Vakkali, Buddha's gay disciple?
I was reading a short story and came across a reference to Vakkali. In the story, the characters founded a Gay Buddhist society named after Vakkali, because "Vakkali was a gay disciple of the Buddha".
Now, that was news to me. I have not came across any "gay disciple of the Buddha" before. Intrigued, I did a bit of research on him.
Vakkali was from a brahmin family of Savatthi. After he saw the Buddha, he became fascinated by the physical appearance of the Buddha. He followed Buddha around in admiration and became a monk in order to be close to the Buddha.
In order to helped Vakkali get over his obsession, the Buddha said to him, "Enough, Vakkali! Why do you want to see this foul body?" Then, he uttered the famous statement, 'one who sees the Dhamma sees me; one who sees me sees the Dhamma’. This is recorded in the Samyutta Niyaka (Vakkali Sutta, S.III.119).
I found basically 2 differing accounts on Vakkali's life. (See more details at this link)
However, what is apparently interesting about Vakkali was
1) his obsession with the Buddha's appearance
2) his "implicit faith"(saddhādhimuttānam) (I am trying to figure out what is this)
3) his apparently committed suicide, yet the Buddha declared him as enlightened
Pertaining to his obsession with the Buddha's physical appearance, I did not find any descriptions or references that imply it is a sexual attraction. Nor were there any references to his sexuality, or relationships with either man or woman. On the surface, it does appear to be something akin to a crush or some strong physical attraction.
Since it is quite unheard of for straight men to have strong physical attraction to another man (if there were, chances are it's a gay man in denial), I suppose that is was natural for gay people to assume that Vakkali was indeed gay. But really, it seems that there nothing in the scriptures that explicitly suggested Vakkali was gay -- his sexuality was an extrapolation from his physical attraction to the Buddha. So I would rather leave it open to interpretation.
Now, what I found interesting about Vakkali's story was that he apparently committed suicide and yet gained enlightenment. According to my copy of Samyutta Niyaka (translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publications), Ven Vakkali "used the knife". This is significant because Buddhism frown upon killing, including one's own life (i.e. suicide). It is considered unskilful. Yet the Buddha declared that Vakkali attained enlightenment upon his death. The sutta itself did not give any details that may yield any explanation. Apparently, the commentaries tried to explain this by claiming that when Vakkali slit his wrist, the pain caused him to meditate and he attained arahantship just as he died.
There is another similar story recorded in Godhika Sutta (Samyutta Niyaka, S,I,121). Godhika too committed suicide and the Buddha declared that Godhika had attained final Nibbana.
Base on these two stories, it does appear that Buddhism may not regard suicide as immoral as it is thought to be.
However, Damien Keown noted the following in A Dictionary of Buddhism (2004) (see the entry under Vakkali):
"On the basis of this and a few similar cases of suicide it has been thought by some Western scholars that Buddhism does not regard suicide as immoral for the enlightened, but this conclusion is not supported by the Theravāda commentaries and tradition nor by a close reading of the canonical passages in question."
Another interesting thing about Vakkali is that the Buddha declared him foremost among those of implicit faith (saddhādhimuttānam). I haven't been able to find out what exactly is "implicit faith". There are a few references on the internet that links Vakkali to faith. Vakkali is upheld as an example of having gained arahantship through "love and faith for the Buddha".
