Category: Folk Buddhism

New Moon, Uposatha, July 18, 2012            Series Index

Psychoanalysis and American Folk Buddhism

The Four Noble Truths are often described in medical terms, in brief: Suffering is the symptom and the Noble Eightfold Path is the cure. Furthermore the causes of suffering that must be addressed are factors of mind. This suggests immediate parallels with Western psychoanalysis and these parallels also inform the popular understanding of Buddhism in the West. It even leads to the popular viewpoint that Buddhism is a kind of psychotherapy.

It should be noted that whereas the European Enlightenment, Protestant Christianity and Romanticism were influences already present in Western culture before there was much awareness of Buddhism, psychoanalysis is hardly a century old and there has been a dialog between it and Buddhism along with other Eastern traditions almost from the start. To a large degree Buddhism has had the opportunity to shape psychoanalysis and that influence has picked up speed with time. William James apparently predicted around the turn of the Twentieth Century that in twenty-five years psychologists would all be studying Buddhism. However in twenty-five years they were all studying Freud, who considered Buddhism, along with all mystical or contemplative religion, a humbug, narcissistic and infantile and beneath the scientific approach he advocated for understanding the human mind. Some of his disciples even considered meditative states a kind of catatonia or dementia. Nonetheless Jung and many of Freud’s other students took an early interest in religious experience and in Buddhism in particular, perhaps initially on the sly, so that the influence of Buddhism seems never really to have gone away. Jung, Fromm and others, most of whom seem to have been conferring with D.T. Suzuki, certainly did much to influence a popular understanding that brought Buddhism and psychoanalysis into close alignment.

I am far from knowledgeable in psychoanalysis nor in its relationship of Buddhism. Just as there are Buddhist adepts whose understanding is generally much more refined than that of Folk Buddhists, there are certainly adepts in psychology whose understanding is much more refined than that of Folk Psychologists and there are also people who are both Buddhist adepts and adepts in psychology who are daily developing a more detailed, and presumably valuable, understanding of the relationship of Buddhism and psychoanalysis than the typical Folk Buddhist or I would be aware of. Of course there is now a extensive literature on this topic. I will confine discussion to those elements of Western psychology that seem to impinge directly on Western Folk Buddhism and whether these are inimical or friendly toward Essential Buddhism.

Emphasis on the Mind. A Buddhism colored by Western psychoanalysis is a Buddhism turned inward, concerned with the mind. This probably differentiates Western Folk Buddhism from most Asian Folk Buddhisms, which tend to be more outwardly directed, toward ritual and community observances, toward lore and toward ethics. This also goes far in according with Essential Buddhism, which is very psychological, very concerned with working with and training the mind even at very subtle levels. I would guess that the inward orientation of psychoanalysis also contributes to the huge interest in meditation in Western Folk Buddhism, in contrast to most of Asian Folk Buddhism. And in fact mindfulness practices in particular seem to have in turn insinuated themselves into modern psychoanalysis shorn of their Buddhist container.

Functions. Traditionally psychoanalysis is about addressing pathologies, and Buddhism in contrast about addressing the things that ail people almost universally. Freud even described the former’s task as removing neurotic misery in order to return people to the common unhappiness that befalls normal people. Buddhism’s primary task in contrast is to produce saints, or at least people with exceptional qualities, qualities of equanimity, kindness, compassion, virtue, penetrating wisdom and absolute humility. Now the function of psychoanalysis has undoubtedly broadened over time, as psychoanalysis has become more broadly dispensed and perhaps as it has come more under the influence of Buddhism, broadened in some instances to what has been described as a science of happiness. However the popular view of psychoanalysis is still oriented around pathology. And the function of Buddhism, especially when regarded as a form of psychoanalysis, has probably narrowed in the popular view accordingly to become something like a cure for unhappiness.

In practical terms people in the West generally come to Buddhism because life has been difficult. When Buddhism is popularly thought of in terms of psychotherapy this makes Buddhism that much more attractive. However then people relate to Buddhism as patients and Buddhist centers become something like hospitals, or at least outpatient clinics. One of the teachers at a meditation center where I once lived once remarked he thought of that center as a hospital; people were there as patients, and impatient for cure. This contrasts markedly with Asian Buddhism communities which are characterized more by a sense of common values, values exhibited by saints, qualities of equanimity, kindness, compassion, virtue, penetrating wisdom and absolute humility. People are not commonly patients in such communities but expect to find role models, kalyanamitta, remarkable people who inspire them to develop such qualities in themselves, perhaps only gradually but occasionally by fully entering a path of intensive practice.

In short, Western Buddhist communities are generally places of cure, Asian are places of refuge. To a great extent this difference is attributable to the way its members enter the respective community, on the one hand because they find life so difficult outside, on the other because they are already born inside. Accordingly Western communities tend to focus on intense practice, while Asian on inspiration and wholesome intercourse with like-minded people. Viewing Buddhism as psychotherapy helps shape the Westerner’s popular relationship to Buddhism and the Buddhist community. Each of these kinds of communities has advantages and disadvantages. Western communities tend to be oriented toward serious practice, but can also be places of frustration and burnout. Asian communities tend to be happy harmonious inspiring supportive family-friendly environments in which more people think about stepping onto the Noble Eightfold Path than actually undertake it.

