Asian Buddhists, as well as Western Buddhists, frequently claim that “feminism” is a “Western” innovation and, therefore, not relevant to Buddhists. This claim always leaves me incredulous. For one thing, one cannot prove that something is irrelevant to Buddhism or Buddhists by citing its Western origins. Many of the Asian Buddhists I know would be extremely reluctant to give up their cell phones and many other technologies, despite their Western origins. But there is a much more basic reason why this claim leaves me incredulous. Granted, “feminism” is a Western term, but what it means and encompasses is not only compatible with Buddhism but is already deeply embedded in many Buddhist texts from virtually all periods of Buddhist history and all schools of Buddhism. From the beginnings of Buddhism throughout its history, some Buddhists have always made fun of and rejected Buddhism’s more male-dominant strata. To claim that feminism is irrelevant to Buddhism, Buddhists would have to ignore many definitive texts that represent important teachers, from the historical Buddha to Padmasambhava, making claims that, were a Western Buddhist feminist to make an identical claim, would immediately be rejected by some because of its alleged Western “feminism.” In recent years, I have begun to focus on what I call “indigenous Buddhist feminism” by demonstrating how prevalent these “feminist” texts, which could not possibly derive from Western influences, actually are. I am not trying to persuade Buddhists to imitate Western practices and Western values.
In their justifiable attempts to avoid inappropriate Western colonial initiatives, why would Buddhists ignore one of the Buddhist tradition’s most precious insights—that gender is ultimately unreal and irrelevant. As I have repeatedly demonstrated in previous chapters, the West cannot claim any superiority in its gender practices until recently, if even then. I am urging Buddhists to live up to the potential and vision of our own tradition regarding gender equality and equity, to promote social practices that enable women and men equally to reach that enlightened state of mind beyond gender—neither male nor female—to quote the slogan that so many Buddhists love. To do that, Buddhists will have to ignore many other dimensions of traditional Buddhism, especially many institutional practices that point in the opposite direction and involve significant male privilege. As I have written many times, the view that promotes gender neutrality and equality and that praises the enlightened mind beyond gender is incompatible with institutional practices of male dominance. Those male-dominant practices may have been unavoidable before modern medicine changed required gender roles so much, but nothing is worse than hanging on to outmoded, irrelevant practices simply because they are familiar. With our facility at penetrating analysis, Buddhists should easily be able to penetrate and resolve this incompatibility between view and practice.
Of course, to make these claims about feminism being indigenous to Buddhism, we have to be clear about what is meant by “feminism.” Herein, I fear, lies much of the problem. Even in the West (especially in the West?), feminism is routinely trivialized and misrepresented in popular media. The only relevant definitions of feminism in this context are my consistently used definition—freedom from the prison of gender roles—and a less personal definition, based on the understanding that women and men are equally human and thus equally entitled to what can make a human birth “precious” in Buddhist understandings of the great good fortune that can accompany a human rebirth. What makes a human birth worthwhile is the possibility of finding that enlightened state of mind beyond gender, neither male nor female, which the prison of gender roles subverts. Feminism, properly understood, is not about female supremacy or about hating men. We feminists are not positively disposed toward male privilege and dominance, but disliking such evil social practices has nothing to do with hating men. It is sad when people refuse to see the distinction between these two things, claiming that feminists must be women who were “unlucky in love” or dislike men. Of course, in patriarchal or male-dominated social situations, applying “feminist” reforms would result in improved situations for women and girls over their status quo. How could that possibly be a problem for anyone?
Buddhist studies scholarship, whether Asian or Western, is not an objective practice in which everyone comes up with the same results concerning questions such as which texts are important and how they should be interpreted. Sometimes some texts are selected to receive far more attention than is warranted, and sometimes relevant texts are ignored for centuries or by certain groups of interpreters. Both processes have deeply affected how texts pertaining to indigenous Buddhist feminism have been received both by Buddhists and by Western scholars of Buddhism. Many texts seem to have received less attention from Buddhists than they deserve. For example, texts discussed in chapter 4 on Buddhist perceptions of humanity as genuinely two-sexed, which are so different from Western texts about the priority of the male and the derived character of the female, have been underutilized by Buddhists. They so clearly undercut Buddhist male-dominant institutions, which are more in accord with Western male-dominated religious institutions than with the Buddhist understanding that humanity is genuinely two-sexed.
