Whom am I hoping to influence with this book? As a Western Buddhist scholar-practitioner, I first direct my comments to Western Buddhists. I hope that my comments contribute to the development of Western Buddhism as a Buddhism that is free of the patriarchies that dominate both Western culture and Buddhist religions historically. That is my primary aim and my primary audience. What about Asian Buddhisms? Buddhism, after all, developed in Asia, and many, many more Buddhists live in Asia than in the West. I hope that some of them find my comments interesting or relevant in various ways. Finally, those interested in topics pertaining to gender and religion, or to gender studies more generally, or socially engaged Buddhists, might also want to consider my comments.
I find myself squeezed between two different sets of audiences, both of whom claim, on differing grounds, that a gender-egalitarian Western Buddhism is not that relevant or important. On the one hand, Asian Buddhists sometimes still try to control Western Buddhisms. Negotiating how to balance the immense gratitude we owe to Asian Buddhists for transmitting Buddhist traditions and practices to us with the legitimate needs of Western practitioners to be free of aspects of Asian Buddhism—including gender hierarchies—that just don’t work for us can be difficult. It is made especially difficult by the fact that some Asian Buddhists resist the claim that Western ideas or practice could have any relevance for them. At the same time, many social activists in the West and many engaged Buddhists worldwide regard gender oppression as a minor problem that can be solved “later,” if it even needs to be solved at all. It is amazing how many men resent being controlled by other men but nevertheless regard it as unproblematic, even appropriate, for them to control “their” women. Additionally, the tendency of social activists to rank oppressions, claiming that their own is the most oppressive and matters the most, causes great difficulty. Their anger at those who foreground a different oppression can be counterproductive. Many times, feminists have been on the receiving end of such anger.
Western Buddhist-feminist scholar-practitioners are unrelenting in our fervor to develop a Buddhism that is free of both Western and Buddhist androcentrism, male dominance, and misogyny. That practice has a complex genesis. Because we were socialized in Western cultures, of course there is an inescapable Western imprint on our thinking. Dissatisfaction with what we had inherited as Westerners led us to become Buddhists. Part of that dissatisfaction with our Western inheritance included intense distaste for Western androcentrism, male dominance, and misogyny. We carried that distaste into our Buddhist allegiance. It is not to be expected that we would react any more favorably to Buddhist male dominance than we had to Western male dominance. And it would be hard to deny that Asian Buddhisms exhibit significant male dominance. Nevertheless, some Asian Buddhists dislike it when Western Buddhists critique Buddhist male dominance. It seems to me that they often do not recognize how much our critique of male dominance is a critique of male dominance altogether, whether Buddhist or Western. It also seems to me that these Asian Buddhists are not fully aware of how intense and oppressive Western male dominance has been.
In fact, in my own case, I resisted my comfort in Buddhist practices and teachings because, as a scholar of comparative studies in religion who had already done major work on gender and religion, I was more than aware of Asian Buddhist patriarchy. But what I saw of nascent Western Buddhisms, already affected by second-wave feminism in the mid- to late 1970s, seemed different. Had what I saw of early Western Buddhism exhibited the same kind of male dominance I had already experienced in Western religions and knew all too well to be likewise the case in Asian Buddhisms, I would never have signed on. But it did not. Finally, I decided that the “dharma is too profound to let the patriarchs have it all to themselves,” as I’ve often put that decision in shorthand. I never had romantic illusions about Buddhism as the perfect foil to all the problems of Western religions, and I knew the day I took refuge in the Three Jewels that eventually I would have to write Buddhism after Patriarchy.
Sorting out what is Buddhist and what is Western in the resulting Buddhist feminism is impossible, as is to be expected for Western Buddhisms altogether. Nevertheless, such boundary-crossing invites potshots from all sides. In the early years, both my colleagues in the feminist theological movement and my Western Buddhist coreligionists thought I had gone crazy. My feminist colleagues could not understand why anyone would join a patriarchal religion, though they understood perfectly why they were trying to make Judaism or Christianity workable for themselves. They apparently could not understand that the spiritual practices and teachings of Western religions no longer made sense to me, so working to transform those religions in a feminist direction had become meaningless to me.
My Western Buddhist coreligionists, who had been involved with Buddhism only slightly longer than I had, but who did not have my scholar’s knowledge of Asian Buddhist texts and contemporary practices, insisted that, because they had never encountered any Buddhist male dominance, therefore it did not exist. They claimed I was “genderizing the dharma,” a heinous offense that should disallow me from ever teaching or publishing anything about Buddhism. It reminds one of eighteen-year-old college freshman girls (term used deliberately) who insist that because they have never experienced sexism in their short, sheltered lives, there is no need for a women’s movement.