Contents. Psychoanalysis and Buddhism are both concerned with the development of mind, but psychoanalysis has traditionally had a distinct idea of what that entails. In Freud’s approach this typically involves discovering the roots of psychosis in early childhood trauma or in complex configurations of factors buried in the past. I think this is still part of the popular understanding of psychoanalysis. Buddhism on the other hand is much less concerned with diachronic origins of problematic factors as with simply letting go of defilements as they arise in the present. The Buddhist project is briefly to purify the mind of factors rooted in greed, hatred and delusion, and particularly in an inappropriate sense of self, and to encourage their opposites, generosity and renunciation, kindness and compassion, and wisdom and humility, much like a gardener pulls out weeds and waters beneficial crops without worrying too much exactly where the weeds came from or how their seeds were transported there. In fact from the Essential Buddhist perspective too much attention to past root causes results in an distracted proliferation of self-directed thinking.

Also common in early psychoanalysis and in its modern understanding is the consistent implication of social and cultural norms and constraints in the development of psychosis, as if without these one’s true self would emerge healthy and unfettered. It is easy to recognize the origins of this particular understanding in European Romanticism. There is no counterpart to this role for cultural and social pressures in Essential Buddhism other than to encourage some social norms as healthy and discourage others as unhealthy as determinants along with other innate and acquire tendencies of individuals’ karmic actions.

Secularization. Finally, psychoanalysis and other forms of psychotherapy are often considered the secular counterparts of religion, insofar as they are concerned with psychological and spiritual well-being, yet generally lack the “religiosity,” with its aspects of the sacred, of ritual, of community functions and hierarchy and of ethics and of transcendent aspirations. Essential Buddhism has such religious functions, even if many are less prominent there before they are further enhanced and embellished in much of Asian Folk Buddhism. Therefore regarding Buddhism as a form of psychotherapy reduces the scope of Buddhism’s functions to produce a kind of secularized Buddhism. Certainly psychoanalysis has had an influence in the open advocacy within Folk Buddhism of a “Secular Buddhism” and even in the claim that that is what the Buddha expounded. I doubt that the Buddha gave much thought to he secular-sacred divide that obsesses monderists let alone attention to staying on one side of it.

I’ve written elsewhere on the issue of secularity and religiosity in Buddhism and have had occasion to touch on many aspects of this here. Suffice it to say that psychotherapy generally has no Triple Gem, nor is the capacity of faith and reverence for opening up the full power of practice present, nor is much attention given to community, except for maybe encounter group, as something that embodies and imparts values, and also which provides special support for those who want to get real serious about practice. Perhaps most problematic is that the ethical dimension is largely neglected in favor of personal well-being, whereas everything in Essential Buddhism is imbued with ethics and virtue. Psychotherapy also generally does not reach beyond making this one life more comfortable and toward dedicating this one life to a much greater project as Essential Buddhism encourages.

Conclusion. Almost two millennia ago as Buddhism was beginning to enter China Taoism seems to have provided a conceptual structure and vocabulary that aided in grasping this foreign import. I think however it is an exaggeration to say that that role has fallen to such a great extent to psychoanalysis in the West. Nonetheless psychoanalysis along with the Romanticism that preceded it did, in making the mind important, provide a huge prerequisite for grasping Buddhism’s full foreign import. And yet Essential Buddhism is not psychotherapy, at least in the popular form of the latter, and care should be taken to avoid Folk Buddhist tendency toward conflating the two.

Next week I would like to end this series on American Folk Buddhism with an overview and general conclusions.

Last Quarter Moon, Uposatha, July 11, 2012            Series Index

Social Engagement in American Folk Buddhism.

In response to the American invasion of Afghanistan the Austin, Texas, chapter of the Buddhist Peace fellowship planned a walking meditation for peace. There was a massive anti-war rally already scheduled at a park in Austin, so we intentionally scheduled our walking meditation to take place about one and a half hours later. One of the other BPFers and I also made arrangements to get on the speaker list at the anti-war rally. The people at the anti-war rally heard the usual line up of angry speakers, who also led in chanting:

“What Do We Want?”

“No War! “

“When Do We Want It?”

“Now!”

When it was our turn, Pamela read a statement that Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh had just made about the war the day before, then I announced our walking meditation for later that afternoon and invited people to participate.

The procedure for our event was simple: Participants walked mindfully from the Capitol steps southward, about four abreast, past Texas State troopers and wandering tourists, the latter often startled to see these odd silent people looming from behind over their shoulders, slowly reached the South gate of the Capitol grounds on 11th Street, then formed a big J as the vanguard began to turn around, which then became a big U, then a big backward J as the leaders slowly and mindfully arrived back to the South steps, altogether taking about 40 minutes.

We were astonished what a great mass of people showed up for this event; I had no idea who most of them were, not recognizing many from Austin’s Buddhist circles. After a few congratulatory words and after we started to break up I talked to a number of unfamiliar faces to discover Quakers, Unitarians, Catholics, presumably Secular Humanists, and many people who with no previous knowledge of the event had been passing by and thought it looked like a cool idea. Local TV news showed up as well. We would be pleased that evening that the local TV would run a long, very respectful piece on our walking meditation. The huge anti-war rally on the other hand would get only a brief disapproving mention.

After the walking meditation an angelic young woman walked up to me and said, “I was at the anti-war rally. Could you Buddhists please come to more demonstrations like that? You are so peaceful. Everyone else is so angry I don’t really like to go to these rallies, but feel I have to.”