At least for Western Buddhists, however, androcentrism on the part of Western Buddhist studies scholars has seriously skewed how texts are selected for inclusion in textbooks on Buddhism and which elements of the Buddhist heritage are emphasized in such books. Needless to say, such interpretive practices would seriously affect what Western Buddhists know about their tradition. Androcentrism is different from male dominance, and that distinction is important. Male dominance, aka patriarchy, is a way of organizing society so that men control a society and its institutions. In a patriarchal society, women may be largely invisible to outside observers, including scholars, and may seem to them to be uninteresting or unimportant, to the extent that women don’t receive inclusion in descriptions of that society or religion—which is androcentrism. Such was the status of the field of religious studies when I entered it as a graduate student in the mid-1960s. I was seriously discouraged from studying women’s religious lives and roles because androcentric Western scholars had “determined” that women had no religious lives of note, that it was waste of scholarly energy to even look into them. I countered that even in male-dominated religions, women had religious lives, roles, and opinions. In my earliest research I found that androcentric scholars, predisposed to think that women are uninteresting and unimportant, had overlooked a great deal of relevant data regarding the religion they were studying.1 Women’s studies scholarship discovered the same dynamic over and over again. It is important to understand that androcentrism is a set of presuppositions residing in the scholars’ minds, not something out there in the data being studied and observed by scholars. It is equally important to realize that the Western academy in general was not only male dominated but was also completely androcentric until relatively recently, and it still is in many cases. Western Buddhist studies is no exception to this generalization.
Such androcentric scholars seem, in addition, to exaggerate and delight in the male dominance they “report.” One small example still stands out in my mind many years later and still irritates me. During second-year Sanskrit, which I studied during the 1967–1968 school year, for some reason the term “yogi,” a practitioner of yoga, came up. The professor, eagerly and with a smirk and undue delight, explained that the feminine of that term would be “yogini.” But, he proclaimed, actually there are no yoginis because the feminine of that term actually means “a witch.” Not only was his delight in his conclusion irritating; he was wrong. I could not correct him at that time because I didn’t yet have the appropriate knowledge. Anyone who knows anything about Vajrayana Buddhism is aware that the term “yogini” is frequently used positively for female practitioners; they are not assumed to be witches but are honored for their accomplishments. It should not take much imagination to appreciate how alienating this false information could be to a young female scholar already fighting for a toehold in an extremely male-dominated field. And yet male scholars insist that the playing field is completely level and that the working conditions faced by women scholars are exactly the same as those under which men work.
Western scholarly androcentrism significantly affects how scholars select texts or elements within texts to highlight, often giving them far more centrality than a less androcentric reading would give them. One example I have begun to emphasize in recent teachings involves the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, which has become one of my favorite texts to teach, especially to Mahayana and Vajrayana audiences, who usually do not know Pali Buddhist literature well. This is the longest sutta in the Pali Canon and narrates the last three months of the Buddha’s life. There are many episodes in the text. I focus on several that make points that are relevant to a discussion of indigenous Buddhist feminism.
One of the more important episodes concerns the Buddha’s decision to relinquish his life force, leading to his death three months later. In the stories found in the Pali suttas, Mara continues to challenge the Buddha throughout his life, unlike the narratives familiar to most people today, in which Mara’s encounters with the Buddha end after the Buddha’s enlightenment experience. In the third episode of the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, Mara again approaches the Buddha, telling him that it is time for him to attain parinibbana. His argument is that he, Mara, had made a similar suggestion to the Buddha immediately after his enlightenment, arguing with him at that time that there was no reason for the Buddha to continue living now that he had attained final release. But, at that time, the Buddha had rejected Mara’s proposal on the grounds that he still had work to do but would attain parinibbana when that work had been completed. Mara argues that the Buddha has now completed the tasks he had set for himself, so he should enter parinibbana. The Buddha agrees and says that in three months, he will indeed attain parinibbana.
The conditions that needed to be fulfilled before the Buddha would declare that his work was completed are relevant. The Buddha had declared:
I will not take final Nibbana till I have monks and disciples who are accomplished, trained, skilled, learned, knowers of the Dhamma, trained in conformity with the Dhamma, correctly trained and walking in the path of the Dhamma, who will pass on what they have gained from their Teacher, teach it, declare it, establish it, expound it, analyse it, make it clear….2
In the repetitive style so characteristic of Pali texts and so annoying to modern readers, exactly the same conditions are laid out again, this time pertaining to “nuns and female disciples” and then twice more, pertaining to “laymen-followers” and finally to “laywomen-followers.”3 Both the Buddha and Mara agree that those conditions have been filled, whereupon the Buddha assures Mara that he will take parinibbana in three months.
This passage is noteworthy for the way it emphasizes that the Buddha’s work is not complete until the sangha includes fully accomplished nuns, laymen, and laywomen. His work is not complete merely when there are only fully accomplished monks. This condition constitutes a severe reprimand to most contemporary Buddhist communities, which emphasize and support only monks while ignoring nuns and not even imagining that laypeople could take on serious roles as teachers and fully accomplished disciples. In this sutta, laywomen and laymen are not called upon merely to earn merit by giving monastics economic support. For the Buddha’s mission to be complete, his community also requires fully accomplished laywomen and laymen followers. Among monastics, it is not sufficient that there be competent monks. Competent nuns are equally important. This passage is one of many Pali texts that emphasize that a complete Buddhist community must include the “fourfold sangha”—monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen—not omitting nuns, as is so frequently done by contemporary forms of Buddhism. These passages are frequently overlooked both by Western scholars and by Buddhists arguing about restoring bhikshuni ordination.