Then there are certain Western social scientists who study Asian cultures but do not themselves seem to be Buddhist practitioners. But political correctness is of overriding importance to them. They claim that Westerners who get involved in Buddhism and attempt to influence the development of Buddhist institutions are colonialists stealing other people’s spirituality. That claim reveals profound ignorance about Buddhism. Already during the Buddha’s lifetime, he reportedly commissioned his disciples to spread his teachings beyond the local area in which he taught. From that beginning, Buddhism spread throughout the world as known by premodern Asians. Why would that spread be expected to stop at the boundaries of the geographic and cultural West?
The interpenetration of Western and Asian Buddhisms is far more complex and important. Though Asian Buddhists often become defensive about Buddhist male dominance, especially when Westerners point it out, it is impossible to deny the fact that Asian Buddhist institutions are male dominated. It was Asians, after all, who came up with the view that the indignities suffered by women under male dominance could be overcome by their future rebirth as men—if they didn’t cause any trouble in their current lives as females, which, of course, means not objecting to male dominance, among other things! So the reward for women would be an ability to dominate other women when they become men in their future lives! How could one expect that women who have developed some intellectual and spiritual independence would not find such teachings offensive? Their cultural origins are irrelevant to their offensiveness. They would be equally offensive if they derived from a Western source, and we are as vigilant about Western patriarchy as about any other.
At the same time, it has become clearer in the last thirty years of Buddhist studies in the West that Western scholarly androcentrism has clouded what Westerners, including Western practitioners, see when they look at Buddhism. Androcentrism was first described by Simone de Beauvoir in her ground-breaking book The Second Sex (1949) and became important in early second-wave feminist scholarship. Androcentrism is, first, a model of humanity that resides in the scholar’s head, not out there in the so-called data. This model of humanity sees men as ideal, normal human beings, to the extent that women do not have to be specifically mentioned or studied because they are included in a generic “mankind.”1 One should just understand that the term “men” includes women, except when it does not, as in “the men’s room.” That model of humanity is then imposed on “the data” and greatly distorts the resulting picture.2 This model of humanity erases women from the picture far more effectively and extensively than does Buddhist patriarchy, which at least acknowledges that male dominance exists and is so unpleasant for women that it needs to be redressed in a future life. I used to joke that the androcentrism of Western scholarship was so pronounced at the beginning of second-wave feminism that a researcher from another galaxy who did not know that human beings come in two sexes would not be able to figure that out from the books these scholars wrote. Only “mankind,” all of whose members are addressed as “he,” would be found in those books. This mindset has clearly affected Western scholars of Buddhism as well.
Androcentrism was so pervasive in Western scholarship that when I was a graduate student, my mentors insisted there was no need to study women specifically. They were already covered and included in the “generic masculine,” it was claimed. This despite obvious gender-role differentiation in all known societies! How could such an absurd claim have scholarly merit? Yet I came close to being kicked out of graduate school at the University of Chicago for demonstrating that androcentric scholarly assumptions simply could not and did not “cover and include” data about women’s religious lives at all, let alone adequately or completely! Regarding Buddhism, by highlighting some facts and ignoring others, Western scholars have, in fact, created a portrait of Buddhism that, in some cases, is more male dominant than the data warrant. Examples of such misrepresentation were presented in chapter 5 of this book.
Nevertheless, many Asian Buddhists seem to be allergic to the term “feminism” and are unwilling to investigate what feminism actually is, apart from media stereotypes stemming from the West. For example, a colleague of mine, a Christian theologian, told me about coteaching a course on Buddhist-Christian interchange at a college somewhere in the Pacific Northwest with a Tibetan who had a fancy Tibetan title, either lama or geshe. One of the topics to be covered was gender, and my Christian colleague suggested, not too surprisingly, that the students be assigned parts of Buddhism after Patriarchy for the Buddhist readings on gender. His Tibetan colleague refused the assignment, declining even to read the book on the justification that the subtitle contained the term “feminist”! My Christian colleague pointed out, to no avail, that I am a Buddhist scholar-practitioner, not a non-Buddhist Buddhalogist, and that I also had a Tibetan title (lopon/acharya), given to me by my Tibetan teacher. The Christian colleague had to teach the materials on Buddhism and gender himself, despite knowing little about Buddhism. Yet Western students of Tibetan Buddhism are expected to respect Tibetan teachers who have fancy titles unreservedly and uncritically!
