Читать книгу Women in Buddhist Traditions - Karma Lekshe Tsomo - Страница 13

The Buddhist canon is quite unique in including the voices of women, especially the voices of women who renounced household and family in favor of the renunciant life. Buddhist scholar Alice Collett points out that a significant number of Buddhist texts were composed by or about women, including the Therīgāthā, the Apadānas (biographies of the Buddha’s disciples, including forty women), the Avadānaśataka (stories of realization, including a number of women), and the Aṅguttara Nikāya (containing stories of eminent nuns and laywomen).¹⁷ She acknowledges the valuable work of pioneering feminist scholars of Buddhism in the West, notably Caroline Rhys Davids (1857–1942), Mabel Bode (1864–1922), and I. B. Horner (1896–1981), in bringing to light the spiritual accomplishments of women in these texts. At the same time, she argues that Western studies of women in Buddhist literature have emphasized certain texts over others (namely, the Therīgāthā and the Pāli vinaya),¹⁸ and suggests that a detailed study of all available literature is needed in order to gain a fuller understanding of women in ancient Indian Buddhism.

In India at the time of the Buddha, women were associated with fecundity and reproduction, which stand in direct contrast to the Buddhist goals of renunciation and liberation. We find scriptural evidence of the preconceptions that celibacy and independence are not natural states for women, that motherhood is a woman’s natural inclination, and that women are happy under men’s protection and dominance. We find no parallel preconceptions about men’s inherent inclination to reproduce or to seek happiness under women’s protection. Women are portrayed as sexually avaricious and therefore threatening to the virtue of men, especially male renunciants. However, contradicting the common stereotypes of women as temptresses and seducers of men, in the Buddhist canon and commentaries we also find stories portraying women as utterly disinterested in sexual exploits and fully confident in rebuffing the advances of men. The most vivid story tells of the beautiful nun Subhā Therī who, when accosted by an admirer, plucks out her eye and presents it to her erstwhile seducer.¹⁹ Her eye is later restored in the presence of the Buddha, suggesting the power of the spiritual attainments of both the Buddha and Subhā Therī. Indeed, there are many stories that portray the piety, virtue, and spiritual attainments of women, contradicting popular preconceptions and expectations of women in that day.²⁰

It is important to acknowledge the historical and cultural context within which texts were composed and to be aware of a tendency to read back into times past our own modern egalitarian biases. Even so, from a gender studies perspective, admittedly a vantage point that is newly developed even within Western scholarship, historical and cultural context cannot be used to erase or diminish questions of gender. Female exemplars of realization appear in Buddhist accounts but may be portrayed as prepubescent eight-year-olds, sparing them the pollution of menstruation. Physical beauty is the result of virtuous actions created in the past, but it can be dangerous for women, who are seen as the snares of men, whereas good looks pose no such disadvantage for men.²¹ In the Lotus Sūtra, an influential Mahāyāna text that affirms women’s potential for awakening, and the Mahāratnakūṭa, women are portrayed transforming themselves into men to attest to their awakened state, reinforcing the assumption of male superiority.²² Even when women implicitly challenge male spiritual privilege and powerfully transform their gender identities, they are shown manifesting their spiritual attainments in male form.²³ For example, in the Candrottādārikāparipṛcchā, a Mahāyāna text from the third or fourth century CE, Candrottā, the stunningly beautiful and precocious daughter of the famed Buddhist scholar-practitioner Vimalakīrti, miraculously transforms her female body into a male body in order to demonstrate the nondual nature of enlightenment. These gender-shifting feats demonstrate that all forms are ultimately empty and therefore beyond gender. However, stories illustrating the nondual nature of awakening do not explain or justify contradictions between theoretical equality and the predilection to portray awakening as requiring a male body that runs through Buddhist texts, rituals, and societies.

Gender identities appear to have been understood as fluid and mutable at the time of the Buddha. In the course of innumerable lifetimes, sentient beings take rebirth in countless different life forms and different genders.²⁴ Further, gender transformation might be possible even in one lifetime; shifting between male and female gender identities seems to have been a commonly accepted concept.²⁵ For example, according to a well-known legend, when Buddha Śākyamuni descended to earth from the Heaven of the Thirty-Three Gods (Trāyastriṃśa) after giving teachings to his mother Queen Mahāmāyā residing there, a nun named Utpala (Pāli: Uppalavaṇṇā; Sanskrit: Utpalavarṇā) transformed herself into a (male) cakravartin ruler in order to get the first glimpse of him.²⁶ The exceptionally beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant, Utpala opted out of marriage, became a nun, swiftly achieved the state of an arhat, and was recognized by the Buddha as foremost among the nuns in the attainment of supernormal powers (Pāli: iddhi; Sanskrit: siddhi). As religion scholar Serinity Young puts it, according to the Buddhist texts, the achievement of supernormal powers not only allows one insight into the mutability of gender but also gives one the power to “enact this mutability” by transforming one’s sexual characteristics.²⁷

Although sexual identities in Buddhist scriptures were depicted as mutable, changes from lifetime to lifetime were not so frequent, due to habitual affinities with one gender or another. Rebirth in a female body was assumed to involve much greater suffering than rebirth in a male body and was therefore regarded as less desirable.²⁸ It was but a small step from there to regarding a female rebirth as the result of unwholesome actions (karma) in the past and a male rebirth as the result of wholesome actions. Consequently, it is a common belief in Buddhist societies that a female rebirth is the result of bad karma. A strong preference for male offspring may not be surprising in patriarchal Indian society, but it is surprising to see a strong preference for male identity against the background of Buddhism’s relatively egalitarian principles.

Buddhist texts also contain stories about women who were capable of high spiritual and intellectual mastery; numerous exceptional female practitioners were lauded by the Buddha. Dhammadinnā, for example, was a nun who became an arhat and gained renown as the foremost bhikṣuṇī in teaching Dharma.²⁹ Dhammadinnā had been married to a merchant named Visākha who became a monk, so she decided to become a nun. In the story, Visākha prostrates to Dhammadinnā and asks her a number of both simple and thorny questions, to which she responds with distinction. When she then reiterates the conversation to the Buddha, he confirms her understanding and assures her that he would have replied in the same manner. As an outstanding teacher, Dhammadinnā serves as an inspiration and positive role model for other women, as do the many other women of awakening.