Alongside gender equality, it is often said that social engagement is a peculiar hallmark of Western Buddhism. Nonetheless Engaged Buddhism as it has come to be called has its own peculiarities within the realm of Western social engagement. It is “so peaceful,” and it puts an inordinate emphasis emphasis on “Bearing Witness,” being present with problematic social problems rather than agitation. But as with gender equality American Folk Buddhism does tend to think of social engagement as a Western innovation that contrasts with the inwardly directed and passive track record of Asian Buddhism, which is much more interested in transcending the everyday world than fixing it.

As with other features of American Folk Buddhism I would like to explore what the influences on social engagement are and how it stacks up against Essential Buddhism, whether it is friendly toward or inimical to Essential Buddhism no matter what its origin.

Origins of Engaged Buddhism. Ashin Nyanissara, a young forest monk who became very ill and sought treatment at a hospital where he recovered. The hospital was run by Catholic missionaries in now independent Burma and as he had lay in bed he began to consider, “Why is it that in a land of devout Buddhists, people who learn kindness and compassion from infancy, there are no Buddhist hospitals.” He resolved at that point to devote his life as a monk to good works. Over the next decades he would found many hospitals, organize a project to bring clean running water into the Sagaing Hills in Central Burma allowing it to thrive, begin a massive relief project in the Delta Region hit by deadly Cyclone Nargis and promote advanced monastic education. (He also became my preceptor when I ordained in Central Burma.)

Engaged Buddhism is actually not uniquely Western, at least no longer, but its Asian proponents often acknowledge their indebtedness to the example of Christian missionaries in Asia. Among these is Thich Nhat Hanh, who coined the term Engaged Buddhism, during the days of his early social work in Vietnam. In the Twentieth Century in fact many Buddhists and Buddhist organizations became active in everything from charitable work to political engagement throughout Asia in ways that had long been familiar to Christians in the West. Examples of other extremely prominent engaged Buddhists in Asia are the Dalai Lama of Tibet/India, A.T. Ariyaratne of Sri Lanka, Sulak Sivaraksa of Thailand, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, Ven. Ghosananda of Cambodia, Ven. Cheng Yen of Taiwan and Daisaku Ikeda of Japan.

In the Christian West itself there is a natural assumption that religious organizations of all stripes will take on the work of social engagement in manifest forms from charity to political activism, alongside pastoral care of the congregation. It was natural that social engagement would become a part of the popular understanding of Buddhism in the West even if Buddhism did not come with good Asian exemplars.

Interestingly, however, by the time Buddhism was establishing itself in Western America, Christian social engagement was already under strong Eastern Influence, for instance, in the activism of Dr. Martin Luther King, a devout follower of the methods of Mahatma Gandhi. Methods of nonviolence and of activism as a kind of personal practice, become the change one seeks, seem also to have been quickly embraced in American Folk Buddhism. Blanche Hartman, former abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center, reports coming to Buddhism in the Sixties because she could not reconcile the pacifism of her opposition to the Vietnam War with the militant attitudes of many anti-war activists. The social activism of American Folk Buddhism was not purely Western in origin.

Essential Buddhism and Social Action. Nonetheless the impression persists that Buddhism has been traditionally indifferent to social welfare. Walpola Rahula, before he wrote What the Buddha Taught, argued that social activism in Asia was in fact discouraged through contact with the West. In The Heritage of the Bhikkhu makes the point that the impression of social indifference arose in colonial Asia as Western powers disenfranchised the monastic Sangha from its traditional social roles in order to appropriate its power and influence for themselves. He documents the role of monks in pre-colonial Sri Lanka as active engagement in education, in scholarship, in social services, in medicine, in providing political advice to kings and ministers and naturally in teaching the Dharma and in pastoral care. He then describes the way in which the colonial occupation changed both the status and the roles of monks in society, for instance, by mandating that children attend government schools, often staffed by Christian missionaries, rather than monastic schools. The result was to make monks socially irrelevant, a condition from which, after having forgotten their own history over centuries of colonial occupation, they still have not fully recovered in post-colonial Sri Lanka. Hence the reputation of the Buddhist clergy as unconcerned with social conditions.

Let’s go back to the Buddha to see if we find any conflict between social engagement and Essential Buddhist practice. The Buddha was of course concerned with liberation from Samsara, that is, reaching a point where most of life’s contingencies no longer touch the practitioner personally. However this cannot be achieved without the practice of Virtue (sila) and without the development of qualities of kindness and compassion; these are among the parmitas (Palin: paramis), virtues to be perfected. These in turn involve a harmless and caring attitude for others’ welfare, no only in the sense of others’ liberation but also in others’ comfort in negotiating life’s contingencies prior to liberation.

The Buddha’s life itself represents many instances of social engagement and compassionate action: personal care for a monk with dysentery, intervention to stop war, pastoral care of all varieties. Many of his teachings were social in nature: on the causes of human conflict and means to maintain harmony, on the relationship of crime to poverty on the social obligations of kings, employers, spouses, students, etc., on the misguidedness of caste distinctions, and as we have seen in the past weeks, of gender in determining one’s true worth. Sulak Sivaraksa and others have suggested that in creating the monastic Sangha the Buddha designed an ideal community, harmonious, cooperative, democratic, with an economy based in generosity not in greed, as an example to be emulated by the larger society. The insistence of the Buddha that monastics go on daily alms round would ensure continual contact of lay communities with this ideal. The monastic Sangha itself has not actually consistently functioned as an ideal community throughout history, always it would seem because lazy monks and nuns sometimes get lax about following the Buddha’s injunctions. However it has sustained itself remarkably well, longer than any other human institution on the planet that I am aware of.

