European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies October 1997 Munich Shenpen Hookham Women and Buddhism I am not involved in women’s issues as such, and the topic seems so vast. I will talk around the subject, with some thoughts from a paper that I prepared some years ago. In this paper I look at the subject from the point of view of Triyana Buddhism - Tibetan Buddhism, which has the special quality that it uses all three yanas : Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. They use this terminology, and which is quite an interesting and useful model. Its useful because it points to three ways that Buddhism presents itself. >From the point of view of the tradition as a whole, the ideal figure is the Buddha, and the Buddha is male. And perhaps like the Christian tradition, the Buddhist world is struggling with this: Why male? For centuries it hasn’t been questioned, it has just been accepted. The Buddha is not actually your ordinary male. If you look at the qualities of the Buddha as a person, even as a human person, he is quite astonishing. He has a head that goes up, with the top of his head going on forever, with his arms and shoulders, knees, fingers and toes, extraordinary details : such as his sexual organ withdraws up inside him, like a horse, which is an interesting detail. It’s not an ordinary male form anyway. And I think you also have to bear in mind in the Buddhist tradition that women don’t feel that that is their total identity. And that men, present men, are not in the pure form of the Buddha, any more than the women are. Men around us now might be men now and women another time, and that women might be men next time. So its not very strongly - if we were only one-off, men or women. But, still, it is a problem. Women Buddhists can feel strongly dominated by this male “clergy” if you like. It’s not a clergy exactly, but each of the teaching lineages, in all the traditions, it’s almost completely male. If you go into a monastery, or a temple, it’s just all the male teachers around you with the male Buddha in the middle. The male Sangha takes precedence. When your attention is drawn to it, it is very striking and quite oppressive. Though, I must say I never particularly noticed it until it was pointed out. Being brought up as a Western, modern Western woman with a Western education, I simply expected to be treated as equal, and all doors to be opened to me, and I must say that, I didn’t find being a woman an obstruction. What my experience of the tradition, which has been mostly in the Tibetan tradition, is that if you ask the right questions of the right people, then you get the right answers. If you don’t ask the right questions, anything might happen. That’s my experience. Talking with Tibetan nuns, and I lived seven years as a Buddhist nun, and five and a half of those years I was in India, I was in retreat in Buddhist nunneries, - and the Tibetan nuns themselves were holding themselves back from asking questions. One young nun, that had a Western education was asking questions, of the older nuns in the nunnery, was actually being held back, She was told that she shouldn’t ask those questions. This is like putting yourself above others. That she should “learn things by heart and do things like we do and not put yourself forward as something special.” It was quite terrible to see women doing that to each other. And certainly, more recently, an old friend of mine who is a very respected woman, lama, you would have to say she is a lama, she spent seven years in retreat, after a long life of devotion to the practice. And she was automatically assuming that since I was a woman, that I would be less qualified to speak than a man with the same experience. She said, “we don’t know about these things, we should ask the lama,” and the Westerner that she was accepting as a lama, he was - its a very loose title, in Tibetan Buddhism, “lama” - its given to somebody who starts teaching Dharma, teacher - lama means guru - its the lama. For her, because he was teaching Dharma, she decided he was a lama. But what about her? I asked her, why weren’t we lamas? Its just so deeply in the culture, for that respect to be for the teacher - I was quite shocked to find this attitude in her. So that is my personal experience. But it comes from the society rather than from the Buddhism. And its been there for a long time. Though not for always. There are periods, times and places when women have been in quite high status, and that is reflected in the Scriptures. We have the Srimali Devi Sutra. There are a number of Mahayana sutras which feature the main person in the sutra, having a dialogue with the Buddha, is a woman. There is a woman giving teaching. Almost always there is something which is a kind of pointing of a finger, saying, “look at this, this is a woman, fancy that. A woman speaking to monks, good heavens! How extraordinary, you wouldn’t expect it would you,” kind of tone to it. And sometimes there will mischievous plays - sex-changes or - “why aren’t you a man,” so she changes into a man. One of the most famous stories: in the ___________ of Vimalakirti, where the Goddess changes Shariputtra into a woman. So it turns all our concepts on their head. But these are usually interpreted to say, “There is no difference, actually.” Between all these beings, In the ultimate reality there are no distinctions, on that level. So its not particularly positive towards women, really, its like accepting the convention that they are supposed to be inferior but fancy that, they can actually - Ultimately, this is a false distinction. What I like about the Vimalidevi Sutra is that the story is simply that the king and queen, King Passineda and his queen Maleka, discussing their very intelligent daughter and thinking