Probably it is wiser to set aside the polemical term “feminism” in favor of discussing the actual ideas and practices involved. In many contexts, using the term “feminism” constitutes little more than name-calling. In any case, feminism should never be understood as an angry, anti-men stance. Such emotions are not part of any cogent form of feminism, and attempts to describe it as such only discredits the movement without actually investigating it. I seldom use the term anymore myself, although I am clear as to what I mean by the term—and when I use it, I only mean what I mean by the term. How others might use the term cannot legitimately be imputed onto me or my work. For many years, I have consistently defined feminism simply as “freedom from the prison of gender roles,” a definition that includes all sexes and all genders. Sometimes I also use the term in a more limited sense. “Feminism” refers to any movement that deliberately seeks to raise the status of women from an accepted status quo. It is presupposed that such movements result in greater gender equality and equity.
It is difficult to see what could be objectionable about a movement with such goals, unless one asserts that men should control women and women should be socially, economically, and religiously disadvantaged. However, many Asian Buddhists object to “feminism” because they think the movement is “Western” and should be rejected on that ground alone. Several replies to this objection have merit. First, an idea or a practice should not be accepted or rejected on the basis of its source. What should be debated is whether or not it is appropriate for men to control women’s lives, not whether feminism is “Western.” Second, although I have great sympathy for postmodern perspectives, that sympathy does not extend to claims that all ethics are culturally relative and specific. I cannot assent to the claim that protecting women’s rights and dignity is merely a modern Western preference with no overriding validity, or that a value system promoting such practices is morally indistinguishable from a value system that does not promote them (by denying education to girls, for example). I would make that claim even if local women supported attempts to restrict education for girls. Third, it would be more useful to distinguish between “modern” and “traditional” practices than between Asian and Western Buddhist practices, because that is the relevant dividing line. The entire world has accepted certain modern innovations and practices, to the point that it makes little sense to label them “Western” anymore. As I said at the beginning of chapter 5, Asian Buddhists who reject feminism because it is Western eagerly adopt cell phones, computers, and other technologies, even though they are equally as “Western” as (actually even more Western than) feminism.
Finally, and most important, it is not at all clear that Buddhist feminisms derive only from Western sources. Although the term “feminism” is not used in Asian Buddhist texts, feminist concepts and practices have been part of Buddhism from its beginnings and throughout its entire history, as I have demonstrated in recent articles3 and in many parts of this book. This fact about traditional Buddhism has been largely missed by androcentric Western scholars of Buddhism, but it could make a great deal of difference for Asian Buddhists. There is plenty of warrant for Buddhist “feminism” in Buddhist sources themselves. Many motifs that would be labeled “feminist” were someone to propose them today are found in texts written centuries before the emergence of contemporary feminism. Therefore, Buddhist feminism, or whatever we’re going to call it, does not depend on Western human rights theory, as is so often claimed. It is not that Western human rights theory and Buddhism are necessarily incompatible, but Buddhist feminism does not depend on Western human rights theories, either. It is easily derived from Buddhist texts whose relevance could be discounted only by denying a significant portion of Asian Buddhism and its heritage. They should make a significant difference to those for whom anything “Western” is objectionable.
Thus, regarding my Asian Buddhist audience, I will say only that I would be pleased if they find something helpful in my writings on gender and Buddhism. What I think might be most useful for them is a deeper understanding of the depths of male dominance and misogyny in Western cultures that Western Buddhists must heal from. That is one reason I have often contrasted egalitarian teachings from Buddhism with their Western counterparts that are more male dominant. If Asian teachers had more understanding of the vastness of Western misogyny and male dominance, they might react more compassionately to their Western students who object to male dominance.
In particular, I hope that they might understand how much their male students need to overcome the views of male superiority that they inherited from their Western cultural upbringing before they can begin to approach the enlightened state beyond gender, neither male nor female. That is necessary if these male students are ever to truly study the self, transcend the prison of gender roles, and live up to the gender neutrality and gender egalitarianism that are so clearly the heart of the Buddhist view.
