| abstract
| - There are six MAJOR POINTS to remember from the start, based upon the early Buddhist scriptures as preserved by the Theravada branch of Buddhism: (1) Despite ancient and contemporary sectarian doctrinal debates, it is undoubtedly clear that the Buddha affirmed the ability of women to attain complete spiritual development. (2) In fact, the scriptural records of the earliest traditions reveal a numerous amount of Bhikkhuni (female monks) as having attained complete enlightenment ("Arahata-phala") during the Buddha's lifetime and afterward. (3)(a) the Buddhist Monastic Community (the Sangha) is the longest lasting, continuously functioning human institution in history and, further, (b) was the first of its sort to explicitly include women. Thus, it (c) is the first (and oldest) human institution to give large throngs of women status higher than that of men in the general population - higher, even, than royalty. (4) Though tradition holds that the Buddha hesitated to "ordain" women as "monks" we must realize that the word translated as "monk" is the Pali word Bhikkhu (Sanskrit form, "Bhiksu") which literally means "beggar". These "monks" lived, slept, ate, and meditated alone or in small groups in the woods (later, in sheltered abodes - "Vihara" in Pali) with no weapons, having to beg alms-food going door to door in towns and villages, almost on continuous pilgrimage traveling on highways and through the wilderness from place to place on foot - again, alone or in small groups. In thinking of the various forms of horrific victimization that women living such a lifestyle would suffer in contemporary society (even with its barbed-wire, police forces, etc.), we can perhaps more easily identify with the Buddha's hesitation to permit and encourage women to undertake this lifestyle of a "beggar" ('Bhikkhu', male; 'Bhikkhuni', female). Further, we can more easily understand his regulations requiring that there be an on-going connection, or attachment, of the female-monk community (Bhikkhuni-Sangha) to male-monks (Bhikkhu)(the regulations referred to are the eight Garudhammas, mentioned below). (5) That the apparent inequality between the male and female monks seem to have been to both provide the females some sort of security from victimization and to "legitimize" the females' standing in the eyes of ancient Hindu Indian society at large (which was, of course patriarchal). Even if neither of these is accepted by the reader as revealing a 'de facto' equality between male and female monks in the Sangha (remember that the term for each is the same, just gendered, i.e. Bhikkhu & Bhikkhuni, rather than widely divergent roles and statuses both effecting and effected by a difference of terms, such as the pair "priest" vs. "nun" or even "monk" vs. "nun".), we ought to realize that in the very least the female monks ("Bhikkhuni") have, merely by being such, higher status, as it were, over ALL unordained men - quite a progressive and advanced position for women five centuries B.C.E. (6) Whereas the above five points concern the Buddha's ordination of female Bhikkhu (i.e., Bhikkhuni), there also exists a not scarce amount of the Buddha both implicitly and explicitly countering patriarchal tendencies in society at large. For example, in the Sigalaka Sutta (from the Digha Nikaya portion of the Sutta Pitaka - also known as the Sigalovada Sutta) the Buddha lists, among other social duties, five basic duties of a man to his wife. These include being faithful to her and - much more interestingly - ceding authority to her. The first is interesting enough in that polygamy was still quite widespread at the time; but the Buddha's exhortation to husbands to cede authority to their wives was nearly unheard of again for nearly twenty-four centuries. Scholars such as Faure and Miranda Shaw are in agreement that Buddhist Studies is in its infancy in terms of addressing gender issues. Shaw gave an overview of the situation in 1994: In the case of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, some progress has been made in the areas of women in early Buddhism, monasticism, and Māhayāna Buddhism. Two articles have seriously broached the topic of women in Indian Tantric Buddhism, while somewhat more attention has been devoted to Tibetan nuns and lay yoginis. However Khandro Rinpoche, a rare female lama in Tibetan Buddhism has pointed out: When there is a talk about women and Buddhism, I have noticed that people often regard the topic as something new and different. They believe that women in Buddhism has become an important topic because we live in modern times and so many women are practicing the Dharma now. However, this is not the case. The female sangha has been here for centuries. We are not bringing something new into a twenty-five hundred-year-old tradition. The roots are there, and we are simply re-energizing them.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)