how good it would be for her to - she is very intelligent and she is approached - receives this letter telling her about the Buddha - which is a bit strange because she must know all about it - and she says “The Buddha is in the world, so if out of compassion he should appear to me, because the Buddha appears where ever he is called.” So she calls the Buddha, and he appears in a miraculous way. So she praises the Buddha, and she holds forth, in a very profound teaching. The more I look at it, the more I recognise that it is what in Tibetan Buddhism is referred to as Dzochen, Maha Ati, Nyingma tradition, teaching. It is a very profound teaching. And at the end of the Sutra, it says, the Buddha says, Queen Shrimala, it is quite remarkable what you are saying, and only the highest Bodhisattvas - it is “you, as a high Bodhisattva,” or “only you and the other high Bodhisattvas - realise these profound truths.” So then she goes back and teaches it in her land. She teaches it to her husband, and he teaches to the men and she teaches it to the women, and the Buddha teaches it to _________ and the whole community. And nothing is said at all about her being a woman, which I really like. There is no - its just not an issue. So, that means that when it was written, it was not an issue. Women were teaching Dharma. Its reflected in the sutra itself, when she refers to lay - at a time when there is a lot of tension among the different factions of the Sangha, “any group of people who meet together to practice the pure Dharma will meet with success.” In the introduction, __ Weyman? ______, mentions that there is this kind of - in other sutras it is mentioned about Mahayana Gattas, Mahayana gatherings, which are not particularly monks or nuns, or monastic. And that this seemed to be a way of practicing outside the monastic community. And its quite interesting that in the sutra, the Buddha leaves the monastic community, comes and speaks to Queen Shrimala, ________Mahayana community, and then goes back, takes the teachings back, which was first delivered in the non-monastic community. I’m hesitating to call it a lay community, because it implies that you’ve got a lay community and a monastic community which are in that relationship to each other, whereas its more like you’ve got a monastic and a non-monastic community. And then the Buddha goes and takes this teaching back to the monastic community, where they have a parallel system. I think that’s particularly important for Western Buddhism which is obviously my prime concern: That there is a long history of this kind of parallel development. And it relates to women in Buddhism very strongly. Because if you can have an equal status, non-monastic Buddhist community, presumable those people are practicing and gaining realisation, gaining enlightenment, in their home-life situation. In which case this is a very positive message. Not the message that you actually get from the tradition itself I must say. And this is something I find quite disturbing. As a modern woman practicing the Buddhist tradition. Although it is said, and you can look in the history of Buddhism, and find in the Therigatta, the Stories of - songs of the early Buddhist disciples, women disciples. And also in the Women of Wisdom, stories of Tibetan yoginis, and also in Mahayana sutras: The women are either: they have given up the home life, and they are nuns, or they are yoginis, and again they have given up the home life and they are wandering around. And very much emphasising what bondage home life is. Or they are queens or very rich, powerful women who would not have to deal with the trials and tribulations of a home life. There are very few examples of women in the home situation, or even men in the home situation. Even, you get Vimalakirti, - he is not at all involved in an ordinary working life, not in the sense that most of us would understand it. So, although Tsultrim Alione write in her introduction to Women of Wisdom celebrating the women’s role and women’s religion about how creative it all is, it doesn’t come across in the Buddhist tradition at all. I wish it did. But it’s - it is presented as an obstacle - the home life. And Subuti, a member of the Western Buddhist Order has written about Sangharakshita’s view on women in Buddhism. And Sangharakshita is putting this same view over really, that - he is making the same assumption: that the spiritual life is something that is different to the home life, ordinary living in the home, and since women are more involved in that than men, then women are at a disadvantage. Now, I take issue with that. I can’t say that the tradition as a whole gives me much material to go on. There are one or two stories of women Siddhas and there are one or two who are householders. But when you read the stories carefully you realise that they were very exceptional people. They received the teaching and the transmission and had seen the truth of the Dharma before they went into the home life. And it was almost in spite of home life that they were able to carry on their practice to maintain tremendous presence of mind or spirit to actually then within the home life situation they get a real break through and realisation about - _________ - as her water pot broke she realised - got her final realisation. There are similar stories by nuns in the Therigatta where - from awareness of - it’s obvious that they have been practicing awareness in their everyday actions and that some everyday occurrence marked the end of the process. She awakens at the moment when she puts the candle out. That is when she realises nirvana. That is a very common theme. And that the very context of those moments of realisation suggests that one should be able to practice this way of awareness in one’s everyday life