In their anthologies of Buddhist texts and discussions of early Buddhism, Western scholars are more likely to focus on a different story: the story of how the historical Buddha was supposedly unwilling to allow women to renounce their conventional domestic lives for the monastic lifestyle. They seem to like that story a great deal, especially the coda in which the Buddha imposes eight highly discriminatory rules on nuns and claims that the dharma will only last half as long as it would have, had women not been allowed to become nuns. These scholars ignore at least three important points in focusing on this particular text, especially when they emphasize it to the exclusion of texts such as the Mahaparinibbana Sutta that emphasize the importance of the fourfold sangha.
First, the view that a proper sangha must include all four orders is more normative than a single text in which it appears that the nuns’ order was something of an afterthought, if only because the assumption of the fourfold sangha is omnipresent in the early texts. Second, many contemporary textual scholars have concluded that the story of the Buddha’s reluctance to incorporate the nuns’ sangha into his community must be a later interpolation into the texts. It contradicts too much about the presence of the nuns’ sangha that is commonplace in early Buddhist literature. Third, even if one wants to take the story of the Buddha’s reluctance to ordain nuns at face value, it includes something highly indicative of early indigenous Buddhist feminism, something I pointed out in Buddhism after Patriarchy. In the story that patriarchal interpreters of Buddhism love to cite, the Buddha changes his mind. As the story is usually told, the Buddha seems firm in his decision to exclude women from the monastic sangha, having already refused his aunt’s request three times, even after she took the desperate step of cutting her hair, putting on yellow rags, and following the Buddha barefoot to a distant location to which he had moved. Ananda then takes up the women’s cause, asking the Buddha if women would be capable of attaining arhatship if they could take up the monastic lifestyle, to which the Buddha replies positively. With no more reasons to refuse the women’s request, the Buddha gives in, though the eight heavy rules and the prediction of the swifter decline of the Buddha’s teaching follow immediately in the text.4 Why ignore the segment of the story that portrays the Buddha as changing his mind while emphasizing every other element of the story? That element of the story does indicate indigenous Buddhist feminism. Someone did not hesitate to include in this text a motif of the all-revered Buddha changing his mind about something important to women and much more positive for them than his earlier position. As I wrote in Buddhism after Patriarchy, if even the Buddha can change his mind about established Buddhist male dominance, so can any contemporary Buddhist patriarch. They have the role model they need.5 I have often pointed out this motif in talks titled “How Clinging to Gender Identity Subverts Enlightenment,” to the great displeasure of some in the audience. On one occasion, someone shouted, “No, he didn’t change his mind!” What else could you possibly call it?
Many Buddhists who are reluctant to reinstate or establish bhikshuni ordination simply ignore how normative the fourfold sangha was to the historical Buddha. They make no mention of texts such as the Mahaparinibbana Sutta and its emphasis on the fourfold sangha in their arguments. Instead, they focus on legalities. The Buddha did not establish procedures for starting a bhikshuni sangha in a situation in which there is no current bhikshuni sangha. Monastic rule requires that nuns be ordained by a dual sangha of both nuns and monks, which is lacking in both the Theravada and Tibetan contexts. “So what are we to do?” they argue. “It’s not that we’re anti-women. We are just trying to follow the Buddha faithfully”—the same Buddha who emphasized that his work was not complete until his sangha included fully competent nuns and laywomen, as well as laymen. What’s wrong with the Chinese nuns’ sangha? They follow a different monastic law code. Or, in the weaker argument put forward by some, the Chinese are Mahayanists—which is irrelevant in this case, because there is no specifically Mahayana monastic law code. Or they will argue that one does not need monastic status to practice Buddhist disciplines and attain release, so it doesn’t matter that women can’t become nuns. That argument is certainly correct, but such monks never reverse the argument by applying it to themselves. If women don’t need a monastic sangha to follow the Buddha’s teachings, why do they? What justifies their privileged position, other than their male anatomy? As was argued about another matter, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If women don’t need the monastic sangha, neither do men. I have suggested to some of these vinaya scholars that in the long run, ethics must trump legalisms when there is a conflict between a legal precedent and an ethical norm, especially an ethical norm central to the religious tradition. Surely it is of ethical urgency to set up social conditions in which the clear preferences of the Buddha about nuns can become normative again, and in which women are not disadvantaged in seeking that enlightened state of mind beyond gender, neither male nor female, that Buddhists refer to so frequently when trying to discount feminist frustration with male dominance. How can a tradition that emphasizes compassion as much as does Buddhism allow uncompassionate legalisms to prevail over the compassionate intentions of its founders? To date, I have not received replies from those to whom I have made these arguments. But in any case, as I’ve noted many times, if it were the men’s monastic ordination lineages that were at stake, I’m sure they’d figure it all out quickly and easily. They have in the past, both in Theravada and in Tibetan cases.6
