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| The Buddha's sister, Princess Sundari Nanda |
Did the Buddha have siblings? Yes. But soon after Prince Siddhartha was born, his biological mother, Queen Maya, passed away. (There is an interesting reason why this is so, but suffice it to say that young Prince Siddhartha would hardly have known anything was amiss).
The king's other co-wife, Maya's own younger sister,
Maha Pajapati Gotami, stepped in to raise the prince as her own. She later had two children, whom she turned over to a nurse so that she could focus on raising the prince.
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| Madonna and child: Mahapajapati Gotami and Siddhattha Gotama |
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| La Madonna i il bambino (Arte Italiano) |
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| The Buddha's biological mother, Queen Maya |
Siddhartha grew up with his younger brother,
Nanda (who later almost marries the most beautiful female in all the land,
Janapada Kalyani Nandā, but instead becomes enlightened thanks to the Buddha, then his fiancée becomes a nun, too), and his sister,
Sundari Nanda [
("Beautiful") Nandā Gotami, who either is or has become confounded with Rupa Nanda and
Abhi-rūpa Nandā, meaning "Ultimate-Beauty Nandā"], and a cousin (or son from a harem dancing girl named Mriga, as recorded in another Buddhist tradition), the famous attendant Ananda. |
| The Buddha's stepmother/aunt, Queen Pajapati |
At the time, there were only three people on Earth with the karma to become "world monarchs"(chakravartin rulers): The Buddha, Rahula, and Ananda. If this is true, it suggests they are all related by blood and/or are a cohort frequently reborn together, as we know to be the case with Ananda, who many times was born alongside the Bodhisattva (Bodhisatta, the Buddha as referred to in past lives when he is a "being bent on supreme enlightenment). Ananda was the Buddha's trusty personal attendant for 25 years, who did not have the job for the first 20 years of the Buddha's 45-year ministry as others tried to do it. But then Ananda volunteered and did it better than anyone else had. Moreover, he was well suited not only by her affable personality but by strength of a memory able to memorize all of the sutras he had ever heard. There is a sutra when Rahula is coming of age and starts feeling strong worldly urges, talking about renouncing and returning to royal life to enjoy its pleasures. The Buddha, seeing this as a sign that the time has come to teach him intensively, he takes him aside to give him an earful, so that he awakens with the help of Sariputra as his teacher.
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| I love my life of luxury and privilege. |
(Could it be a coincidence that their names as they have come down to us in history all contain the word "Nanda"? Everyone in Buddhism gets a popular name, not their given name but an appellation, to make them easy to remember. For instance, Prince Siddhartha's cousin and wife by arranged marriage when both were 16, was not "Princess Yashodhara." That's what we call her. Her actual name was Bimba Devi, and when she became a nun, fully enlightened, a fierce debater who could challenge anyone in any place she wandered, she known by many other names as if to conceal or diffuse her greatness -- Bhaddha, Bhaddha Kaccana, Rahula-mata, and so on.)
This focus is on his beautiful sister or half-sister, who also became a nun and also attained enlightenment with his help, just as his adoptive mother did, who became the world's first Buddhist nun.
The Buddha's sister: The Great Teacher Sundari Nanda Gotami
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| AI (artificial intelligence) renders Sundari Nanda a Dravidian Indian rather than an Aryan (Iranian from Gandhara) Central Asian as was more likely (Ishy Comar/provided by Rev. Kyoji/Rising Lotus Sangha). |
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| Author Rev. Kyoji (Rising Lotus Sangha) |
When Sundari Nanda was born to King Suddodhana and Queen Pajapati Gotami, there must have been great rejoicing and some trepidation. Queen Maya, the king’s first wife, died seven days after giving birth to their son, Prince Siddhattha Gotama (Sidhartha Gautama, the Future Buddha).
Although heartbroken, the king had a second wife, Maha Maya’s younger sister Maha Pajapati Gotami. Some years later, when Queen Pajapati became pregnant and gave birth, there was great joy and hope that this time mother and baby would survive.
Fortunately, both did. King Suddodhana and Queen Pajapati welcomed their daughter Princess Sundari Nanda into the world with elaborate celebrations.
She was raised a princess treated with the utmost deference and respect. She had everything she could ever want and two parents who loved and doted on her.
She was known for being graceful, beautiful, and very well-mannered. As she grew, she very much enjoyed her privileged life and her royal status.
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| I'm leaving Scythia, Channa |
When her brother, Prince Siddhartha, renounced his privilege and left the palace in the middle of the night to become a spiritual wander on a quest to find a solution to the problem of suffering (dukkha) and later, having found it, became the "Enlightened One," the Buddha, her life changed forever.