Nuns and monks, the members of this ideal community, may seem least likely to become socially engaged; they are after all renunciates who forsake worldly existence to devote themselves fully to liberation. The monastic code in fact enforces this. It is telling however that although there is a rule against virtually everything worldly nuns and monks could conceivably do for themselves (acquiring stuff, earning a living, even cooking up a meal … though things like sewing one’s robe and keeping things tidy are OK), what they can do for others is almost limitless: Charitable work, advocacy, education, clearing rubble, rescue work and so on . Of course laity are not subject to such rules in any case.

In Ashoka (~304-232 BC) we have an example of a very early example of a benevolent Buddhist emperor wielding power according to Dharmic standards. His edicts engraved in still existent stone pillars tell of his good works in founding hospitals (even for animals), of building roads with rest stops, of his mercy in eliminating torture or mutilation of criminals and even the death penalty, his advocacy of non-violence at this (the Mauran) borders, of his promotion of general edication, of his tolerance of all religious faiths, and of his promotion of Buddhism internationally.

Conclusion. I think it is safe to conclude that Engaged Buddhism is a friend of Essential Buddhism and represents an ancient tradition, even while its modern influences are varied and are substantially both Christian and Gandhian.

Full Moon, Uposatha, July 3, 2012            Series Index

Consumerism in American Folk Buddhism.

If anything characterizes American Folk Culture it is consumerism, the boundless commercial advertising whetting and then drenching our appetites for more and more, the commodification of everything under the sun, the common regard of financial wealth as one’s greatest spiritual aspiration and of poverty as the most abysmal failure, the mall shopping experience as one of our greatest cultural achievements and on-line push-button instant gratification as one of our greatest technological triumphs.

It is a cinch that consumerism will have colored American Folk Buddhism, the popular understanding of American Buddhists, and will compel me to write about it here.

If anything characterizes Essential Buddhism, the Buddhism as understood, maintained and transmitted by the adepts, it is the equation of craving with suffering, the imperative to let go of lust and greed, envy and competition, instead to cultivate contentment and to disentangle oneself from the samsaric snarl of impulse, and the embrace of renunciation as a way of life.

It is a cinch that American Folk Buddhism, nestled as it is between the general American Folk Culture and Essential Buddhism will find itself in a process very much like trying to mix oil and water in a bowl or like trying to eat a snow cone in the shower.

Let’s look at consumerism in Folk Buddhism today at three levels: first, Buddhism as an object of consumerism, second, consumer behavior as template for structureing Buddhist practice, and third, Folk Buddhism’s confrontation with the unwholesome aspects of consumer behavior.

Buddhism as an object of consumerism.  Folk Buddhism is often a shopping experience: statues, malas, incense, artwork, cushions, sitting robes, Zen mindfulness bell clocks, books, fountains and chimes, subscriptions to magazines full of ads for more Buddhist paraphernalia, Buddhist mood music, luxury retreat experiences, any product with “Zen” scrawled on it (curiously “Vajrayana” does not seem to work and “Theravada” even less so). Of course people have always spent a lot of money on Buddhism; consider the million dollar pagoda we just build here at our monastery, whose motivation belongs to Burmese Folk Buddhism. Western consumerism involves primarily expenditures for oneself and lacks a community spirit.

But in either case, consumerism about Buddhist stuff doesn’t worry me so much. First, it probably just offsets some other material distraction like fashions, power tools or hang gliding and therefore brings one no further from actual Buddhist practice, as long as the shopping experience is not misconstrued as real Buddhist practice. Second, some positive influence might actually come out of Dharmic shopping that might bring one closer to Buddhist practice: Once all of these things are purchased there is a bit of an obligation to offer the beautiful jade Buddha a stick of fragrant Japanese incense in the elegant ceramic incense holder or to actually take a book with its glossy cover of the shelf  and read it. True inspiration might with some luck ensue.

Consumer Behavior as Template for Structuring Buddhist Practice. Consumer behavior seems widely to serve as a model in American Folk Buddhism, for how we to treat practice and for the way we to integrate practice into our lives. It probably also becomes a model for other aspects of our lives as well, such as our personal relationships, but we will focus on the way entering and integrating Buddhist practice parallels our consumer behavior with predictable consequences.

To begin with, American  offers a veritable marketplace of  teachings, practices and teachers from which American Folk Buddhists are free to select those that appeal most, mixing and matching the various options much as they do with home furnishings or kitchen utensils.  Many teachers and authors correspondingly fall into the role of promoting and selling particular practices and teachings as commodities, often adapting them to increase their market appeal, for instance, favoring reassurance over challenge or ease over effort, and to to take care how they are packaged and presented, for instance, in the form of popular self-help books, lectures, seminars,  CD’s, stage performances, personal hourly consultations.

These teachings and practices are then integrated into Folk Buddhists’ lives much as products are used to enhance those lives. Rather Buddhism is integrated piecemeal as enhancements into the old pre-Buddhist life, for instance, adding a meditation practice much as one would add a regular gym workout or skydiving lessons without otherwise changing any other parts of one’s life. Just as American homes and lives become cluttered with market products, Folk Buddhist lives become more cluttered with the accumulation of practices and teachings. Progress in Buddhist practice adds but rarely subtracts these. There is, for instance, generally no mention of renunciation as a practice in American Folk Buddhism, and only cursory mention of the practice of virtue or precepts, since these generally involve abstention from certain behaviors. A practice like meditation, on the other hand, fits well with the consumer product model as something we can add, devote time to and later even supplement.