One final example of the politics of scholarship is the notorious example of how androcentric Western scholars love to select texts that make Buddhism seem even more male dominant and misogynist than it actually is. There is a short passage near the end of the Mahaparinibbana Sutta that is often pulled out of this long text to be included in an anthology of Buddhist texts. But nothing is mentioned about the text as a whole or its emphasis on the fourfold sangha. The three months during which the Buddha had promised to live are over; the Buddha is ill and near death. In fact, he and the monks traveling with him have reached Kushinagar, his death place, and he is already lying between the two sal trees where he died. Interspersed between the Buddha’s instructions on making pilgrimage to the places where the four main events of his life occurred and on how to deal with his body after his death, Ananda, who had interceded to persuade the Buddha to ordain women, is represented as asking a question:
“Lord, how should we act towards women?” to which he replies, “Do not see them, Ananda.” “But if we see them, how should we behave, Lord?” “Do not speak to them, Ananda.” “But if they should speak to us, Lord, how should we behave?” “Practice mindfulness, Ananda.”7
In verbal presentations of this text, with the proper setup I have had audiences hooting because this interpolation into the text at this point is so preposterous. Why would an editor choose this insertion into the text at this point? The Buddha and his disciples have had forty-five years to discuss how to conduct themselves with regard to women, but now, moments before his death is the proper time to bring up that topic! To say nothing of the fact that a few lines further on in the text, the Buddha praises Ananda for having been a good attendant who always knew the proper time to let not only monks but also nuns and laywomen have audiences with the Buddha. The editor’s judgment is surely something about which one can speculate. But what about the judgment of numerous Western Buddhist studies scholars who have picked only these six lines out of a long text for inclusion in their anthologies, which are intended mainly for student audiences and others less knowledgeable about Buddhism?8 As I have tried to demonstrate, such androcentrism resides in the minds of such scholars, from where they impose it on the Buddhist materials they claim to be studying.
The case for indigenous Buddhist feminism that predates Western feminism by centuries is strengthened by stories told about the women closest to the earthly Buddha in later literary traditions. In the most often recounted stories about the Buddha, we hear almost nothing about the most important women in his life, especially his foster mother, Pajapati, and his wife, Yasodhara. They are not portrayed as central characters in the earliest accounts of the life of the Buddha. In fact, in Bhikkhu Nanamoli’s account of the Buddha’s life story as narrated in Pali Canon texts, his wife doesn’t even appear and Mahapajapati makes only a few cursory appearances.9 In those early accounts, his (male) disciples are much more important to the narrative than the women with whom he was associated before his renunciation. Even the well-known story of how Siddhartha abandoned his wife and newborn son to pursue his own ends is not found in canonical accounts of his life. I think it is important for Buddhists to know that the “Sunday school” versions of the Buddha’s life story known to almost every Buddhist are not the stories early Buddhists chose to tell about him.
In later Buddhist literature, from perhaps the second century C.E. to almost the present day, their stories were considerably expanded, demonstrating, among other things, the considerable freedom Buddhists felt to reinvent and modify their stories well into the development of Buddhism. Given this traditional flexibility, one wonders why there is reluctance to introduce new materials on the part of modern Buddhists, whether Asians or Westerners. Furthermore, the kinds of additions made to stories about the women in the Buddha’s life would surely be labeled “feminist” were they to be suggested today because of the ways in which they expand and elevate the status and accomplishments of both Yasodhara and Prajapati.
The story of Yasodhara (Sanskrit: Yashodhara) has been greatly elaborated both in ways that expand on the more familiar story of how Siddhartha left her and her newborn infant and in ways that depart radically from that story. Stories that expand on the more familiar narrative magnify her grief, portraying her as severely reproaching her former husband when she finally sees him again, and also magnify the importance of her role as the wife and companion of the future Buddha, life after life. These narratives emphasize the importance of her long partnership with the future Buddha, and her unfailing, constant loyalty to him, in his development of the merit and virtue required for the bodhisattva to achieve enlightenment. But these same texts also go on to narrate Yasodhara’s own spiritual achievements, her own enlightenment, parinirvana, and miraculous powers.
However, the story of Yasodhara is taken in a completely different direction by the Sanskrit Mulasarvastivada Vinaya, the vinaya followed by Tibetan Buddhists.10 In this story, rather than being born the night that Siddhartha abandons his home and family, Rahula, the Buddha’s son, is conceived on that night. Yasodhara has frightening dreams after they make love and she experiences great foreboding. She asks Siddhartha only to take her with him wherever he may go, which he promises to do. However, when she wakes up in the morning, he is gone and she is pregnant. Their journey together continues, however, as he struggles toward realization and she remains pregnant for the six years between Siddhartha’s departure and his enlightenment. She finally gives birth to their son the same night that he becomes enlightened.