and for this kind of way to be possible. And certainly I think that this is what as a whole the Western Buddhist community is counting on being possible. So it’s a pity that there isn’t more literature to back up that kind of sense that it should be possible. A very major influence on Buddhism in the West, and talking about personal experience, as a Western woman, as a Western Buddhist, and a very strong influence on that whole _______- being Chogyam Rinpoche. He was a very eminent Tibetan lama who came out very early, he was already established in Britain in the 1960’s, that is when I met him. And he had the full training in Tibet. He was already regarded as realised, and then - extraordinarily - before he came to the West. He did do something quite remarkable, I found. ( Because I am in a way, double-cultured, I have spent so long with Tibetans, that Tibetans regarded me as one of them, - they would speak to me about Westerners as “them” meaning I wasn’t one - I have quite a good understanding of their culture and how they think ) I found it quite impossible to actually translate that whole framework into Western terms. But Trungpa Rinpoche, in a very short time, actually shed that whole load of Tibetan, and stepped into speaking about the heart of the Dharma and the experience the whole Buddhist experience, directly in English. Without any reference to his Tibetan roots. If you take anything written by Trungpa Rinpoche and you try to translate it back into Tibetan, you can’t. It just comes out -- it just doesn’t work, it isn’t a translation. He just spoke directly in English, in Western terms of the heart of the teaching, with a great deal of subtlety, which were not coming from a Tibetan background at all. He really believed that you can practice in daily life, that you can practice as a modern western in a modern western life. He didn’t encourage people to become monks and nuns at all. And this - I found this quite challenging. When I first got interested in Buddhism I met Trungpa Rinpoche and I asked him - of all the Buddhist teachers I had met, he was the one that appealed to me the most - and I asked him what I should do, and he was the one that suggested I go to India, and go to a Tibetan nunnery. I think I became a Tibetan nun because I wanted to do the most committed thing possible. And in Tibetan culture, being a nun is the most committed thing. The most extreme - I was in that kind of mood, I still am… Meanwhile, he was emphasising that this was - not even that it wasn’t necessarily the way - he was saying that it was not the way. So, when I came back seven and a half years later and met him, I was in a different world. The very interesting thing happened to me at this point, and that was that I met a Tibetan lama that was known for his learning and for his yogic experience, : the way you get known in Tibet - there is a hierarchy, institutions, teachers, and so on - but there is also a network of those who know in some sense. Those who have got experience. And they don’t always relate to the actual hierarchy on the ground. But his particular yogi was well known among yogis as somebody that was quite exceptional. And when I met him, and felt that I had a very strong connection with him, and asked him to be my teacher and so on, he actually told me to stop being a nun. He cut through that - he told me that he thought that was not the way I should be practicing, that he thought it was making me proud. I challenged him: I said, if you think taking my robes off is going to stop me being proud…forget it! I couldn’t see that it was going to make any difference. But it was very interesting that when I took off the robes, I remember that my last thought was “How am I going to maintain my sense of having a special mission? Now I will be just ordinary,” I did find that quite significant. I felt I needed some kind of mark of specialness, in order to maintain my sense of commitment. It made me think quite seriously. I don’t want to get these two issues muddled, but there is a connection in my mind. What I am trying to say is that, I don’t think I practised as a lay person, the lama sent me off to study more. He was right. I didn’t know enough. I’d just been practising meditation, but I was rather weak background in understanding philosophy and issues that did have bearing on meditation practice. The implication was that I could practice with equal commitment without the support of the nun’s robe and that whole institution and all the attitudes that supported it. And as time went on, I realised that he really believed that one could practice as __________ in ordinary life and that although he was telling me to avoid family life, because he thought it would be a distraction from the particular way of life he wanted me to follow, he wasn’t saying that to other students, he was actually encouraging them and in exactly the same way as Trungpa Rinpoche was encouraging them. And it was much later on that I discovered this sutra, called the Definitive Vinaya, which talks about: saying that the Buddha would sometimes talk to his students about suffering, the suffering of the home life, the life of renunciation and so on. Sometimes he would do this and sometimes he wouldn’t. Sometimes he would stress joy and love, certainly not stressing renunciation of the home life, simply because, if he were to stress the renunciation of the home life too much, at the wrong moment, it can actually produce feelings of wanting to disconnect from other beings. And in the Mahayana it’s very important to want to have a strong connection with other beings. And that home life can assist in this. Although it was a fault to have attachment, it is not a very serious fault. And very difficult to avoid. So, a Bodhisattva should not be afraid to develop