It seems to me that the consumer model of Buddhist understanding and practice distorts the content of Essential Buddhism in some profound ways. First, mixing and matching of freely selected teachings and practices damages the coherence of Essential Buddhism in which all the parts of the practices are intended to work together as a unified whole. For instance, the Buddha taught that you cannot have Right Samadhi without first establishing the previous seven factors of the Noble Eightfold Path, without, for instance, Right Intention, Right Action and the others. This is almost impossible to achieve by mixing and matching whatever has appeal to the spiritual shopper.

Second the actual presentation of teachings and practices as saleable products or services with actual market values violates the Buddha’s principle that teachings should be offered freely. For instance, once when a layperson declared he was offering a meal in recompense for the Buddha’s offered teaching, the Buddha refused to teach! Or to eat. Furthermore selling Buddhism in this way tends to  bias what is taught in the direction of saleability and away from actual efficacy. Although I have no doubt that this bias is substantial in American Folk Buddhism, there does seem to be some restraint in this regard as well, presumably under the influence of Essential Buddhism. The crass promotion found in much of American religion through open proselytizing and TV programming is almost entirely absent.

Third, the piecemeal accumulation of spiritual products largely excludes plunging boldly into a new way of life or taking on a Buddhist way of being in the world as the defining framework in which the details of one’s life are to be integrated. There is accordingly generally little mention in American Folk Buddhism of faith or vow, nor of aspects of Buddhism as a community project, nor a deep understanding of the Triple Gem. There is little opportunity for Buddhism to shake one’s life to the core.

Fourth, “renunciation” and “restraint,” fundamental to Essential Buddhist practice, are relegated to the fringes of the Folk Buddhist vocabulary. But in fact virtually all of the progress one is likely to make on the Essential Buddhist Path will be directly correlated with what is given up or curtailed: the physical trappings of life, relations and obligation like debt and car ownership, self-view, identity or being somebody, behaviors like partying flirtatiously or channel surfing, and particularly the clinging emotions rooted in greed or anger. Practice in Essential Buddhis is no more and no less than a long process of disentanglement strand by strand from soap-operatic existence, of renunciation. Meditation has an ancillary role in this larger task; it provides a magnifying glass so that we may see and then disentagle the subtlest aspects of the clinging mind.

Fifth, I fear that a Folk Buddhism built on the consumer model is very commonly a selfish Buddhism, one about self-enhancement, about making oneself special and envying others’ attainments rather than about the total selflessness encouraged in Essential Buddhism.

Folk Buddhism’s Confrontation with the Unwholesome Aspects of Consumer Behavior. According to Wikipedia, “Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the purchase of goods and services in ever-greater amounts.” It is an order that goes beyond satisfying human need to feeding human greed, which Buddhism teaches will never ever be satisfied. Consumerism in some form has probably been a part of almost all folk cultures, but took on a particularly virulent form with the rise of the commercial marketing industry and public relations starting in America in the early Twentieth Century, which beginning with the great pioneer Edward Bernays developed the art of mass manipulation of human drives to specific ends. It was discovered that desire and craving could be stimulated to increase market demand and fear and hatred could be stimulated to promote a war or a political movement. Stimulation largely played upon the irrational, emotional and delusive aspects of human cognition rather than upon clear rational thinking, which was discovered to be not only harder to manipulate but in much shorter supply than anyone had ever imagined.

Now, from the perspective of Essential Buddhism this is all an abomination. For Buddhism craving with its manifestations in greed, hate and delusion is the root of suffering. Buddhism is fully in accord with satisfying fundamental material needs, but the relentless intentional stimulation of dissatisfaction must for Essential Buddhists lead bottomless human misery. This conclusion is borne out in the modern world, particularly beginning in America as evident in the generally feeling of impoverishment even in the midst of wealth, the enormous degree of drug and alcohol abuse, the rate of suicide, the huge market for antidepressants, the ubiquity of daily fear, the widespread unraveling of social networks, the dissolution of  families and the renewed strength of class and racial oppression. And so much stuff, we are choking on it. Ultimately this order has produced endless war, poverty for much of the world’s population and brought us to the brink of ecological collapse, all driven by greed, hate and delusion.

David Loy writes that

“… our present economic system should also be understood as our religion, because it has come to fulfill a religious function for us. The discipline of economics is less a science than the theology of that religion, and its god, the Market, has become a vicious circle of ever-increasing production and consumption by pretending to offer a secular salvation.” — “Religion and the Market”

Loy suggests that consumerism is displacing all of the world’s other religions in providing the answers to life’s problems. People are almost universally aware that something is dreadfully wrong in the world, but respond in different ways. For many the resolution is more consumption! For others it has been to turn to Buddhism. I think many people in the West are initially drawn to Buddhism because it conveys an image of simplicity, of not seeking happiness in worldly things, of refuge from the rat race of life. The British economist E.L. Shumacher who proposed an alternative “economics as if people mattered”in the 60’s and 70’s, and wrote the book Small is Beautiful, named his system “Buddhist Economics,” and he was not even a Buddhist. I am all for interreligious understanding, but it is clear that the values of the religion of consumerism is in actual fact almost entirely diametrically opposed to the values of Essential Buddhism.