What can one make of this strange story? While it is difficult to regard giving birth and attaining enlightenment as equally significant or outstanding events, because the one is so common and the other so rare, this story obviously tries to maintain a bond between Siddhartha and Yasodhara even after he abandons her. This story emphasizes that even though they were separated, their lives proceeded on the same track: when he fasted, she also fasted; when he began to eat, so did she. Finally her pregnancy and his spiritual quest both reached their climaxes at the same time. While, as a Buddhist woman and a feminist, I do not find anything for me to emulate in this version of Yasodhara’s story, I do appreciate the interest in what happened to her after Siddhartha disappeared from her life. One could also read this story as an unsatisfactory attempt to elucidate some enduring and essential partnership between male and female, despite so much emphasis on celibacy in Buddhist tradition, and no matter what the superficial appearances of the story may lead one to believe. Or perhaps one could interpret the story in an even more radical way. Women who become pregnant and give birth are just as valuable as men who renounce the world and become enlightened and should not be so easily dismissed in Buddhism’s overall value system. Many women who have gone through pregnancy and childbirth, something no man has ever experienced, probably do feel that their accomplishment is as difficult and important as anything any man could do, whatever Buddhist monks might think. It is not difficult to imagine that such thoughts motivated the authors of this curious narrative.
Later Thai stories elaborate on Yasodhara’s extreme grief and sense of injustice at being abandoned even though she had served her husband well.11 These episodes are inserted into narratives about the Buddha’s first visit to his hometown after his enlightenment experience. Bimba, as Yasodhara is called in this narrative, alone among his relatives refused to greet him. Instead, she sobs inconsolably in her room, falling unconscious and repeatedly stating that her terrible fate must be the result of bad karma from previous lives. Finally, she sees the Buddha, unloosens her long hair, and sweeps it over his feet. She pays her respects to him and reproaches him: “Oh my lord, I pay my respects to you. I am unlucky and ashamed before you. You abandoned me and our child without any compassion….You never gave me any indication that you would leave me alone for such a long time.”12 Her extreme grief would not be considered exemplary behavior by many Buddhists, but it certainly mirrors how many women feel about this narrative. It can be a relatively difficult story to “explain away.” It is quite refreshing to learn that a radical criticism of the Buddha’s behavior could be inserted into narratives about his life long after Buddhism became the dominant religion of Thailand.
Sinhalese literature from the Theravada tradition, translated by Ranjini Obeyesekere in 2009, follows the more familiar narrative of Yasodhara from early Pali and Sanskrit traditions but takes it in a completely different direction.13 Of the two texts in question, the Yasodharapadanaya (“The Sacred Biography of Yasodhara”) dates from the twelfth or thirteenth century, while the other, the Yasodharavata (“The Story of Yasodhara”), is a folk poem with no certain dates or authors. Both texts have roughly the same story line, ending with Yasodhara’s triumphant parinirvana as a miracle-working arhat who is highly praised by the Buddha. Both also treat Siddhartha’s abandonment of Yasodhara and her reaction to it, and both also recount the long partnership between Siddhartha and Yasodhara. It was said that their partnership began when the future Siddhartha/Buddha first took his bodhisattva vow; the future Yasodhara vowed in that earlier life always to be reborn as Siddhartha’s partner and always to support him. One part of her story thus emphasizes her loyalty and the many ways in which she helped the Bodhisattva along on his path.
The folk poem, The Story of Yasodhara, focuses mainly on Yasodhara’s emotional devastation at being abandoned by Siddhartha. She reproaches him by recounting how she always supported him in his previous lives, and she voices her main complaint: not that he abandoned her but that he abandoned her without telling her what he was doing, which seems unfair to her given how loyal and helpful she has been in all their past lives. In this literature, a voice is given to the faithful but abandoned wife, of whom there probably have been many throughout Buddhist history. In such literature, a figure who probably was almost never listened to or given any real importance or credence in life, as opposed to literature, can express her sorrow and frustration. It is easy to imagine ordinary women identifying with this literary figure and finding solace for their own sorrows about unfulfilling or unfulfilled relationships. Obeyesekere, the poem’s translator, notes that women still sing these laments as they work, improvising new verses as they labor.14 Such literature is clearly untouched by any connection with Western feminism. Yet it demonstrates what many current Western feminists would regard as a feminist agenda: giving voice to otherwise silenced women, exploring their emotional lives, and providing them with religious folk heroes with whom they can identity. That it would never occur to many indigenous commentators to link such literature with feminism demonstrates just how slippery and ultimately irrelevant that label can be.
