Buddhism and gender

Overview

Recall questions on women's capacity for awakening, the founding of the order of nuns, the dragon king's daughter in the Lotus Sutra, the gurudharma, ordination in the Theravada tradition, eight precept women, the revival of full ordination, Thailand and Myanmar, and Sakyadhita.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is at issue in Buddhist discussion of whether women can attain awakening?

   Model answer

   Buddhists are not agreed. The doctrinal case that women can is strong: anatta means there is no fixed self of any kind, so no permanently gendered self either; early texts record women attaining arhatship and preserve verses attributed to awakened nuns; and the Buddha is recorded as founding an order of nuns. Against this, other traditional material treats female rebirth as the result of lesser merit, holds that a fully awakened buddha appears in male form, and describes women as a distraction to male monastics. The question therefore divides into whether awakening is theoretically possible for women and whether the institutions of Buddhism make it realistically achievable.

2. 2

   What does Buddhist tradition say about the founding of the order of nuns?

   Model answer

   Tradition holds that Mahapajapati Gotami, who raised Siddhartha after his mother's death, asked to be ordained and was refused, then walked a long distance with a group of women, shaven and in robes, to ask again. The Buddha's attendant Ananda is said to have intervened, asking whether women were capable of attaining the fruits of the path, and to have received the answer that they were, after which the order was established with additional rules attached. The account is doubly significant: it affirms women's spiritual capacity while embedding the nuns' subordination in the founding moment.

3. 3

   How do Theravada and Mahayana traditions differ over female attainment of awakening?

   Model answer

   Theravada tradition accepts that women can attain arhatship, and its texts record women who did, but holds that a fully awakened buddha who rediscovers and teaches the path appears in male form, and it has generally combined this with practical obstacles to women's full monastic life. Many Mahayana traditions go further doctrinally: if all things are empty of intrinsic nature and all beings possess the capacity for buddhahood, then gender cannot be an ultimate barrier, and Mahayana texts include female bodhisattvas and awakened women. Yet Mahayana texts also contain accounts of women who must first change into male form, and Pure Land material has been read as promising rebirth in male bodies, so the picture on both sides is mixed.

4. 4

   What is the story of the daughter of the dragon king Sagara, and what does it establish?

   Model answer

   In a Lotus Sutra episode, Manjushri reports that the eight-year-old daughter of Sagara, the naga or dragon king, has understood the teaching and is capable of awakening. The disciple Sariputra objects that a female body is defiled and that women cannot attain buddhahood. The girl offers a jewel, which is accepted instantly, and points out that her attainment is quicker still; in the account she then transforms into male form and demonstrates buddhahood before the assembly. Mahayana Buddhists cite it as proof that awakening does not depend on gender, age, species or long training, and as an illustration of the sudden, universal buddhahood the text teaches.

5. 5

   Why do interpreters disagree about the episode of the dragon king's daughter in the Lotus Sutra?

   Model answer

   Because of the transformation. One reading takes the whole point to be that Sariputra, representing conventional assumptions, is publicly refuted: a young female naga attains what a senior monk thought impossible, so the objection collapses. The other reading notes that she does not attain buddhahood as a female, and that her body changes first, which concedes rather than overturns the assumption that buddhahood requires a male form. A third reading takes the change of form as itself a teaching about emptiness, showing that bodily categories are conventional and not fixed. The disagreement matters because the passage is the main scriptural resource used on both sides of the argument.

6. 6

   What philosophical or ideological reasons lie behind Buddhist disagreement over women's capacity for awakening and their standing in the tradition?

   Model answer

   On one side, the core teachings of anatta, emptiness and universal buddha-nature imply that gender is a conventional designation with no ultimate reality, so any doctrinal exclusion of women looks inconsistent with the tradition's own foundations. On the other, the framework of kamma and merit was widely applied to gender, so a female rebirth could be interpreted as reflecting less accumulated merit and a male rebirth as an advantage, which turns a social hierarchy into a spiritual one. There is also a difference over authority: those who treat texts restricting women as the Buddha's word reach different conclusions from those who treat them as later monastic accretions shaped by their context.

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