American Folk Buddhism, nestled as it is between the general American Folk Culture and Essential Buddhism, is right in the thick of this seismic contradiction of values. This is perhaps comparable to the situation within the Catholic Church in Latin America at various times and places faced with choices ranging from cozying up with the landed wealthy class thereby securing its own financial backing and safety, to becoming relentless advocates of the poor and dispossessed in accordance with the model of Jesus. American Folk Buddhists individually are faced with choices ranging from  practicing a stripped-down Buddhism that does not challenge the dominant religion of consumerism, to living according to Buddhist principles and (probably gradually) disentangling themselves from participation in the consumer culture. I think that since Essential Buddhism is so clear on this matter that the latter will be potentially among the greatest contributions of Buddhism to American culture.

First Quarter Moon, Uposatha, June 19, 2012            Series Index

Gender Equality in American Folk Buddhism (4)

Karl Marx famously stated, “I am not a Marxist!” I think this statement was in response to the popular understanding of Marx’s teachings that arose even in his lifetime, a Folk Marxism that no longer accorded to his satisfaction with what Marx was trying to get across. This was inevitable, since most radicals of Marx’s age were simply not as smart as Marx was. And yet Marx as a revolutionary had to come to terms with the Folk Marxists to aid in the birth of new economic order.

The Buddha did not have in his vocabulary the ist-word needed to state, “I am not a Buddhist!” in his lifetime, but like Marx he had to come to terms with a Folk Buddhism. Who were these Folk Buddhists? They were those who had imperfectly assimilated the Buddha’s message, those who took refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, yet whose understanding was still very much shaped by the (in this case, patriarchal) popular culture. Why did the Buddha need to come to terms with the Folk Buddhists? They were the bulk of his disciples. Although they might be of limited understanding one day, the next day through his influence their understanding might be greater. Some of them would become the adepts of the future, and the rest could be gently turned in a more positive direction to their great benefit. They were also the ones who provided for the material needs of the Sangha, the donors of food, robes, shelter and medicine that afforded the monastics the generous opportunity of the very pure form of practice he propounded.

This week I wish to consider how the Buddha, in navigating this interplay between Essential and Folk Buddhisms, may plausibly have spun off an early form of gender inequality as a practical means of establishing a sustainable independent nuns’ order. Although he was apparently wildly successful in realizing the Essential ideal of equal opportunity for nuns in an inhospitable culture (as we saw in the Ashoka’s India last week), he may also have created a precedent in the Vinaya that historically would encourage the opposite result. This account may be as speculative as many others, but see if this does not seem plausible.

Establishing the Monks’ Order. Before the nuns’ order came the monks’ order. Now aside from being a man of limitless kindness and compassion, the Buddha was a practical man of threefold brilliance. The first aspect of his brilliance was his own awakening, his insight into how things really are and the perfection of the human character. This second aspect of his brilliance was his teachings, his ability not only to express what he had attained but to provide a program of study and practice that others might grow in understanding and go on to replicate that attainment. The third aspect of his brilliance was the design of a community that provided individuals with the optimal conditions for study and practice and that would sustain, propagate and transmit Essential Buddhism for future generations. When we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha we are acknowledging this threefold brilliance.

Now the Buddha’s establishment of a sustainable Bhikkhu Sangha was aided by precedent. Wandering mendicants were very common in India in masculine form, and their aspirations were respected, at least enough for people to offer alms to help sustain them. Nonetheless the Vinaya reveals a pragmatic Buddha that had to be very attentive to the relationship of the bhikkhus to the Folk Culture, in particular that it blend with its values and habits, maintain a respectful reputation and yet follow a strict discipline in accordance with his teachings. He imposed a uniformity of appearance on the monks so that people could recognize them as his disciples and thereby know what to expect and learn how to relate to this particular group. It has been suggested that in developing the governance of the Sangha he wanted to circumvent government (royal) interference by demonstrating its ability to regulate satisfactorily the behavior of its members. His overall achievement in governance is remarkable: that its gentle policies and regulations have survived as governments and empires have risen and fallen and survives today as possibly the oldest continuously functional organization on the planet.

The give and take between Essential and Folk Buddhism is exemplified in the story of the sneeze that I related a number of weeks ago: The Buddha sneezed. A monk said, “may you live long,” which is like our “Bless you” or the German “Gesundheit.” The Buddha replied, “Do you think by your saying that that I will live longer?” “Well, uh [shuffle shuffle], no.” “Then don’t say it!” And so it was, the monks quit blessing anyone who sneezed. The Buddha here assumed the Essential Buddhist position, that in which monks do not offer blessings or spells in the manner of the Brahmins. However laypeople then began to complain that when they stood in the presence of a perfectly good monk, the monk would not bless them as was the norm in Indian culture. So the pragmatic Buddha rescinded the rule, saying, “Monks, laypeople are superstitious. They need to hear, ‘May you live long‘.” He here had tactfully given way to Folk Buddhism where harmony was at stake.

A large portion of the monks’ precepts were in fact either proposed by lay people or enacted in response to criticism from lay people, as long as they did not conflict with important principle of Essential Buddhism. Most of the rules of etiquette in the Patimokkha are like this, according to their origin stories in the Vinaya. So to a great extend the laity had considerable influence over the character of the Sangha according to their own culturally conditioned expectations. “Design-a-Monk®.” The institution of the yearly three-month Rains Retreat (vassa) was, as another instance, in response to lay criticism that the Buddha’s disciples were out sloshing about stepping on crawling things during the long rainy season while other ascetics resided in one place for the interim.