Both texts narrate how Yasodhara became a nun and attained arhatship through her diligent practice, thus focusing on her spiritual life as well as her relationship with the Buddha. In both works, Yasodhara, now an aged arhat nun, enters parinirvana and is praised by the Buddha, who, in the folk poem, places flowers on her bier.15 However, The Sacred Biography of Yasodhara is completely a narrative about Yasodhara’s triumphant parinirvana. At the beginning of the text, Yasodhara decides it is time to enter parinirvana and she goes to declare this to the Buddha. The Buddha then makes the following statement about her:
This revered person is one who has the knowledge to see uncountable eons of past lives. She has acquired the Divine Eye and Divine Ears and has the unique and special powers of sight and hearing. She has extinguished all Defilements. She has arrived at the summit of the Three Kinds of Knowledge. She has supernormal powers not second to the Buddha.16
The Buddha then asks her to demonstrate her supernormal powers, and she puts on a show of miracles that, were someone to try to create a film version of the narrative, would require extremely talented masters of special effects. After that, a long description of how much Yasodhara helped Siddhartha throughout their various lives is inserted into the narrative about her parinirvana. In contrast to the folk poem, in this more orthodox and literary text, her grief at being abandoned is not mentioned. Rather, as she recounts their lives together, Yasodhara proclaims that no matter what Siddhartha had done to her in previous existences, she always accepted his behavior and supported him. Then the Buddha takes the stage again to speak himself of how great Yasodhara is, declaring that, together with him, she had practiced all the virtues required for enlightenment herself. At the end of her display of miracles, her recounting of her loyalty and helpfulness to the Buddha throughout all their samsaric lives together, and his extravagant praises of her as having attained superlative states of spiritual development, she goes back to her nunnery and attains parinirvana that night. In this text also, elaborate funeral rites are performed and the Buddha himself takes her relics, has a stupa constructed over them, and offers flowers and incense.17
These stories are almost equally focused on the partnership between the Buddha and Yasodhara and on Yasodhara’s merits as a practitioner in her own right. Like the curious story in the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya, these texts seem unwilling to focus almost solely on the Buddha while ignoring Yasodhara. Though, of course, she could not be portrayed as equally important with the Buddha, these texts are much more interested in the intensity of their partnership and how it contributed to the whole endeavor of the Buddha’s long journey. It is almost as if the always-male future Buddha is declared to be incomplete and inadequate without a feminine counterpart, whereas in more conventional and more familiar stories, the focus in entirely on the male Buddha, and Yasodhara is very much an afterthought who disappears from the story as soon as Siddhartha leaves his palace. (Given Indian society of the day, he would have had to have a wife while he lived as a householder, but she doesn’t need to play any significant role in his life.) But in these stories, their relationship continues “until death did them part,” and Yasodhara is essential to the overall story line. Though many male-dominant elements remain in these texts—such as that Yasodhara accepts abuse from her partner and yet remains loyal to him—nevertheless, the interest in her side of the partnership, and indeed the emphasis on the partnership quality of their long relationship, are quasi-“feminist” elements, especially when compared to the more usual dismissal of Yasodhara.
Even more “feminist” is the insistence that by the end of her life, Yasodhara had fully completed the path to arhatship and had attained miraculous powers “not second to the Buddha.” Whatever she had gone through or endured previously, by the end of her life, she was no longer inferior to the Buddha except in the way that all other enlightened beings are “inferior” to the Buddha—they could not discover the path to nirvana unaided. But once she attained realization, her freedom was just as real and complete as that of the Buddha. How different from the earlier, more conventional accounts and how much more “feminist” that her story would end with her arhatship rather than ending when Siddhartha walked out of their house without her. And how “feminist” that the Buddha himself honors her relics. Surely this story is important to women reared in a tradition that often taught them that women could not attain enlightenment.
The stories eventually told about Pajapati (Sanskrit: Prajapati), the Buddha’s foster mother and the first nun—also known as Gotami (Pali) or Gautami (Sanskrit)—are even more impressive as “feminist” additions to the standard stories about her that circulate, though in a sense they are less elaborate. Yasodhara’s story has emotional resonance because of her long partnership with Siddhartha as his wife and companion, life after life, whereas it was not thought that Mahapajapati had a complicated emotional relationship with Siddhartha even in her last life, let alone life after life. Rather, her previous life stories tell of how, in an earlier life, she was born during the life of Buddha Padumuttara and watched as that Buddha made his aunt the chief of all the nuns. She resolved to be that same woman in the lifetime of a future Buddha. After that she was reborn as a goddess in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three and lived there for a long time. The rest of her lives are passed over quickly until she is reborn in her final life as Siddhartha’s aunt.18
Her story is told in the Apadana section of the fifth nikaya (the Khuddaka Nikaya), usually thought to be the latest collection of texts included in the sutta section of the Pali Canon, so this literature is much older than the Sinhalese texts about Yasodhara. The Apadana consists of stories of the previous lives of famous monks and nuns who had lived and attained nirvana during the lifetime of the historical Buddha. It is thought that they were composed in the immediate post-Ashokan era (the last two centuries B.C.E.) when Buddhism was rapidly becoming a popular religion. It has been suggested that these previous life stories were inspirational for the many laypeople now becoming Buddhists who would not become monks or nuns in their present lives but could model their lives on the stories of how famous monks and nuns had lived in their earlier lives.19 This text has been ably translated and commented on by Jonathan S. Walters.20
Like the Sinhalese texts about Yasodhara, this text is fundamentally an account of Mahapajapati’s parinirvana. At the beginning of the text, Mahapajapati, being old and not wishing to experience the demise of the Buddha, decides that she should die—reach parinirvana—first. She goes to the Buddha to see him one last time and tell him of her decision. The text ends with a description of the funeral rites for Mahapajapati and her five hundred nuns who also “went out” with her, followed by extravagant praise of her by the Buddha. Inserted into this narrative is much advice to other Buddhists, given by both Mahapajapati and the Buddha, accounts of Mahapajapati’s earlier lives, and an account of the final conversation between the Buddha and Mahapajapati. In this context, only a few episodes relevant to the topic of indigenous “feminism” or proto-feminism can be discussed.
