Not more than other religions, Buddhism does not recognize spontaneously equal rights for women. However, the struggle for equality is easier than elsewhere. It is a religion (or philosophy, we do not fight with words), not legislative, influenced from the beginning by the tradition of debate of Greek philosophy; oppositions express themselves through language, does not seek the means of legal compulsion, and keep the measure. The question of whether a woman can attain enlightenment without prior rebirth in a man's body from the outset received a positive response, which did not prevent him back repeatedly. The order of Buddhist nuns, a time disappeared, reborn with difficulties, and is also subject to the order of monks. We think it is as secular a woman can most effectively pursue freely their own spiritual quest as part of this great tradition.
CAN ACHIEVE THE WAKE OF A BODY IN WOMEN?
A woman can attain enlightenment directly, or should it go through a rebirth in a male body? In theory it should not even be any question, since it was settled from the outset by the Buddha himself, when he agreed, albeit reluctantly, the creation of a college female. Advocating for women, her closest friend, Ananda, asked him:
"Lord, women who would engage in life without your residence by your Dhamma and discipline they could attain perfection (that is to say enlightenment)?
- Yes, Ananda. "
says it all, one might think ... Especially as the Pali Canon, one of the oldest canonical collections, contains stanzas written by the nuns The Therigatha.
The Therigatha, ninth book Khuddaka Nikaya, consists of 73 poems (522 verses in all) in which the first nuns (bhikkhunis) recount their struggles and achievements throughout the route to the state ' Awakening. More than one tells us how she has achieved:
"Free! I am so completely free! Freed from twisted three things: mortar, pestle, and the crooked old husband. Having uprooted the 'craving that leads to becoming, I am free of old age and death. "
"Going in search of alms, weak, leaning on a stick, and trembling limbs, I fell right there on the floor. Seeing the drawbacks of the body, my mind was then released."
Here is also an imaginary dialogue between Mara, which is a somewhat equivalent to the devil in Buddhism and meditation Soma
"Mara:
This state that offer themselves as wise and whose goal is difficult to obtain, a woman who did that an ounce of wisdom, is not able to reach it! Soma: What do we care
womanhood if the mind is tamed, and if knowledge is that which has the right vision of Dhamma! Where it comes from, the enjoyment was defeated and the mass of darkness is pierced. Sache, Mara, that you are defeated, you, the agent of death! "
Despite all these ancient texts, the idea that women must go through a re-birth for men attain enlightenment has a tough life. However, according to the Dalai Lama:
"There is a real feminist movement in Buddhism that is connected to the deity Tara. Following his cult of bodhicitta, the motivation of a bodhisattva, she observed the situation of people striving to achieve full awakening and she noticed that few people reached the state of Buddha as a woman. So Tara has made a promise (she said to herself): "I have developed bodhicitta as a woman. For all my lifetimes along the way, I swear to be reborn as a woman, and in my last life, when I reach the state of Buddha, again, I am a woman. ""
CHALLENGES FOR THE FULL
is from the outset that the women had difficulty in gaining admission into the Buddhist orders.
The monastic community of women was officially born when the Buddha returned for the first time in Kapilavastu after his enlightenment. Her aunt was waiting to ask him to receive it as bhikkhuni with five hundred other ladies. While initially reluctant, the Buddha would come to accept the insistence of women and that of Ananda. Gautama would nonetheless predicted that his teaching extinguished earlier due to the presence of women. He put a condition that they accept the following eight rules that placed them under the authority of the monks.
Throughout history, the community of nuns disappeared completely or almost completely different schools. Women remained who led the ascetic life, but without the status of fully ordained nun in precarious economic conditions, and performing domestic tasks primarily serving the monks.
The rebirth of a true feminine order is laborious.
Here is an example of what can be read, written by monks, to keep practicing in a lower status:
"If I'm wrong, fine, because I feel that people very friendly and obviously full of goodwill are (unintentionally) the Buddha's Teaching at Risk, under the pretext to "advance the rights of women, especially nuns in Buddhism."
confess that to me seems out of place! Also paradoxical.
