement.
As an engaged Buddhist activist, Hua has been instrumental organizing numerous events and projects aimed at nurturing trust and cultivating a sustainable network of allies and supporters of the vision of an inclusive society. One such event was INEB’s “Interfaith Pride: Gender Equality and Social Justice,” the first event of its kind, held in June 2023 in cooperation with Bangkok Pride and other LGBTIQ activist organizations.***
BDG recently spoke in depth with Hua to learn more about her life as a transgender woman and her work as a Buddhist activist and bodhisattva for social change.
BDG: Can you talk a little about your personal relationship with Buddhism?
Nachale Boonyapisomparn (Hua): Yes, as a Thai, I grew up in a Buddhist family. Actually, I don’t really know what my father’s religion is, but my mother is definitely a Buddhist. She would regularly visit the temple and would always take me with her.
There’s one story I often hear about how I was born: my mother had some difficulty conceiving after her first daughter, so she would go to the temple and pray to the Buddha for another child. She made a promise that if she had a boy, he would be ordained as a monk. Eventually she became pregnant with me, and when I was 13 years old I was ordained as a monk for seven days. This is a fun story that demonstrates how serious my mother was toward Buddhism, which had a strong influence on me.
Also, you know, growing up in Thailand, when we’re in primary school and high school we have classes on Buddhism. So I had a strong Buddhist influence from my mother and from school as well while I was growing up. Buddhism has always been integral to my life; going to the temple, observing Buddhist festivals and holidays. As I grew older, I recognized that there are many religious traditions in this world yet the Buddha’s teachings have resonated the most with me.
My attitude is that I trust the Buddha, not the temple. As I grew older, I began to question whether the temple was the right place for me as a transgender woman. When I’m in my hometown, Phrae, in northern Thailand, I still go to the same temple that my mother used to take me to. When I was ordained as a novice monk, I was ordained at that temple. So whenever I go home, if I have time, I attend that temple, because they know my mother and they know me well and saw me growing up.
BDG: Can we say that you practice traditional Thai Buddhism?
NB: I don’t know that I can describe myself as a traditional Thai Buddhist because when we speak about traditional Thai Buddhism, I feel that it has a very gender-binary perspective, you know? I think that as a transgender person, and at my current stage of life, traditional Thai Buddhism is not so relevant to me anymore. I would rather learn more about the Buddha’s actual teachings and about Buddhism outside of the Theravada paradigm. Thai Buddhism is traditionally very male dominated, which is something that’s not so relevant to me.
BDG: How were your early experiences as a member of the LGBTQ community?
NB: I don’t know exactly when I first recognized it, but I grew up feeling very different from other boys. Although the gender I was assigned at birth was male, I felt different growing up as a boy, although I didn’t have the words at that time to express my feelings or to describe what I wanted to be. This was also because I grew up in a very rural area, and Phrae is a small province. And 30 or 40 years ago, the term transgender was not even known!
So in those days, when I was a kid, people would call me “katoey” [a colloquial term in Thailand commonly translated as “ladyboy”]. I felt that this term was very insulting but at the same time I didn’t have a better way to describe who I was, so I accepted the label of katoey up until I went to university. And I had close friends who also referred to themselves as katoey.
I didn’t refer to myself transgender until my first real job as a project manager for a social program to assist transgender women. That was when the term transgender first entered my consciousness, and I recognized it as the right identity for me. And when I say transgender, it’s not the same as the term transsexual, although many people use them interchangeably. Transgender is when your gender identity is different from the gender you are assigned at birth; transsexual specifically applies to someone who has undergone sex-reassignment surgery; but it’s an outdated term. So I think of the term transgender as a broader definition that I prefer to apply to myself.
But I wasn’t really aware of these concepts when I was growing up. I just knew that I felt different from a very young age. I don’t think I ever had to tell my mother because she already knew who I was, although she never addressed directly the fact that I was different or that I behaved in a very feminine way. When I went to college, I think she finally recognized that this is who I am and she came to accept it fully.
So I didn’t have to struggle to win my parents’ acceptance—unlike a lot of transgender kids. I think part of the reason for this was that, as Buddhists, we are much more willing to compromise and let things go, and my mother was a very sincere Buddhist, so that may be part of the explanation in my case.
BDG: At what point did you decide that you wanted to work as a Buddhist activist?
