Can a female become a Buddha?

Can a WOMAN become a buddha? One line says never [but as the Dalai Lama jokes in a movie, If she is reborn a male first]. Who wrote it?

Can I be Buddhist nun? YES!

(Buddha's Wisdom) Oct. 21, 2026: 🪷 Why BUDDHISM said females can become fully enlightened [but not supremely enlightened to become a] buddha?

Can a woman become a buddha? Buddhism gives two answers, and both sit in its own scriptures. In the old Pāli canon, the Buddha tells the monk Ānanda that a woman can reach full enlightenment (arahantship), full awakening, the end of suffering in this very life.

In the Bahudhātuka Sutta, a female cannot be a fully awakened buddha. This video follows females in Buddhism from the first nuns at Vesālī to the fully-ordained nuns (bhikkhunīs) walking Bangkok, Thailand's streets at dawn. We separate the question into four:

1. Can a woman wake up?
2. Can she be a buddha?
3. Can she wear the monastic robe?
4. Can she walk through the temple door?

Then we go to the sacred texts and to the scholars who compared their versions in Pāli and Chinese languages. Where the evidence is solid, we say so. Where it rests on legend or on passages scholars suspect were ADDED LATER, we say that, too.

• [See the scholarship of Ayya Tathaloka for details about the "eight added rules" that are shown to NOT have been laid down by the Buddha, as evidence in the Bhikkhuni Vinaya makes clear.]

DISCOVER

• Why [the Buddha's adoptive mother, sister of his biological mother] Mahā Pajāpatī Gotamī asked three times, and the "eight rules" (eight garudhammas) that came with the yes
• The sermon that says a female cannot be a buddha, and the Chinese version where that passage is missing
• What the "dragon girl," the Vimalakīrti goddess, and Tārā reveal about different Buddhist answers.
• The Vimalakīrti goddess who turns Ven. Śāriputra (one of the Buddha's chief male disciples declared "foremost in wisdom" by the Buddha) into a woman, and the female buddhas of Tibet
• Why Theravada Thailand still forbids monks to ordain females, and the [ten precept or maechi] nuns who walk alms round for requisites anyway
• The famous chariot image this channel credited to a monk six times. It came from a nun named Vajirā.

#Buddhism #WomenInBuddhism #FemaleBuddha

• Buddha's Wisdom (video), Oct. 21, 2026; Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly