I’M WALKING down a street near my house. It’s a warm afternoon. A gentle wind plays with the trees. There are some men standing outside a shop, drinking. I walk past them and overhear: “Is that a man or a woman?” I carry on walking.
This is an everyday experience for me, one I share with many nonbinary people. The question follows us, surfacing from people’s lips—indicating that we confuse and upset them because we challenge their preconceptions; we don’t fit into the binary categories they use to judge humans. Caught in this confusion, they double down, demanding we fit into this or that box.
These men aren’t special or unique. The ignorance they We love what we think is good and chase it everywhere; we hate what we decide is bad and try desperately to escape it. We’re caught in dualisms. This is the very human dilemma that Zen responds to.
