Dhr. Seven, Ananda (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Vanessa R. Sasson (Buddhistdoor, 11/7/17); Samsara
This is a beautiful speech in a beautiful movie (Samsara) by one of the most beautiful women we've ever seen, but it's wrong on nearly every point. It is certainly a true and legitimate reaction to the popular story of the Buddha's life. But it is not what happened, and the movie makers should have done some research rather than condemn the Buddha, who came back and saved his wife, son, parents, cousins, friends, and every Scythian/Shakyian interested in enlightenment and nirvana, even his horrible cousin, Yasodhara/Bimba's brother, Devadatta.
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In between moments of patriarchy...something special happens
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| Is other's beauty to blame for our lust? |
Women are also described as dangerous temptresses, and the image of their decaying bodies in charnel grounds is used as a teaching for monks struggling with sensual desire.
For a predominantly male monastic community, women [or excessive attraction and clinging to them] can be seen as obstacles to be overcome.
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| What makes awakening possible is overcoming three things: lust, aversion, delusion, not eradicating external objects. Women are not the problem. Ignorance is (Wisdom Quarterly). |
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| Venerable, can women become enlightened? |
There is nothing kind or compassionate about the accusations made against women in the name of "awakening," as if women were to blame for the male gaze, as if greed (lust) were the fault of the attractive object, as if beauty is to blame for obsession.
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| There are female monastics, too? Yes, many. |
I am quite certain such illustrious thinkers could have found alternative means had they made just a bit more of an effort.
But let us not discard all Buddhist literature because of some of it. Sometimes, I read past the denigrations and instead look for something more inspiring.
Other times, I stay with the ugliness and wait for some kind of wisdom to tell me where to go. And when I encounter positive portrayals of females, I always cherish them.
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| Princess Yasodharā (the future enlightened nun Ven. Bhaddhakaccana) and future enlightened son Prince Rahula wait for the Buddha in Kapilavastu, Scythia/Afghanistan (ranajitpal.com). |
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| A mural of the Buddha's mother, Maha Pajapati Gotami, as a Buddhist nun at Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery by Tibetan artist-in-exile Kalsang Damchoe and his assistants and students from the Kalsang Tibetan Traditional Art of Thangka painting studio (buddhistartnews.wordpress.com). |
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A FEW FORGOTTEN BUDDHIST WOMEN
Ven. Bhaddhakaccana ("lucky" former wife of Siddhartha, Princess Yasodharā), aka:
Yasodhara=Nun Bhaddakaccana - Bhaddakaccā,
- Bimbā (her real name, "Yasodhara" being but a description)
- Bimbādevī (Princess Bimbā),
- Bimbāsundarī (beautiful Bimbā),
- Subhaddakā,
- Yosadhāri;
- Sundari Nanda (the Buddha's half-sister, an enlightened nun, born of the same father and the Buddha's adoptive mother, his biological mother's sister),
- Khema (the Buddha's chief female disciple, foremost in wisdom),
- Uppalavanna (chief female disciple, foremost in psychic powers),
- Maha Pajapati (Prince Siddhartha's adoptive mother and the world's first Buddhist nun, following the introduction of female wandering ascetic Jain nuns);
- Kisa Gotami (possibly a Gautama = Gotama = Gotami),
- Ambapali (eminent female donor labeled a "courtesan" because she had her own money and donated a mango or amba grove to the Buddha),
- and the countless enlightened women, like the daughters of the great donor Anathapindika,
- Queen Maya (Prince Siddhartha's biological mother) and the countless other devis of the deva-lokas...
I read such passages over and over, almost as though I am trying to wash my eyes clean of the hurt previous passages created.
- Inspired from Enlightened Nuns: Therigatha
- International Women's Day 2021
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| What if enlightenment were most important? |
I recently came across a precious moment of female-focused inspiration in the pages of the relatively obscure collection known as the Mahāvastu. It is just a few lines — a small scene tucked away in what is a much larger and more dramatic narrative — but it is so lovely that it deserves a moment of recognition.
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| The Buddha cared about women? Yes, a great deal. |
The Buddha [or Sage of the Scythians] was residing in a park not far from his hometown of Kapilavastu, so the king decided to bring the entire Śākyian [Scythian] community with him to greet his illustrious returning son.
