Abstract
While women’s writings have always been read as delimited in their concerns, Therigatha — the gathas or verses written by the elder nuns or bhikkhuni — is one such body of writing coming from women and refreshingly free of any subaltern undertones. The ninth book of the Khuddaka Nikaya, it consists of seventy-three poems in which the early nuns recount their struggles and accomplishments along the road to arahantship. This paper proposes to give a glimpse of these great minds, including Mutta, Dhamma, Vimala and Ambapali, to establish that these nuns were champions of the feminist cause in ancient times. Buddhism and feminism can be seen as particularly linked with each other: both are concerned with emancipation and broadening our self-view.
Keywords: Therigatha, Buddhism, feminism, bhikkhuni, liberation, ancient Indian women
Buddhism and Women
In response to Ananda’s query about women’s status in the cult, Buddha categorically stated that women were as capable of gaining enlightenment as men. Therigatha becomes valuable as the record of these first women renunciants. For six centuries these pearls of ancient wisdom were circulated orally before being scripted in the 1st century B.C. Kathryn Blackstone analyzed the 522 verses of therigatha in comparison with 1,279 verses of the theragatha, finding that while monks speak of liberation as an abstract ideal, for the nuns it is more of an internalized experience.
Feminism and Buddhism
A very basic difference of perspectives exists between feminism and Buddhism. While feminism is rooted in the belief that women are victims, Buddhism believes that to identify oneself as victim is to incapacitate oneself. Blackstone argues that both the therigatha and the theragatha are “liberation manuals.” However, for the monks freedom lies in escaping the world while the nuns take a stronger stand, speaking from their lived experience.
The Nuns’ Verses
The nun’s verses were almost all spoken after the author had realized that rebirth and all its associated suffering had been brought to an end. Virtually all the poems contain some form of “lion’s roar,” an exclamation that the author has become awakened. Therigatha is a collection of the nuns’ teachings to nuns — a sharing of their experiences with other women.
Soma, in conversation with Mara, says: “What harm is it / to be a woman / when the mind is concentrated / and the insight is clear?” Subha changed the heart of a libertine who was lusting after her by plucking out one of her eyes and offering it to him. Sumangala’s mother and Mutta express their blissful state of freedom: “So freed! So freed! So thoroughly freed am I, / From three crooked things set free.”
Conclusion
Much water has flowed since the therigatha in terms of feminist treatises, but it still holds its own as a document of woman’s human experience, because it is certainly not gender specific. Most of these verses tend to blur the lines that mark woman’s experience as different from man’s.
References
- Willis, Janice D. “Nuns and Benefactresses: The Role of Women in the Development of Buddhism,” in Women, Religion, and Social Change, ed. by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad & Ellison Banks Findly. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985.
- Norman, K.R. (trans.) The Verses of the Elders - Therigatha. Oxford: UK, 1991.
- Murcott, Susan. The First Buddhist Women: Translations and Commentary on the Therigatha. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1991.
- Kane, Paula & Arai Robinson. Women Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns. Oxford University Press: New York, 1999.
- Blackstone, Kathryn. Women in the Footsteps of the Buddha: Struggle for Liberation in the Therigatha. Curzon Critical Studies in Buddhism: The Curzon Press, 1998.
- Paul, Diana Y. Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in the Mahayana Tradition. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1985.