attachments, if they were of benefit to other beings. And it’s stressed very much, this is a very interesting sutra, it says “Of course, hatred is a very bad fault, but it is easy to avoid, not like attachment.” Which I think is true. And, “Ignorance is a very bad fault, and very difficult to avoid.” That is what is keeping us in Samsara, so I was very interested to find this Sutra, which is presenting a whole new attitude to renunciation. It’s quite appropriate. The Bhikku who is receiving this sutra from the Buddha, is Uppali, who is the one who is supposed to be chief, the one who is very learned, the expert on Vinaya. I’d always noticed that we would pray to have discipline like (Shila) such as Uppali, but I didn’t know that in the Mahayana sutra, specifying that Uppali’s discipline was concerned with this very different attitude towards renunciation. So, from the Mahayana point of view, it seemed to be a very weak case to put forward the idea that being a monk or nun was the way you should practice as a Buddhist. And then this reflects in the way that the Sangha has developed, and is developing in the West, where you have a very strong following for someone like Trungpa Rinpoche, who has inspired a lot of people to practice and not thinking in terms of giving up the home life and not being encouraged to do so. And Sangharakshita’s organisation doing the same thing, and in other contexts. Not thinking of themselves as less committed than the nuns and sisters in other monastic community. And this goes a long way, because as I started off saying, the Triyana Buddhism, one yana is what is called Hinayana : is called the “Pratimoksha” the discipline, where you give up your own actions and follow the basic Buddhist discipline. And then the Mahayana, which is the great yana where you practice in order to liberate all beings, and therefore keep your connection with all beings. And so it requires a different kind of prioritising. And then of course, on top of that you have the Vajrayana, where the woman is no longer, just empty, it is a very positive - there is a lot of play going on between the feminine and the masculine and the symbolism of male and female, the symbolism of sexual union, and symbolism of ultimate reality being a play between two aspects, which from their combination comes this tremendous creativity. Whole worlds are created from this play of duality, in the ultimate nature of reality, it’s a whole new ballgame in terms of using male and female imagery, using sexual imagery. And in fact, in that tradition, it would be an offense to, in any way, look down on women. Also, it’s an offense to reject the sense pleasures, so that the whole way that the whole monastic thing is written and taught, is actually to be used a Tibetan way of expressing it, “Back to back”. How you are supposed to practice. It’s inappropriate for Tantric practitioners to have monastic: the bhikksu, bhikksuni, vows. And this is my last point. That the whole thing was turned on it’s head for me, having devoted so many years of my life to the discipline of being a nun. And when you think this is the best thing I can do is become a Bhikksuni. I actually now find myself in the strange position of practicing a tradition and a discipline which is in a way, against it. I remember my teacher, who belongs to the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, and he travels all around the world as a full-time teacher in the Kagyu centres. And one of the Kagyu nuns, very much in the spirit of this conference, talking about raising the status of Buddhist nuns by making the Bhikksuni ordination more available, to build up the Bhikksuni sangha. She came to Khenpo Rinpoche, saying that she wanted to help women in Buddhism by increasing the status of the Bhikksuni sangha and helping it. And he said “If you want to help women in Buddhism, then that is exactly what you should not do.” He said, “Because, in the Bhikksuni sangha, the rules are all establishing that the woman is - the Bhikksuni sangha is controlled by the male sangha. And it’s based on the idea that the woman shouldn’t be independent. You don’t need rules like that in the West. You don’t need it in Triyana Buddhism, you don’t need it in Mahayana Buddhism, or in Vajrayana Buddhism. It puts women down. You don’t need it.” And this for me was a complete turning around, in my experience of the tradition. And this - all the other Tibetan lamas that I know, except for Trungpa Rinpoche, say, “To be a Bhikksuni, it would be so wonderful, such a great blessing, such a great power you are doing.” And, “That’s really it, to help Bhikksunis, that would be the best thing you could do.” And here was, not just that he was my teacher, but I could see that logic of it. : You don’t need that. I think that that is a nice point to end on, something to think about, consider. Also to think about in relationship to what Brother Josef was saying yesterday. And maybe to give a bit of background, about the point I was making then, that when we talk about the Buddhist sangha, is the assumption when we talk about the Buddhist sangha, that it therefore should be with those with the highest ordination, with Bhikksuni or Bhikksu ordination, is something you have to approach very carefully. And to understand the whole history of this from many points of view. Rather than making this assumption. Although I’m not saying that people who are able to devote their whole lives to a discipline outside of home life, obviously have a tremendous amount of energy to put into it. And that isn’t to be sniffed at. It is very difficult to find enough energy while in the home life. But I am very interested in that whole area, of what is being said, what is possible for, not just women, male practitioners, too. It’s an ongoing issue.