At a time of escalating attacks on trans and gender-expansive communities, alongside ecological and political upheaval, we might ask: What is so threatening about lives that refuse to conform to the boundaries of the dominant order? And what wisdom might these lives carry for a world in transition?
Across the living Earth, ecotones—the fertile thresholds where ecological communities meet—are places of encounter, adaptation, and emergence. In the Nahuatl concept of nepantla, and through the writings of Gloria Anzaldúa, we encounter another understanding of the in-between: a space of disorientation, transformation, and possibility.
Drawing from his lived experience as a trans and Two-Spirit person and his path as a Dharma practitioner, Andrés González brings these ways of knowing into conversation with Buddhist teachings on emptiness, nonduality, and interdependence, including the playful disruption of gender duality in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra.
Together, through contemplative practice and shared inquiry, we will explore how trans and gender-expansive experiences can illuminate the constructed boundaries between self and other, human and nature, and how we might move beyond separative consciousness toward a more intimate, compassionate, and liberatory relationship with ourselves, each other, and the more-than-human world.