At the same time the Buddha kept the life of the Sangha consistent with Essential Buddhist principles where it mattered. When he saw monks engaged in potentially competitive behaviors, such as endearing themselves to laypeople in order to obtain more or better alms, he prohibited such behaviors. He also eliminated caste distinctions within the Sangha, even while this would almost certainly have displeased many of his supporters. Luckily in this case the presence of multiple castes in the Sangha would have been largely hidden from daily awareness under the uniform attire and bald heads of the monks.

Establishing the Nuns’ Order. Establishing the nuns’ order required even more tact. There was apparently little in the way of a tradition of women among the ranks of wandering mendicants, except for recently among the Jains. This alone would suggest that much of the public that was already supportive of monks would be less supportive of nuns and would therefore make it more difficult for the nuns to receive adequate alms to support their practice. Unfortunately, unlike caste distinctions the presence of two genders in the Sangha could not be hidden from daily awareness under uniform attire or bald heads. Furthermore women were across the board expected in Indian society to be under the guardianship of men, except for the “loose women.” This circumstance might indeed improve the potential for garnering alms, at least from men, but would hardly be conducive to nun’s practice nor to their safety, nor to the reputation of the Sangha. Furthermore, the nuns would need a lot of coaching; few would have experience in the intense spiritual practice of the mendicant or yogi (although the monks’ order itself was but a few years old, many of its members would have had decades of ascetic practice behind them before joining the order). Also the nuns would be at a disadvantage in general education, education having been largely neglected for women of all social classes. Finally, the Jain experiment with nun ordination seemed not to be working out so well due to a “decay of morals” (as Ven. Prof. Dhammavihari puts it) stemming from mingling monks and nuns to an extent that they were finding each other far more interesting than sitting under a tree following the breath.

According to what we learned two weeks ago the Buddha clearly wanted to offer women the same opportunities for monastic practice that his monks enjoyed since their potential was no smaller. Nonetheless it is already apparent why the Buddha would have balked when pressured to establish a nuns’ order or why he might have feared the consequences for the longevity of the Sangha: He may not yet have formulated a satisfactory solution for how a nuns’ order was going to survive in this hostile environment.

Yet the Buddha relented and a hallmark of the Buddha’s solution was to uphold a clear separation between monks and nuns in order to avoid the weaknesses of the Jain monastic order. Nuns should have a quite independent order that would discourage romantic interludes and flirtatious behaviors vis-a-vis the monks, as well as discourage both genders from falling into well-worn domestic roles, which would generally be to the nun’s disadvantage. In order to achieve this the nuns would have considerable independence, be responsible for their own internal affairs and governance, maintaining harmony, etc. Once the nuns order was launched and the first nuns began to attain a level of seniority they would also be able to ordain their own new nuns.

In spite of the relative separation, the Buddha’s solution also engaged the monks’ order in a supportive role, first to bring the nuns up to speed in terms of doctrine and practice and second to help protect the reputation and welfare of the nuns in this hostile society. This required the engagement of senior monks as teachers to “admonish” the bhikkhunis. Also monks living in the vicinity of monks would provide the nuns with some degree of protection from the dangers of the outside world. (We discussed already two weeks ago the restrictions on monks targeted to protect the nuns from misconduct on the part of some of the monks).

Although the engagement of the monks’ in this supportive role was to be controlled and limited, the Buddha’s solution involved some PR: maintaining the public appearance of guardianship, of the bhikkhunis living under the wing of the bhikkhu sangha. This would help dispel the notion that these were loose women. I imagine that the public awareness of just how much independence the nuns in fact enjoyed might also even arouse envy of women lay Buddhists who were under the constant thumbs of menfolk more than symbolically.

If this was, as I speculate, the Buddha’s solution to eking out an independent bhikkhuni sangha in a society hostile to this purpose, the Garudhamma rules would appear as an effective means of implementing this solution, as harsh as they seem at first sight from the perspective of our more gender-neutral culture. Notice that according to these rules the bhikkhus are substantially in a position of responsibility, not advantage, in this arrangement; the most substantial relationship between the two sanghas is the “admonition.” Furthermore the Vinaya takes special care that that relation not become abusive. For instance, an admonishing monk cannot show up among the bhikkhunis in the late hours, and must have certain qualifications, described as follows:

A monk who is entrusted to preside over their welfare should conform to perfect standards of moral virtue. He should also possess a thorough knowledge of the teaching of the Master and know well the complete code of the Patimokkha covering both the Bhikkhus and the Bhikkhunis. He should be of pleasant disposition, mature in years and acceptable to the Bhikkhunis, and above all, should in no way have been involved in a serious offense with a Bhikkhuni. – Vin.IV.51

Of course this bimonthly admonition would have most practical value in the early years of the bhikkhuni sangha, after which they would be expected to have acquired a level of competence similar to that of the monks, but no expiration date seems to have been foreseen. Oversight by the bhikkhus over actions of the bhikkhuni sangha such as ordinations (the Garudhhama rules were listed last week) may have had a practical function at first until bhikkhunis were up to speed, but would have quickly assumed a purely symbolic function along with the first Garudhamma requiring a gender-based hierarchy of respect (the prohibition of a nun from abusing or reviling a monk fits in here, though monks were already prohibited from abusing or reviling nuns or anyone else). These would not have seemed like harsh demands in the society in which the Buddha lived, where such hierarchies of respect were common, for instance, between castes, or fashioned within the bhikkhu sangha itself strictly according to ordination date (regardless of maturity or previous ascetic experience). In fact there is relatively little in the way of opportunity for abuse or oppression by the monks, only service.