NB: I think that I’ve always embraced activism since I was at school. I was always doing something, even if it was just managing the school cooperative shop or being a member of the student council. But I didn’t become involved in human rights activism until I moved to Bangkok after graduating from university.
Then I was a master’s degree student at Chulalongkorn University and I became involved in an international conference on HIV/AIDS here in Bangkok in 2004 as a volunteer for the Global Village, which was the space to showcase nonprofit organizations working in the sphere of HIV/AIDS. I applied to be a volunteer with the Rainbow Sky Association of Thailand, and through getting to know them, I became hooked on this work. Later, I was recruited to become a program manager for Rainbow Sky.
This was the starting point for me in working for nonprofit organizations. I focused on HIV/AIDS for about four years, then I started to feel increasingly strongly about working with transgender people to promote human rights and gender diversity and sexuality. So I became a researcher before focusing on human rights advocacy for transgender people. Up until 2024, when I turned 44, I’ve been working in LGBTQ activism for 20 years—so 2024 was my 20-year anniversary!
I continued this work in Thailand for six or seven years before moving to the United States, where I live for about 10 years. Then I moved back to Thailand in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. When I returned to Thailand, I felt very refreshed; I was very motivated and full of energy and I became involved in so many projects, including working with INEB.
Since 2020, I‘ve realized one thing: the reason I now have so much energy is because I was able to take a break from activism—not a full break, I was still involved—but I was also able to live my own life for 10 years in the US. I was still active, for example volunteering at a sex worker’s organization in Washington, DC, organizing events with my school in the US, and so on, but at the same time I could experience many new things and I had the opportunity to grow up and truly live my life. I think this is the reason why I have so much energy for activism now.
BDG: How did you become involved with INEB?
NB: I didn’t know about INEB until I came to know the NGO International Women for Peace and Justice (IWP) in Chiang Mai [in northern Thailand]. I was connected with them for many years before I moved to the US. I used to attend training workshops, and I co-facilitated a 10-day training program for 16 transgender activists, which was one of the first events of its kind at that time in Thailand. I eventually came to know INEB through the IWP’s affiliation. And when INEB began their Sangha for Peace project, IWP nominated me to join this project. So that’s how I entered the INEB fold.
BDG: How has your Buddhist practice influenced your approach to LGBTQ activism?
NB: I believe strongly in the Buddha’s teaching. As I mentioned before, I trust the Buddha’s teaching, although I don’t feel like I belong in a temple. I feel that compassion is the foundation for this kind of work. Especially when working in social justice, having compassion, not only for other people but also for yourself, helps you sustain what you do and also helps you to understand other people’s suffering: it gives you the ability to to give yourself, to sit with their suffering. Compassion is extremely important. If we’re unable to sit with their suffering in this way, then we cannot find the right solutions for their suffering, we cannot be a help for people—especially transgender people, who suffer a lot from social injustice, discrimination, and violence.
BDG: And how about compassion for people who may not understand what you’re trying to do or perhaps feel afraid or even threatened by it?
NB: Yes! Yes, yes, I think it’s very important that you mentioned this. Sometimes we have to hear from those people about their perspectives and the reasons why they may disagree. I think it’s very important to cultivate compassion toward them as well. Although it can be very difficult, I feel like it’s most needed because if you’re going to work toward social change, you’re not only working on behalf of those who support you, but also with those who may disagree with you.
I can give you an example: on one occasion, I was asked by a bhikkhuni in the south of Thailand to organize a gender workshop in her temple. The bhikkhuni invited a Buddhist monk to give a speech before the workshop started. The monk sat on a raised platform above everybody else, who sat on the floor. He began his address by saying something like, “Sometimes I feel like activists do too much; I think that gender is flexible so you just have to bend back to being a man in order to be ordained as monastic.” I was sitting there as he said this, listening to him among all the bhikkhunis and female novices. I was the only transgender woman in that space, and the only activist in that space, so I felt like I was targeted by this monk’s words. But I told myself, I’m not here to work with that monk. When he finishes his speech, he’s going to return to his temple and my workshop will begin. I’m here to work with these bhikkhunis, who are going to participate in my workshop. So although I disagree with a lot of what this monk has said, I don’t need to respond. And it was actually a good thing that I didn’t respond to the monk because otherwise I might have ruined a chance to work with the bhikkhunis. This is just one example of how compassion can work with someone who has a different attitude or disagrees with you!
BDG: Is it difficult to balance the Buddhist cultivation of acceptance and equanimity with the need for social change?