From what I understand, the Buddha has never refused to teach a woman because of her womanhood, and if certain lines no longer exist, it is not due measures deliberately hostile to women. There are, unfortunately, many lines that have disappeared over the centuries, especially after the Muslim invasions in India. This harms all Buddhists. Men too. When I
lu des articles à propos du Congrès, ou quand j’ai entendu les interviews ce matin, j’avoue que j’ai ressenti un certain malaise.
A titre d’exemple (fondamental), dans le bouddhisme, "entrer dans les ordres" se dit "quitter le monde", "quitter la maison". Aussi, quand j’entends revendiquer un statut social, ou une reconnaissance de la part de la société, ou des titres pour s’imposer, eh bien, je m’interroge ! Ou quand il est affirmé que devenir bhikshuni serait un grand progrès pour les femmes car cela renforcerait "leur assurance et leur amour-propre" (sic), je me demande ce qu’on a fait du renoncement au monde, base necessary for Buddhist monks and nuns, to say that the scriptures ... "
Oh the ego! What argument! It always works! When women want to improve their condition, it comes always the ego! But we never talk about him when they are men who cling to their privileges!
Fortunately, there are monks who speak otherwise, as Bante Sujato in this excellent text in which he analyzes sexism, misogyny and androcentrism:
"The problem here lies not at the individual, but since
These once in place, institutional practice "normal" simply ignore, marginalize and exclude women, becomes an active suppression of them.
The problem that arises is that it requires the presence of women in meeting the misogynistic fantasy. Therefore, women should be attracted to the monasteries, encouraged and supported so they can stay and be abused. If there are no women in monasteries, how can they be confined to the kitchen?
is the transposition into a spiritual frame of the same phenomenon that is perpetuated in some marriages. "
Access to full ordination is done in dribs and drabs. Here are some examples in different schools :
Zen advance the tradition of Vietnamese Zen Soto and
Tibetan: Kagyu tradition advance; Tara Abbey (Karma Kagyu tradition); Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, who also took the vow specific attain enlightenment as a woman, the Dalai Lama is ordinattion for women, but not to the point of impose on the rest of the religious hierarchy
Theravada: late; ordination difficulties
A very positive aspect of these ordinations is that they require to break down barriers between different Buddhist schools, for example, Tibetan nuns do in order fully Mahayana school other than their own, more flexible over the ordination of women, then return to their home school.
PRACTICE AS A SECULAR
We saw the difficulties faced by the nuns to get a full ordination. We have not forgotten that ordination, even full, but half is satisfactory, since the nuns, even fully ordered, remain subordinate to the monks and exposed to humiliating attitudes.
The right solution is to actually practice as a layman, and not enter into a system of subordination of master to disciple.
We all have the means to do so. The major texts are available on the net and in bookstores. The spirit of free inquiry was recommended by the Buddha himself in the Kalama Sutta.
"Come, Kalamas, do not let yourself be guided by reports or by religious tradition, nor by what you heard. Do by guided by the authority of religious texts, nor by the simple logic or allegations, or by appearances, nor by speculation on opinions, nor by probable likelihood, nor by the thought that "religious is our spiritual master "
However, Kalamas, when you yourselves know that some things are unfavorable, such as blameworthy things are censured by the wise and that, when put into practice, these things lead to harm and unhappiness, abandon them. "
The Buddha has given us all men and women, monks, nuns and lay people, all it took to achieve enlightenment, and he made it clear. There is no place for secret teachings in Buddhism, contrary to tell barkers.
At death, the Buddha, in a final sermon (the Mahaparinibbana Sutta), urged his followers to ask questions about their last points of the education they are obscure because, he says, he will not see the next day. Before the general silence, he exhorts his audience one last time, in terms remained famous, and recalls that after his death, as was the case during his lifetime, each is its own light and its own master
"Be faithful to the Dharma, and be a refuge to yourselves."
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