Likewise, these Asian teachers need to understand more clearly how much Western misogyny and teachings of female defectiveness and inferiority have damaged Western female dharma students. Many of those women need to gain some confidence and overcome low self-esteem before they can approach that enlightened state themselves. Eventually one must absorb the idea that frequent and fervent declarations that enlightened mind is beyond gender, neither male nor female, are incompatible with male dominance, misogyny, and the prison of gender roles.
When Asians become defensive about Western frustration with Buddhist male dominance, they may think we Westerners are speaking from a position of superiority, as if Western cultures have their act together on gender. They do not, any more than do Asian cultures. This is a problem we all have to solve together in various ways. As a somewhat privileged Western woman, I am grateful and thankful that I have attained some freedom from male control. Men do not and cannot control my life. I have been able to receive an education and become economically independent. I have been able to make my own spiritual choices. That is what I want for all women and men, call it what you will: feminism or any other name.
What Asians make of these suggestions is not for me but for Asian Buddhists to decide. Just as I insist that Asian Buddhists should not try to control Western Buddhists who do not want to adopt Asian Buddhist practices of male dominance, so the elimination of male-dominant practices in Asian Buddhisms has to be an Asian project. Because Western and Asian societies still differ, male dominance or clinging to gender identity can manifest differently in the two regions. Nonetheless, I still find it difficult to imagine how clinging to gender identity could ever be justified on Buddhist grounds. I also find it difficult to imagine how one could promote or justify male dominance without clinging to an ego based on gender identity. Furthermore, I expect Asian Buddhists not to vilify me, as been done by some, for promoting a more “feminist,” which is to say, a more egalitarian, Buddhism in my own culture.
To return, then, to the question of what audience I primarily hope to influence with this book, the answer is unambiguously, and unreservedly, Western Buddhists. Obviously, how would I even be able to have much impact on Asian Buddhists? I do not expect Western Buddhists to “rescue” Asian Buddhism, though I have sometimes been misinterpreted as having suggested such a thing. In Buddhism after Patriarchy, I did write of the auspicious coincidence of Buddhism and feminism in the West.4 But those comments were about Western Buddhists, not about Asian Buddhists. Asian Buddhist teachers and the second wave of feminism came together in the West in the late 1960s, creating a new situation for Buddhism. Western Buddhism in its current form has two parents—Asian Buddhism and second-wave feminism. It is impossible to imagine that a situation in which about half the Western dharma teachers are women could have developed as it did, within a generation, without the influence of second-wave feminism in the West.
The point of comments about the “auspicious coincidence” of Buddhism and feminism in the West is to emphasize that Western Buddhists have no excuse whatsoever for allowing any male dominance to creep into our forms of Buddhism. Buddhist teachings are gender neutral and gender egalitarian, as Asian teachers have so often reminded us when citing that enlightened mind is beyond gender, neither male nor female. That’s the sole relevant factor regarding gender for Western Buddhists. Because we are Buddhists, therefore, the deep heritage of Western misogyny, often based in Western religions, is utterly irrelevant to us, or at least it should be. Because we are Westerners, the male-dominant forms of cultures that support Asian Buddhist male-dominated institutions in Asia are also irrelevant to us. There is no reason for Western Buddhism not to take a fresh start of freedom from the prison of gender roles. None whatsoever.
What does this mean for Asian Buddhists? It’s up to them. If they want more gender-egalitarian Buddhist institutions, they will have to create them. If they choose to retain male-dominated institutions, that’s their choice. Based on the sum of my own life experiences, however, as a woman, as a scholar, as a feminist, and as a teacher of dharma to Western Buddhists, I will never be able to understand why people would choose male dominance over freedom from the prison of gender roles.
This book is written from the perspective of someone who has suffered mainly from one specific version of the prison of gender roles—that of a woman living in male-dominated and extremely misogynist Western culture as well as a woman dealing to a lesser extent with traditional Buddhist institutions. My specific situation does not mean that I am unmindful of the situations of those dealing with other aspects of the prison of gender roles or with other kinds of cultural deprivations. When I give talks on the prison of gender roles and the various versions of it, especially from a Buddhist perspective, people often ask me, “What about the many other forms of difficulty?” I usually reply that the methods I have used—studying the literature of my tradition, contemplating deeply the basic teachings of my tradition, and speaking up (speaking truth to power)—are easily transferable; and although they are often slow and not as effective as one might prefer, they do work to some extent.