NB: This is very interesting, because at that workshop where I spoke with the bhikkhunis, the bhikkhunis said, “We’re monastics. We shouldn’t become overly involved with what happens in the secular world because we practice the Buddha’s teachings, we practice to let go of our attachments and aversions, we practice to attain spiritual awakening, so we shouldn’t engage too much with what’s happening in the outside world.”
I responded saying, “No, the Buddha did not say that; a lot of the Buddha’s teachings only work when we engage with those who are suffering. We cannot attain Nirvana knowing that we’re not lifting other people up together with us. This is the bodhisattva path. As a monastic, you can still do small acts for the benefit of society and to engage with social justice.
As for me, I recognize the need in my community for a space to practice, to feel safe. How can you engage in spiritual practice if you don’t feel safe? First you need a practice space where you feel safe, where you can practice according to your faith—whether you’re a Buddhist, a Christian, or a Muslim. A lot of LGBT people don’t always feel safe in a traditional temple because a lot of the teachings are still being misinterpreted—for example, karma: that I was born as a transgender woman because of something terrible I did in a past life. When you teach people like this, you’re not liberating them, you only oppress them! You’re taking away their value. What we need as trans-gender people is a space that affirms us as we are. Focusing on your current life allows you to improve yourself physically, mentally, and spiritually, here and now.
BDG: Have there been any occasions when you felt that your gender identity and your Buddhist beliefs were in conflict (and how did you reconcile them)?
NB: Yes, aside from the issue with karma teachings, there was one time when I was much younger. I don’t really like to use these words, but they are the only words that accurately describe it: I hated myself for being born as a transgender woman. I felt that I didn’t deserve love, that I made my parents feel ashamed or embarrassed by being who I am, that I was too tall, that I didn’t look feminine. All of these kinds of things. I hated myself.
But I was eventually able to reconcile these feelings after I connected with the IWP in Chiang Mai. During a workshop there are so many activities, such as mindfulness, meditation, deep listening, and other spiritual practices, but the core teaching was not only learning about feminist concepts but also learning how to keep compassion for yourself and for those who share your suffering. Whatever guilt, whatever blame, whatever stigma you put on yourself, you learn how to disengage from that.
When I attended that workshop, there was an activity about understanding privilege. A statement was read out and if the statement was true for you, you stepped forward. If it wasn’t true for you, you stepped back. An example statement might have been, “If you have a bachelor’s degree, step forward.” By the end of this activity, I was standing right at the front. And the next instruction was: “Those of you standing at the front, please turn around and look back.” So I looked back and saw the rest of the group were all standing behind me.
Then it was time for us all to sit in a circle and share our reflections. The first thing I did was to cry so hard because I realized that for all these years, I was the only person who was constantly telling myself that I was undeserving of love, that I was shameful, that I was unworthy, and so on. I was the one stopping myself from being happy. I cried so much! And those people gave me the space to cry, and listened to what I had to say. That was the first time I was truly able to put aside a lot of the guilt and shame that I was carrying, that I had put on myself, and to try to change that way I felt about myself.
This was such an important experience in my life. I think that part of being a Buddhist is exploring how to let go of negative feelings, such as guilt and trauma: things that happened to you in your body, things that happened to you in your heart, things that you have been thinking about yourself or carrying with you in your mind.
Compassionate mindfulness is so helpful in this sense. It allows you to practice self-compassion and to offer yourself loving-kindness. Then you can let go of all the feelings of guilt, all the bad things that you keep telling yourself. It was a life-changing experience for me. In the same workshop, we also learned about cultivating Buddha-mind, which is like a clear blue sky. Our minds are so often unclear and clouded with thoughts and feelings that are tied to the past, present, and future.
As I said, it was a life-changing experience. I remember that I suddenly saw an image of a lotus flower in my mind, so I associate that experience with the story of the Buddha attaining enlightenment and seeing four kinds of lotus flower. I remember thinking, “Oh my! I used to be like a lotus under the water, and now as a disciple of the Buddha I can see myself as a lotus flower that has grown above the surface of the water, to be reborn! I saw this clear image in my mind all of a sudden. It really was life-changing!
I now use the same approach in all of the workshops that I organize for my activist community.
BDG: How has the recent legalization of marriage equality in Thailand impacted the public perception of LGBTQ individuals?
