Читать книгу Women in Buddhist Traditions - Karma Lekshe Tsomo - Страница 11

According to Buddhist tradition, throughout his life, the Buddha was surrounded by exemplary women. The legends about his life begin with his mother, Mahāmāyā Gautama, portrayed as an exemplar of purity. She conceived the young prince in a dream of a white elephant who carried a white lotus in his trunk and entered her right side. The Buddha’s miraculous birth took place when Queen Mahāmāyā, traveling to her natal home, stopped in a beautiful grove of blossoming fruit trees at Lumbini. As the queen reached up for a tree branch for support, the infant emerged fully formed from her right side, and then stood and took seven steps. The devas (gods) rejoiced, and the child was given the name Siddhārtha Gautama. His father, King Śuddhodana of the Śākya clan, is cast as a ruler with high hopes that his son would grow up to succeed him. Siddhārtha is described as growing up in his father’s capital, Kapilavastu. Queen Mahāmāyā is portrayed as an ideal woman for her role in giving birth to a special, male child, which perfectly matched the expectation for women in the social and cultural milieu of ancient India. Although she passed away when the young prince was barely a week old, she is framed in this portrait as the perfect woman in perpetuity, and images of her giving birth to the future Buddha are ubiquitous throughout Asia (see figure 1.1). Indeed, without Mahāmāyā, the young prince would never have been born and hence there would have been no Buddha Śākyamuni, and no teachings, disciples, or Buddhist traditions.

After Queen Mahāmāyā died, her sister, Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī (Pāli: Mahāpajāpatī), who was also married to King Śuddhodana, became Siddhārtha’s loving foster mother. She displayed archetypal selfless maternal devotion, nurturing the young prince as if he were her own offspring. Later, after the prince became a fully awakened Buddha, she demonstrated her intelligence, commitment, and courage by leading some five hundred women of the royal Śākya clan to petition him to allow women to enter the saṅgha (“community,” monastic order). When Siddhārtha grew to adulthood, he married the beautiful princess Yaśodharā, who exemplified the role of the perfect wife, bearing his son and never forsaking him, not even after he abandoned both her and their child. The fourth key female figure is a young woman named Sujātā, identified as Rādhā in some texts. At the nadir of Siddhārtha’s spiritual search, when he was totally emaciated by hunger and thirst, Sujātā appeared and demonstrated selfless compassion by providing food to nurture his awakening. Gradually, as women became part of the early monastic community, thousands received the Buddha’s teachings and through diligent practice became arhats.

Figure 1.1. Image of Mahāmāyā, mother of the future Buddha, who died a week after he was born, at Dharmakirti Vihar, Kathmandu, Nepal. Credit: Photo by Karma Lekshe Tsomo.

The Buddha attracted a wide range of followers during his lifetime, some of whom wished to follow his example and renounce the householder life. After the Buddha had achieved perfect awakening, he went to the Deer Park in Sarnath near Varanasi on the Ganga River, where five of his ascetic companions were staying. These five young śrāmaṇas (renunciants) had followed him as he pursued the path of austerity and abandoned him after he lost faith in extreme asceticism and broke his fast by accepting milk rice from a maiden named Sujātā near Bodhgaya. When these five ascetics met up with the Buddha again in the Deer Park after his awakening (bodhi) while sitting under a peepul (ficus religiosa or bodhi) tree, they at first shunned him but then recognized that he had become realized and asked what goal he had achieved. The Buddha told them that he had attained the state of deathlessness, or liberation (Sanskrit: nirvāṇa; Pāli: nibbāna). They bowed at his feet and resolved to similarly reach the goal of liberation. As he uttered the phrase “Come here,” these five disciples became the first Buddhist monks and thus began the bhikṣu saṅgha, the community of ordained monks. As the number of bhikṣus grew and mistakes were made, the Buddha began to set forth rules of behavior, which gradually grew into a body of monastic precepts that were later recorded in the vinaya texts. These became the guidelines for the Buddhist monastic order (saṅgha), reportedly the world’s oldest continuous organization.

When the Buddha began teaching soon after his awakening, countless women followed him and became respected communicators of Buddhist knowledge. However, the accomplishments of women were greatly enhanced when Mahāprajāpatī initiated the bhikṣuṇī saṅgha, the community of fully ordained Buddhist nuns, the world’s oldest documented women’s organization. She achieved liberation and provided skilled leadership for countless accomplished women for the rest of her very long life.

Buddhist studies scholar Kathryn R. Blackstone has compiled a list of the renowned female arhats credited with composing the verses of liberation included in the Therīgāthā (Verses of the Elder Nuns), expressing the insights and attainments of seventy senior nuns who lived at the time of the Buddha.¹ These verses, preserved in Pāli, document both the obstacles and the achievements of these pioneering women who transcended cultural stereotypes to become nuns and effect their own freedom. Indologist Ria Kloppenborg has identified stereotypes of women that appear in the verses and seem to have been common characterizations at the time: women as stupid, as devoted daughters, as obsessed with their bodies and adornments, as temptresses, as obsessed with childbearing, and as old ugly hags.² Images of the liberated women who transcended these stereotypes have served as inspiration for innumerable practitioners across cultures.

To understand the full significance of women’s successful practice and contributions in Buddhism, we must consider the context in India, the land where the Buddha first taught and where his teachings and community first took root. During the sixth to fifth centuries BCE, India was primarily agricultural, but society was becoming increasingly urbanized. Small kingdoms and principalities were developing across northern India, and trade was generating prosperity for the entrepreneurial class. The prevailing society was decidedly patriarchal, and women’s activities were often highly restricted.³ Negative stereotypes of women were commonplace in South Asian societies at the time. After marriage, women were often treated with contempt until they gave birth to a son; then they were treated with greater respect.⁴ If the boy died, the mother might lose her privileged status and be castigated or rejected. At the same time, countless female deities were worshiped and revered. The spiritual creative power (śakti) of the universe was understood to be female and embodied in goddesses. Although women had śakti, the emphasis was on the need to control women so they did not conceive a child out of wedlock. The dichotomy between the divine feminine and ordinary embodied women creates a profound ambivalence that is evident even today in Hindu society.