The Buddha was aware of their approach and wondered how he might greet them upon arrival. He knew that the Śākyans were a proud people and that if he remained seated, they would be offended. But if he stood up, their heads would shatter as a result of the power of his cosmic sovereignty.
The Buddha performs miracles
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| Look, the Sage of the Scythians (Shakyamuni) is performing miracles in Kapilavastu! |
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He therefore chose something different: He levitated himself into the air and met his community while floating above them in a rare demonstration of his psychic powers. (A smile is surely required here).
After generating the necessary gasps of astonishment, the Buddha proceeds with a magical display of his unique powers, simultaneously transforming the upper part of his body into water and the lower half into flames.
Then he switches things around and transforms his lower body into water and his upper half into flames. Then he transforms himself into a bull that vanishes and reappears in various places in the sky, then he turns himself into a fountain, spouting water in all directions.
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| The Buddha enlightens his deceased mother, Maya, in Tavatimsa, the World of the Thirty-Three |
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Queen Mahā Pajāpatī (the future first Buddhist nun) was the Buddha’s aunt; she adopted the future king, Siddhartha, when he was 7-days-old and raised him more lovingly than her own two children, Nanda and Sundari Nanda. All three had the same father.
Prince Siddhartha's biological mother, Queen Maya, was Pajapati's older sister, but she passed away a week after the future Buddha's birth.
- As depicted above, she was reborn, returning to Tusita, from which she later traveled, descending to Tavatimsa, to hear her son, now the Buddha, teach the devas in space.
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| Look, he's doing the impossible! |
Mahā Pajāpatī, however, could not see any of this because she was [psychosomatically] blind.
Her blindness is a detail I have not encountered elsewhere, but according to the Mahāvastu, Queen Mahāpajāpatī cried so many tears after her adopted son (her sister Maya's biological son) renounced the throne and left home that her eyes became filled with scales, and she was blinded as a result.
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| The Buddha demonstrates many miracles. |
Realizing that nothing she could say would do the spectacle justice, Yasodharā instead cupped her two hands together and caught some of the water that was pouring out of the Buddha’s body as he performed his miracle.
She then brought the water to Maha Pajāpatī and bathed her eyes. The scales fell away and Mahā Pajāpatī’s sight became as clear and faultless as it had been before.
The story then continues to focus on the Buddha and his father, King Suddhodana, keeping the male protagonists at the center of the narrative. But the scene of these two women is nevertheless included, and it is tender and kind.
Women are so often described as competing temptresses, whose sole purpose it is to disturb the spiritual pursuits of the men who left them behind. But in this story, another picture has been captured.
Two women — who do not speak to anyone but each other and do not ask anything of anyone — wander quietly onto the scene and manage their suffering [brought on, of course, as the Buddha will later teach them, by their own clinging, attachment, and expectations] for themselves, finding a solution without having to ask a man, any man, for help.
Princess Yasodharā feels compassion for her mother-in-law and finds a way to heal her — something Mahāpajāpatī never even asked for. The quiet dignity of these two women in the scene, their cooperation and mutual kindness, is heartfelt and touching.
They are lost in a sea of male characters, and no one around them appears to even notice them. They are invisible and virtually silent.
The Making of the movie Samsara
The making of the fantasy Samsara about a man who leaves his wife.
Editorial Commentary
Everything the Buddha said about [attachment to] women being an impediment to men's enlightenment he said to women: [attachment or obsession with] men is an impediment to our enlightenment. In respect of other genders, whomever or whatever we crave or cling to will be an impediment. Let go.
But keep in mind that it is not all our personal responsibility. There is a collective responsibility we all have, males and females, to lift females back up to an equal footing.
The Sakyians/Scythians were famous for the strength and social position of their women, with many females training as horse riding "warrior princesses" (actual fighters not symbolic kshatriya caste members as they are now depicted).
This was quite unlike females in the Kingdom of Magadha East in "India," toward which Siddhartha traveled when he left his "Western Paradise" in Central Asia, having renounced his privilege and abandoned his comfortable home to embark on a quest for enlightenment to become a sage to save his people, the Scythians.