NB: I think a major reason why we were able to see the marriage equality bill passed is because we received a lot of support from society at large. I think the narrative is very clear, very easy to understand: when we say “love is love,” this concept, this feeling resonates clearly with people. Love has no gender, right? This is the first thing that people recognize, especially those who are more open-minded. They give their support because they can see that their love is no different from that between a same-sex couple.
Another factor is that in Thailand, there was no law that protected or promoted the rights of LGBTQ people. So I think this is a very significant moment for Thailand to pass the marriage equality bill. It stresses the importance of thinking beyond binary concepts. When we say equality, it doesn’t only mean male and female, equality means everyone in society regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.
One thing that does still concern me, although I may be overthinking, is that people in Thailand may see this as meaning that equality has been achieved; that there’s nothing more we need to do for LGBTQ people because we already have marriage equality. In fact, there are still so many things that we need to do, including legal gender recognition for trans people, gender-affirming care coverage, and support for lesbians. non-binary, queer, and intersex people. Each of these different identities has different circumstances and needs.
We use the term LGBTQ and many people see a monolithic community, when of course it’s not: lesbians have different needs than gay people, who have different needs than trans, and so on, so we still have a lot to do. I just hope that Thai people don’t think that marriage quality is the end game for LGBTQ equality and social inclusion.
BDG: How do you address opposition from more conservative Buddhists (or people of other religions) who may not support LGBTQ rights?
NB: One thing I’ve learned from working with INEB is that INEB organizes a lot of activities and spends a lot of time on dialogue, putting people with different ideas and different perspectives together to talk about ways in which they can live in the same society. I think it’s very important when working with those who might disagree or who are different from you. We need that space where people can come without judgment and feel safe enough to speak their own minds, and perhaps express anger without judgment—a safe space that can still contain all the feelings that are happening.
But if you ask me how we’re going to build that space, I’m not sure! You know, it’s very challenging, very difficult. But what INEB does is amazing, putting people of different faiths together to talk about sometimes very sensitive things. So I hope we can put people of different ideologies about gender together to talk about how we can progress.
Another very important point is having allies, especially when working with a group of Buddhists. I think that having a few allies who understand you and can pave the way for you to give space for people from the community to have their voices heard is also very important. We have a few allies in the Buddhist community who can talk about gender issues beyond a binary perspective, who can talk about equality, and can challenge resistance. I think it’s important to have more of these people; starting from a few people, we can expand our reach.
I’ve seen this while working with Buddhist monastics on the Sangha for Peace project. On one occasion, I asked whether a transgender person could be ordained, and the bhikkhuni said, “No, we cannot ordain trans people.” And so, during the course of a year, we had a lot of dialogue and exchanged ideas. We got to know one another and they came to see me as a real person. And after interacting in this safe space, I asked the same bhikkhuni the same question, and this time the answer was different; she said, “Yes, you can ordain!”
So clearly, we really need this dialogue, we really need the time, we really need to get to know one another at a very personal level to truly understand that we’re all human, that we all seek peace and we all want happiness.
BDG: Do you have any advice for young people—or young Buddhists—who are struggling with their gender identity in relation to their practice?
NB: My advice would be don’t believe anyone who tells you that you did something terrible in a past life. I think it’s very important to empower people, regardless of the past. Life is in this moment. It’s very important for you to separate yourself from your suffering. In my experience, it’s also very important as a Buddhist to not only bring compassion for others but to bring that same compassion for yourself as well. You need that compassion to grow, to learn, to explore your identity, and also to be able to live in a society that may be against you or may completely misunderstand you. You’re going to be able to live as your authentic self with the compassion that you give to yourself. Bringing this compassion is something very important that we can do for ourselves.
Later on, when you’ve grown up and found the right place for you, that’s the time when you can fully be yourself. Practicing self-compassion will help you hang in there until such time as everyone can see you for your authentic self!
BDG: Hua, thank you for your time and for sharing your insights with us.
* Taiwan became the first Asian government to legalize same-sex marriage in 2019, while Nepal has taken progressive steps toward equality, most recently in November 2023, when its government, under an interim order from the Supreme Court, recognized a marriage between two Nepalis of the same legal gender for the first time.
** Thailand Becomes First Southeast Asian Country to Legalize Same-Sex Unions (BDG), Special Report: Thailand to Become First Nation in Southeast Asia to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage (BDG), and Thailand Takes a Historic Step Closer to Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage (BDG)
See more
International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB)
INEB – International Network of Engaged Buddhists (Facebook)
Project Brief: The Sangha for Peace (INEB)
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