As the eldest, Prince Siddhartha had been expected to take over as king (Scythian tribal leader) when his father passed. It was considered his birthright and responsibility.
But his leaving had been prophesied as one of two possible destinies if he were to see the real nature of life as full of suffering (old age, sickness, death), which his father for many years worked hard to keep him from seeing exactly so he would choose to stay in the palace.
So when at 29 Siddhartha defied his royal father, family tradition, and the interpretation of the Sage Asita’s words who made the prophecy with other Brahmin seers, it must have confounded his family and broken their hearts.
Siddhartha wandered for years, first committing himself under one yogi (
Alara Kalama) then another (
Uddaka Ramaputta), learning their
samadhi meditation techniques as an ascetic before setting off on his own to find an answer to his central question, which could not be found under these eminent teachers.
Sitting under a pipal tree (Ficus religiosa) for 49 days, finally allowing himself the bliss of samadhi (meditative absorptions known as jhanas) followed by a systematic practice of mindfulness on four things (body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects), at age 35, he experienced a great awakening (maha-bodhi).
He found the answers to the universal problem of suffering and the path-and-practice that results in awakening and end to suffering in this very life.
Sometime after his enlightenment, Siddhartha, who was now regard as "the Buddha," returned to his home (Scythia, Saka, Shakya Land), to one of its three seasonal capitals, all called Kapilavastu.
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| Ven. Rahula, the Buddha, and Ven. Ananda |
Seven years after his enlightenment, the Buddha, at the request of his father, who missed him dearly as did all the people of his country, returned to his palace in the city of Kapilavastu.
His father was aging and ailing. The Buddha wanted to see him and help him before he passed. While visiting, he began talking to everyone who would listen about suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering, and the way to the end of suffering, teaching what he had found.
It is said that his brother Nanda, his cousins, all of the men of the household, and many from Shakya Land (Scythia, Saka) followed him when he again left, leaving behind their privilege and luxuries.
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| Do nuns ever revert to beauty queens? |
He was changing many lives, including Sundari Nanda’s, forever.
When the king passed away, after having realized one or more of the stages of enlightenment thanks to his son, the women of the royal household -- Maha Pajapati, Sundari Nanda, Princess Bimba (Yashodhara), the royal harem, and the female servants and musicians -- were left in the palace without income or protection.
There must have been wealth stored in the palace, but that would not last forever. The women in the surrounding Shakya villages were left without sons or husbands because they, too, had followed Siddhartha and become wandering ascetics under him.
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| Do beauty queens ever become nuns? |
Culturally, this left the women unable to support or protect themselves. Some stories suggest that King Suddodhana had been something of a regional warlord (much as is seen in modern Afghanistan, which at that time was ancient Gandhara) and the threat of his army had kept other leaders at bay, to say nothing of local bandits.
Grief stricken, hungry, needy, and fearful, the Shakya women and children stood outside the palace gates. What else could Queen Pajapati do? She let them in.
This had to be an unsettling time for the princess Sundari Nanda. What had happened to the life she once knew? Now there were many women and children, many mouths to feed, so many who needed her mother’s attention,
In addition, Sundari Nanda and the women had to be more careful as they were now open to attack by neighboring territories (maha-janapadas) and their regional warlords, who by now knew they were left alone and unable to fully defend themselves, although all Scythians/Shakyians were fierce warriors, including the women.
A decision was made. Queen Pajapati went to the Buddha for refuge, as the remaining representative of what was left of Shakyas, but she was turned away.
This did not stop the women. Queen Pajapati and 500 (a figurative not literal number) women shaved their heads like Buddhist monastics, put on saffron robes like wandering ascetics, and set off to find the Buddha to ask him to accept them as disciples the way he had the males, including his own 7-year-old son, Rahula.
Sundari Nanda was among them. She had no choice but to go with her mother, and her aunt Princess Yashodhara (Prince Siddhartha’s former wife).
- I can relate to Sundari Nanda here. As a teenager, I was forced to move from my hometown and state, leaving all of my family and friends, when my mother remarried. I did not go happily. I can imagine that this would have been the case for Sundari Nanda, too. She was having to leave the luxury of the palace and her position in the country to become a spiritual wanderer, sleeping in the forest, in all kinds of weather, and with wild animals, men, and ogres. What would be worse to meet on the road, savage animals or bandits? But what else could she do, where else did she have to go?