This is the context for this scene of tenderness between wife and mother-in-law. The larger story recounts how the Buddha returned (as he had always intended) and was received. He was now enlightened, a sage who had something real to offer his family and people. He was now able to teach them all, the women and those overly proud men, the path to enlightenment (awakening) and nirvana (the end of all suffering).
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| 1st human depictions of the Buddha (Gandhara) |
Indeed, many women became monastics, making Bamiyan and Mes Aynak in particular great monastic centers with giant Afghan temple complexes — nunneries and monasteries for the bhikkhuni and bhikkhu sanghas that no one believing the standard history can explain.
Afghanistan has the largest and oldest Buddha statues in the world (in Bamiyan, with a massive, yet-to-be-excavated reclining-into-nirvana statue being the very largest) and the largest unexcavated Buddhist monastic complex (Mes Aynak).
The only older viharas (biharas) or monastic residences would be in Bihar (Vihar'), India, but they could only at most be seven years older because the Buddha returned to Kapilavastu seven years after his great awakening to teach and ordain them.
- Interestingly, when Ananda intervened on behalf of his female relatives who wanted to ordain under the Buddha as wandering ascetics like the men and boys, he could not have been the Buddha's attendant. That coveted assignment came much later, 18 years later, but as he ordained he would have been a monk. According to Czech monk and polymath Ven. Dhammadipa, in a story from both Mahayana and Theravada sources, there were only three people on the planet with the karma to be "world monarchs" (chakravartins), and they were Siddhartha, Rahula, and Ananda, as Rahula points out as his pubescent urges incline him to disrobe and return to Kapilavastu to be king (literally of the world) as he believes his destiny intended. This is additional evidence that Ananda was also his son, not his cousin.
The Buddha himself said quite early on that his mission, his sasana (dispensation), would never be complete until he had FOUR types of students: nuns, monks, female lay disciples, and male lay disciples. So it is not true that he opposed female ordination except for the intervention of his son*/cousin Ananda.
- *Different Buddhist traditions have different explanations for who his famous attendant Ananda is, given that it is only because of him that we have a Buddhism in the form we have it in. Ananda, who loved women and often mediated on behalf of the nuns, seems to have been the offspring of Mriga, a female in King Suddhodana and/or Prince Siddhartha's royal harem, or whatever set up they had in ancient Afghanistan/Scythia/Gandhara, which we do ourselves a disservice to judge from our modern perspective.
In fact, the whole story that Siddhartha abandoned Princess Yasodhara (aka Bimba Devi) is not true of this buddha but a former one. The Buddha is not telling us what happened when he renounced the world but what a previous buddha had done.
Somehow nearly everyone misses that, except careful monks and knowledgeable scholars. Nevertheless, reading the texts carefully gives us enough details to knock us back to our senses:
When the prince left the palace, the princess followed his wandering ascetic habits, doing what he was doing as he started doing it.
- How did she know what he was doing if he abandoned her without a word and no one knew anything about their former prince? The video at top is a great and popular fantasy about what Yasodhara must have felt, and it would have us believe the wrong tale and be righteously indignant about it. The answer is that the king sent messengers to find out what the former prince was doing, asking him to return.
When Siddhartha started eating only one meal a day, she would eat just one meal. When he wore only saffron robes, she did the same, and when he gave up lofty beds, she also took to sleeping on the ground.
She did all of this while she continued to live surrounded by luxury and servants, cared for by his parents, who were her biological relatives (because they were cousins [Let's not judge]), together raising the next king, Prince Rahula, their legitimate son, Ananda therefore technically being the "illegitimate" son, at least from our Western perspective. Ananda, who only served as attendant much later (for the last 20 years of the Buddha's dispensation), was obviously celebrated and loved in Scythia.
The Buddha's aunt, who adopted him, had two children of her own, the Buddha's half-brother and half-sister, Nanda and Sundari Nanda, born of the same royal father, King Suddhodana, who was co-married to his deceased wife's sister, Maha Pajapati Gotami.
The biological mother, Queen Maya, passed away shortly after Prince Siddhartha's birth. So he had two loving mothers and many important females around him from a very young age.
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| Siddhartha accepts food from a woman's hand. |
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