In a brief, interesting conversation, obviously referring to the well-known text in which the Buddha is so reluctant to found the nuns’ order, Mahapajapati asks the Buddha to forgive her if that was a fault. But then immediately, without waiting for any reply from the Buddha, she proclaims:
Unforgivable! Forgive!
Why should I praise my virtue now?
What more is there to say to you
When I am going to nirvana?21
In another telling verse, she says:
That state which is not seen by elders
Nor by non-Buddhist teachers
Is witnessed by some Buddhist girls
When they are only seven.22
For our topic, however, the most pertinent statement is a request the Buddha makes to Mahapajapati after she tells him that it is time for her to “go out” and that she has achieved the Buddha’s teaching. He replies,
Yet still there are these fools who doubt
That women too can grasp the truth.
Gotami, show miracles
That they might give up their false views.23
She complies with his request, putting on a show of miracles at least equal to the one put on by Yasodhara. In addition to telling us that Buddhists had begun to rely too much on miracles as proof for the cogency of the Buddhist teachings, this verse clearly demonstrates that Buddhists had already begun to doubt that women could attain enlightenment, a view that became ever more entrenched in many parts of the Buddhist world. But this text represents the Buddha as saying that this is a “false view.” If it is a false view according to the Buddha, how could anyone persist in the belief that women cannot attain enlightenment? What could be a more “feminist” stance than representing the Buddha as correcting the false views of the majority of his followers when they indulge in inaccurate and negative views or practices concerning women? If feminism can be defined as “any movement that deliberately seeks to raise the status of women from an accepted status quo,” then clearly the authors of this Buddhist text from the late pre-Christian centuries were indigenous Buddhist “feminists.”
The scholar who has most studied the Apadana literature, Jonathan S. Walters, goes even further. He claims that in the thought-world of these texts, men were always reborn as men and women as women.24 If this belief is combined with a belief that women cannot attain enlightenment, a dire problem results. The Buddhist goal of enlightenment and freedom from perpetual rebirth would be completely unavailable to roughly half the human population, including many pious and diligent Buddhist women. Walters sees Gotami’s story as an attempt to solve this problem by portraying Gotami as “the female counterpart of the Buddha, the founder and leader of the nuns’ order who parallels (though does not supersede) Gotama, the founder and leader of the monks’ order.” She is nothing less than “the Buddha for women,” he claims.25 He bolsters this interpretation by emphasizing that in this text, Mahapajapati is always called by her clan name, Gotami, whereas in other literature she is usually called by her given name, Pajapati. The significance of the name is that Gotami is thus portrayed as a female Buddha. “ ‘Gotami’ is, grammatically speaking, the exact feminine equivalent of the name Buddha was known by, ‘Gotama.’ ”26 We may conclude this line of investigation by quoting another verse from the Apadana. The text says of Gotami’s “going out,”
The Buddha’s great nirvana, good,
But not as good as this one.
Gotami’s great going out
Was positively stellar.27
We do not have to engage in a competition between Gotama and Gotami to conclude definitely that this text presents a strong argument that women are not inferior to men in their spiritual capabilities. Surely if this text were being written today, some would want to reject it as “feminist” rather than including it in the canon of Buddhist sacred writings!
We can draw two conclusions from these examples of how Buddhists expanded their repertoire of stories about the two women most important in the life of the historical Buddha. The first concerns the tradition of Buddhist contestations of gender. To me, this literature is an attempt to elevate the status, both of these two women and of women in general, by adding to the previous narratives about their lives in ways that indicate that, whatever earlier portraits of them may have presented, their realization was not lesser than that of the Buddha or any male arhat. This is consistent with early Buddhist teaching that, although only a Buddha could discover the dharma, after that, anyone could realize it fully, including any woman. It also seems likely that the stories of Pajapati, Yasodhara, and other women were expanded precisely because the status of Buddhist women had begun to decline and some wise Buddhists could see that such a situation was not in accord with fundamental Buddhist teachings. These stories were a deliberate corrective to an inappropriate, un-dharmic gender hierarchy that had begun to infiltrate Buddhism. Today such a corrective would be labeled “feminism.”