Most know the story about how women were finally admitted into the Buddha’s monastic community or Sangha. It was largely due to Maha Pajapati Gotami’s persistence who, with the help and advocacy of Ananda, pleaded the women’s case.
Because females are able to reach enlightenment just as males are (and because the Buddha had previously said his spiritual community would not be complete until it contained four kinds of people, male and female monastics and male and female lay followers), they were welcomed into the Buddha’s Sangha.
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| Burmese novice (samaneri) Phaung Daw Oo Temple (Huggy's pics/flickr.com) |
Even when they were accepted, the Buddha (and the male Sangha) made it difficult. It is said that the women were subjected to eight additional rules (garudhammas), which made it easier for men and harder for women to ordain. Still, they stayed. They worked hard. They practiced harder, or at least everyone else did, but not Sundari Nanda.
- (This is doubtful, as the research of Ayya Tathaaloka (facebook) into the Bhikkhuni Vinaya or "Nun's Code of Discipline," a book of monastic rules and the origin story of each rule).
The legend goes that Sundari Nanda would have none of it. She wanted her old life back, with all its privileges and luxuries. She rebelled against monastic life.
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| Monastics find that beauty is only skin deep |
Using her beauty and charm and her close relationship to the Buddha, she got others to do her chores. She refused to sit in meditation. She hated working or having to go on alms round to eat. Sew robes? She had always had someone to sew her gowns!
She was more interested in making friends than in doing what was asked of her. She felt out of place and at odds with herself. She was unhappy as a nun and wanted to leave the spiritual community even if it was full of her circle of relatives and friends. But where else could she go?
One day the Buddha said he wanted to speak to each of the nuns individually. Sundari Nanda, thinking she was in trouble, evaded the Buddha as long as she could. He was not fooled. He sent the other nuns for her.
She could not be found. He sent attendants for her. Each returned emptyhanded. In the end, he went and found her himself. Instead of berating or lecturing her, he filled her ears with the most pleasant words: telling her all the good things about her.
He encouraged her and built her up. Then he spoke to her of impermanence and the way to end suffering (dukkha, disappointment) in a way that spoke deeply to her. She was changed in that moment and became enlightened soon after.
Sundari Nanda came to be known throughout the nun's community as foremost in meditation. She was compassionate and taught many other women. She was remembered as a positive influence in her community.
- This point reminds me of how I felt with the rug taken out from under me when my mother announced that we were going to move 350 miles and forever be away from our family, friends, and the life we once had. The feeling in the gut when life changes on a dime, that’s part of what anicca (impermanence, transience, constant change) means. I felt the same on the day my mother passed. I felt the same when I was going through a divorce. We have two choices at these times. grasp, resist, rebel, and be miserable or acknowledge, open to the experience, and move forward. Neither is easy.
- As a mother of daughters, I can also relate to Maha Pajapati. In leaving her home and the comforts of Kapilavastu, she was taking Sundari Nanda and the other women and children to safety. Leaving something we love almost always has tradeoffs. Change is inevitable about successfully navigating it involves compromise. Children cannot be expected to understand adult decisions. It’s our job as adults to act like adults and make the changes necessary for the health and welfare of the family.
Sundari Nanda’s story speaks to us about how we resist practice. We do not like all the self-discipline it takes. We know meditation practice can positively affect our lives. We’re afraid of what will change. We see it as losing things rather than building a more peaceful existence. When we can finally open ourselves, nirvana becomes possible. Isn’t that it?
Finally, this story speaks to me as a Zen teacher and priestess. The Buddha met Sundari Nanda Gotami where she was. He encouraged her. He did no harm. These are the Three Tenets of Teaching my current teacher is passing onto me as well, and I practice to uphold them.
What did Sundari Nanda’s story say to you?
COMMENTS
- Shinjin (Shuso) Feb. 29. Recalling that in Sunday's dharma talk you mentioned the way Buddha spoke to Sundari reminded you of Unbuntu. Sundari Nanda's story reminds me to take the sacred pause when I'm feeling the resistence or noticing that someone else is. And that kind words work wonders.
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Ayya Tathaaloka and the Buddhist nuns of the Alliance for Bhikkhunis (bhikkhuni.net)
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(WQ) Women are found throughout the history of Buddhism. They have not been removed even if people act as if the Sangha only means the "Order of Monks." There was an equally significant "Order of Nuns." The monastic Sangha means both.
The special significance of the world is the Noble Sangha refers to the "community (monastic and nonmonastic) of enlightened practitioners," not to merely to people in robes, though there is much overlap. TO BE CONTINUED IN PART II