Social activists who are deeply concerned with a specific issue often foreground that issue to the extent that they become competitive about whose cause matters most, whose pain matters the most. Unfortunately, discussions of oppression and liberation sometimes devolve into arguments about whose liberation should come first, whose oppression hurts the most, and even whether certain groups—women, for instance—deserve better living circumstances or liberation at all. These discussions about rights, justice, liberation, and oppression are admittedly more prominent in the West than in Asia or in traditional Asian Buddhism. For Western Buddhists, such language is impossible to avoid; it is part of our Western heritage, though we must be careful to wean ourselves from the ideology and anger that often characterize such language in Western discourse and that are totally inappropriate for Buddhist sensibilities. And notably, through the international engaged Buddhist movement, concern about a just and appropriate social order is becoming increasingly characteristic of Asian Buddhist discussions as well. In our thoroughly interconnected and interdependent world, it makes less and less sense to make distinctions about discussions being relevant for Western Buddhists but not Asian Buddhists or vice versa.
Women often land on the underside of polarized discussions about whose liberation should come first or whose oppression hurts more. In liberation movements, it is common for men to care intensely about their own liberation from domination by other men—men of other races, cultures, or nation-states—but to see nothing problematic at all about wanting to control “their” women. But can it ever be appropriate for men to own women, as the term “their” women would indicate? Reflect on how easily such language about “their” or “our” women rolls off the tongues of many, without seeming at all problematic to them or to their audiences. Such unconscious language about gender is extremely revealing. That is why using language more precisely, in gender-neutral and gender-inclusive ways, is so important for Buddhist feminists who advocate for such language in Buddhist liturgies—often to be ridiculed and dismissed by male fellow practitioners, and even sometimes by women.
Second-wave feminism began when women involved in the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s became fed up with having roles that were limited to making coffee and running the copy machines for the men who were directing these movements. In fact, in 1964, Stokely Carmichael quipped that the only position for women in his radical civil rights organization was “prone.”5 Joke or not, the comment reflects a widespread attitude about women’s rights, independence, and dignity, even in movements for social justice, that created legitimate frustrations among women. Then and now, women have been told that their concerns for better treatment within their own societies are trivial compared to “larger concerns,” which always means something men want for themselves. These issues are often racialized. “Feminism” should be avoided because it is claimed to involve nothing more than attempts by outsiders to protect brown and black women from brown and black men. Brown and black women should be mainly concerned with helping “their” men rather than their own oppression as women. In a racialized context, such recommendations effectively remove any focus from the reality that, just as white men sometimes abuse or oppress white women, black and brown men sometimes abuse or oppress black and brown women.
Likewise, engaged Buddhist movements, both Asian and Western, often totally ignore women’s concerns in favor of rants against the International Monetary Fund, various national governments, and international businesses and the economic or environmental fallout of their practices. For example in the Festschrift collected to celebrate the seventieth birthday of Sulak Sivaraksa, the important Thai engaged-Buddhist leader, only three out of eighty-three articles dealt with gender issues in any way.6 Conveniently for Buddhists, these criticisms are directly outward, toward institutions that Buddhists don’t control themselves. It is easy to be critical of organizations that one does not and cannot control. But Buddhists do control their own institutions and the gender arrangements within them, as they have throughout Buddhist history. Yet Buddhist gender arrangements are no more equitable than those of any other religion or society. Why isn’t domestic violence within Buddhist households or the trafficking of Buddhist girls as worthy of denunciation as repressive governments? If gender is discussed in a collection of articles on engaged Buddhism, the only topic discussed is nuns’ ordination, as if that were the only issue Buddhist women face. Unfortunately, that, too, boils down to a situation of men controlling women. Men take the prerogative of deciding whether women can receive full ordination in the monastic lineages in which such ordinations are no longer or never were performed. They make this claim even though men’s interrupted ordination lineages have been restored on more than one occasion and in spite of the fact that, if anything can be attributed to the historical Buddha, one would have to conclude that he set up a religious community consisting of four types of disciples—laymen, laywomen, monks, and nuns.7
Unfortunately, especially in America, discussions of differing oppressions and the social movements meant to counteract them often devolve into a “race to the bottom,” a claim to be the most victimized of all. I characterize this unfortunate development as a claim that “I am victimer than thou and, therefore, thee owes me! Big time!” In Buddhist terms, the victim ego is one of the most difficult to work with because it is so tenacious. It justifies so much self-pity and resists healing because of the privilege that can go with being a victim. Insofar as the conventional, worldly ego is concerned, being a victim is a particularly safe haven because it is so difficult to give up this ego style. As long as the victim ego is retained, enlightenment will most definitely be subverted.