The ambiguity and complexity of these newly retold familiar stories make them worth close analysis. The most important point revealed by these developing stories is that male dominance has always been contested in Buddhism. A tradition of Buddhist male dominance and patriarchy is certainly more than evident, but it is not the whole story. Contrary to accusations made by both Asians and Westerners, such contestation should not be regarded as a “feminist innovation” or as solely due to Western feminism. I am one of the Western Buddhist feminists looking for relevant female role models in Buddhist scriptures, and I have long regarded this search as important for contemporary Buddhists, whether men or women. Closer study of Buddhist records shows that there are many more relevant female role models than Western Buddhists were aware of, at least thirty years ago. However, it is tempting and easy to turn this search for relevant historical role models into a dualistic black-and-white judgment about Buddhism’s past, which is both naive and counterproductive. By investigating the ongoing traditions of Buddhist storytelling about these and other women, I suggest that we can rescue a narrative that is both more accurate and more relevant than the common claims either that Buddhism has been unrelievedly patriarchal or that Buddhism does not have any problems regarding gender, making feminist critiques irrelevant.
Thus we return to a basic point: There have always been “feminist” movements in Buddhism. They are “indigenous” to Buddhism. Therefore, labeling a proposed change, such as reinstating the nuns’ sangha, as “feminist” and then using that label to dismiss the proposal as obviously Western and colonial, something that indigenous Asian Buddhists would never think up, is an argument unworthy of any serious Buddhist. Is restoring the nuns’ sangha a genuinely Buddhist concern that would promote genuinely Buddhist goals? Why the assumption that critiquing Buddhist traditions cannot be done on Buddhist grounds but must stem from some foreign perspective? For example, highlighting the way in which the Buddha emphasizes the importance of the fourfold sangha has become a major argument for reinstating the nuns’ sangha. It is also an inherited, traditional Buddhist norm, whether or not it has been sufficiently recognized in recent Buddhist history.
I would contend that one does a great disservice to the intelligence and integrity of Buddhists, whether Asian or Western, if one claims that we should passively accept everything that has become traditional without bringing any critical thought to bear on the issues. It is equally problematic to assume that such critical perspectives and values would stem from non-Buddhist rather than Buddhist sources. Insofar as these critical perspectives derive from Buddhist inspiration, they are indigenous to Buddhism, whether uttered by Westerners or by Asians. So let us discuss Buddhism’s existing problems with gender equity on the merits of the issues, rather than by resorting to name-calling. It is never appropriate to dismiss a proposal by attaching the label “feminist” to it, unless we want to dismiss much Buddhist teaching.
The second major conclusion takes us back to the relevance of “story” in religious discourse. It is noteworthy that the medium chosen for this message is story rather than discursive, abstract modes of expression. Unless one is too sophisticated and rationalistic, anyone can understand a story and be touched by its power and vividness. I would also claim that if people still live within their sacred stories, they always want to retell the old, traditional sacred stories in new ways that address the contemporary situation. Thus, rather than indicating irreverence or disregard for the tradition, retelling stories and changing them, even changing them drastically, indicates that the values of the tradition still reverberate deeply in people’s lives and psyches. If the story can no longer be retold but has ossified into a sacrosanct version that cannot be tampered with, then the story has died and can no longer really inspire people and enliven their lives.
The quest to discover the empirical history surrounding these sacred stories is in no way damaging to them as living scripture, but fundamentalism, the insistence that the sacred story is empirical history, completely deadens it, depriving it of its ability to be a living scripture newly relevant in every age and generation because the story is always being retold, amplified, and updated. If one understands and appreciates what a living scripture is, one understands that there can be no final, definitive version of the sacred story, that it can never really be fully canonized and closed down to new retellings.
Outsiders might ask if such storytelling is still alive and well in Buddhism in the modern era. Certainly, regarding the historical Buddha himself, this storytelling activity continues into the present, especially in the Asian Buddhist world. A popular series of Japanese comic books titled Buddha, drawn by Osamu Tezuka and portraying the life of the Buddha, ran from September 1972 to December 1983,28 and a lavishly produced, ongoing Indian Bollywood-style TV series on his life—titled Buddhaa: Rajaon Ka Raja (“Buddha: The King of Kings”)—began airing in 2013. Thich Nhat Hahn’s long, novel-like “biography” of the Buddha29 blends traditional stories with modern concerns such as social equality and the status of women and is popular among Western students of Buddhism. A delightful “children’s book” version of the Buddha’s life, The Cat Who Went to Heaven,30 is set in Japan. One can see storytelling continuing in the realm of cinema. A 1993 movie, Little Buddha, retells the Buddha’s story in a contemporary context, and at the center of the story is the suggestion that a girl might be a tulku, a rebirth of an important male Buddhist teacher. This suggestion would have been unthinkable in a traditional Tibetan context in which rebirth as a female could only indicate a maj or lapse on the part of the formerly male teacher, but it does resonate with modern and Western viewers unsatisfied with conventional male dominance. Although the Dalai Lama has suggested that if his incarnation lineage continues, there could well be a future female Dalai Lama, I suspect that suggestion is more positively received by Westerners than by Tibetans.