Therefore, Buddhist women, Buddhists, women, and all others who care about social justice need to be especially cautious not to fall into playing the victim game, especially in a competitive manner: “We are the most oppressed of all, so we deserve the most consideration.” Such claims intensify anger and resentment, both on one’s own part and on the part of others. Such emotions do not promote enlightenment. They encourage groups that otherwise could help each other to instead devolve into competitive, mutually resentful camps. That is why politicians love to play “divide and conquer.” Unfortunately, they are often successful. The tendency to create competitive hierarchies among human beings seems to be a strong worldly or samsaric habitual tendency, and such competitive claims to victimhood are one of its least useful manifestations. The most successful way to avoid falling into this trap is to foster as much awareness as possible about all oppressed groups rather than to claim uniquely oppressed status for one’s own group.
Buddhist wisdom has a practical slogan for dealing with potential difficulties inherent in ranking oppressions: “Liberating one liberates all.” This principle is first articulated, at least to my knowledge, in the Sandhinirmocana Sutra, a difficult Mahayana sutra usually classified as belonging to the “third turning,” the “final” set of sutra teachings, at least according to some schools of Buddhism. As translated by John Powers, the relevant passage reads:
monks who practice yoga, having completely realized the suchness of one aggregate, the selflessness of the phenomena that is the ultimate, do not have to seek further for suchness, for the ultimate, and for selflessness in each of the other aggregates, or in the constituents….8
In other words, once you really “get” something definitively, once you truly understand one thing, you understand every other thing of the same type equally thoroughly. One does not have repeat the process of investigation and contemplation that led to the initial breakthrough with every other similar phenomenon. One can safely assume that the insight holds generally.
Applied to the potential for a competitive race to be the most oppressed, the “victimest of all,” this principle would mean that there is no need to question the relevance of work that has already been done regarding one set of oppressions to a different kind of oppression. For example, analysis done on gender could be transferable to issues of race or sexual orientation and vice versa. Therefore, someone whose primary issue involves race or sexual orientation should not regard someone who has worked primarily on gender issues with hostility or claim that their work is inadequate because it does not usually directly address race, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Unfortunately, such bitter and hostile accusations between members of these various communities are relatively common. For example, while giving a talk on gender issues, I have been bitterly attacked because I don’t usually address issues of sexual orientation. But why the assumption that unless I directly address an endless list of social woes, I must be ignorant of or hostile to those affected by other kinds of oppression? There are practical limitations to how much time and energy one can put into the many causes and issues that are all worthy. It is egocentric to expect everyone who cares about greater equity in society to put my issue first. If Buddhists understand Buddhist teachings, they should not fall into this trap.
What if this principle that “liberating one liberates all” doesn’t seem to be working? What if someone who is recognized as having deeply penetrated Buddhist teachings still engages in or promotes inappropriate relative practices? Such questions often surface, for example when revered teachers engage in sexual relationships with students that seem ethically questionable. What if a Buddhist teacher were to display racism or homophobia? When it was revealed that revered Japanese Zen Buddhist leaders promoted Japanese militarism and imperialism before World War II, their Western disciples were deeply troubled.
It could be argued that even the Buddha, at least as represented in some Buddhist texts, seemed to favor male dominance. Difficult as it may be for students to accept, trustworthy insight into ultimate truth doesn’t necessarily translate into faultless understanding of contemporary social issues. Such limits do not discredit the reliability of the teacher as a dharma teacher, even though students might have to do their own thinking regarding some relative practices and issues. It is unrealistic to expect dharma teachers to be perfect role models in every regard or to be able to guide students in matters about which they may have little understanding themselves.9 Such discoveries have been disheartening for Western students. But it is unrealistic and overly romantic to expect Buddhist teachers and Buddhism itself to be free of the general faults of religions.
Regarding the question of whose liberation matters most, the acme of Buddhist wisdom is that one is ultimately responsible for one’s own state of mind and cannot blame it on others. This can be a steep and unwelcome truth, but it seems incontrovertible. Buddhist nontheism teaches us that no one else is going to liberate us. We are each responsible for our own liberation. Thus, self-liberation first is most important because without self-liberation true compassion, the fuel to work toward the liberation of others, will not develop properly. This is another meaning of the slogan “liberating one liberates all.” The more fully one has liberated oneself, the more other instances of social pain will be important. We won’t ask whose pain matters the most, and we will see more deeply into what might be helpful in liberating others.