We do not know to what extent the Buddha is the author of the Garudhamma. Various inconsistencies call into question the account in which he declared them after Mahapajapati requested ordination. Yet even if much of the Garudhamma was added after the Buddha’s death, for instance, during the First Council, it may well have been with perfectly good intentions, that is, to strengthen not weaken the bhikkhuni sangha. This seems highly plausible to me. As mentioned India seems have been on a trajectory of every increasing patriarchy by the time of the Buddha, with forces increasingly aligned against the Bhikkhuni Sangha. The practice of sati, the self-immolation of widows on their deceased husbands’ funeral pyres, for instance, would not be known in India until several hundred years after the Buddha. This leads one to wonder to what extend trying to uphold the bhikkhuni sangha as the folk society became increasingly patriarchal, might in fact have contributed to the eclipse of Buddhism in India, roughly as the Buddha is alleged to have predicted.

The ongoing and greatest historical difficulty with the Garudhamma is that they belong to an ancient Indian Folk Buddhism, not to Essential Buddhism, yet have scriptural authority and as such have persisted and been applied in cultures in which they made no sense, most of which were probably not as patriarchal as ancient India. In some societies the Garudhamma have probably had the opposite of their intended effect, the weakening of the nuns’ order by justifying symbolically a level of gender inequality that might not otherwise have occurred to anyone. It is ironic, for instance, that in Burma, which is known for its relative high degree gender equality, described by an anthropologist around 1970 in a book I read recently as having “among the most emancipated women in the world,” that where gender inequality is most evident is within the Buddhist institutions and practices. This does not seem to bother people in Burma much, but consider how this translates into lost opportunities for spiritual practice for a large part of the population over hundreds of years as well as into the loss of many teachers and role models for the rest of the population that a vibrant nuns’ order would have secured.

Finally Back Home. If the Buddha were alive today, and had awakened in, let’s say, uh, Austin, Texas, founding a monastic sangha of any gender would be difficult. There is no significant precedent, for instance, of monastic support in the folk culture to build on. However certainly there would be no Garudhamma, for rather than protecting the nuns’ sangha a Garudhamma would degrade it. The gender equality called for in Essential Buddhism and in the Buddha’s deepest kind and compassionate resolve is already endorsed by American Folk Buddhism. To the extent that the Sangha observes procedures that have even the appearance of significant gender inequality damages the reputation of the Sangha in this folk culture. Somebody recently turned the Buddha’s alleged prediction cleverly upside down (I’ve lost the reference): If the perception of gender-inequality in the monastic Sangha in the West is not quickly resolved, we can expect that this Sangha will not survive for more than fifty years. Considering the already fragile condition of the Western monastic sangha I find this very plausible.

New Moon, Uposatha, June 19, 2012            Series Index

For an updated version of the following post, see my essay What Did the Buddha Think of Women?

Gender Equality in American Folk Buddhism (3)

I hope last week I made persuasively the point that,

Essential Buddhism is concerned with securing for women exactly the same opportunities and respect that men enjoy in spite of prevailing folk attitudes and in spite of inherent gender differences.

From this we can see that the trend in American Folk Buddhism toward gender equality seems to stand in close accord with Essential Buddhism. Buddhism also stands in support of a broad social movement in Western culture and that movement reciprocally supports a correct understanding of Essential Buddhism. Great!

However, what I presented as the proper understanding of this issue in Essential Buddhism is not what everyone East and West thinks of as Buddhism. Many observers compare Buddhism critically with the Catholic Church with respect to gender inequality as just another institution in which patriarchy has run amok. Many even accuse the Buddha personally of sexism! This week I want to begin to look at how the record of Buddhism become besmirched in this way, because it has implications for our regard for Essential Buddhism in the West. Also the contrasting situation in much of Asia is very illustrative of the tension that can arise between Essential Buddhism and Folk Buddhism when Essential Buddhism challenges the dominant culture as it often does and as it does in the West with respect to other issues. With respect to gender we see how badly the message of Essential Buddhism has shipwrecked on the rocky shores of Asian Folk Cultures for which Buddhism has otherwise generally been a civilizing force.

Gender Inequality in Buddhism. The commonly cited and worrying instances of gender inequality in Buddhism include the following.

1. Isolated statements attributed to the Buddha in the Discourses that seem to disparage women.
2. The Garudhammas, special rules allegedly imposed by the Buddha on the founding of the Bhikkhuni Sangha that entail an unequal relationship between the two sanghas.
3. The alleged reluctance of the Buddha to create a Bhikkhuni Sangha and his prediction that the lifespan of the Sasana would thereby be cut in half.
4. The historical track record of Buddhism, including the many instances in later Buddhist texts that disparage women along with the relative invisibility and neglect of the Bhikkhuni Sangha historically.

Here is an example of a isolated statement in the early discourses that disparages women:

“Venerable sir, what is the reason that women neither come to the limelight, nor doing an industry see its benefits?”

“Ananda, women are hateful, jealous, miserly and lack wisdom, as a result they neither come to the limelight, nor do an industry and see its benefits.” – AN 4.80

Whoa! Where did that come from? Does that sound at all like last week’s Buddha?

In fact this exchange is tacked onto the very end of a sutta which begins with the theme of “non-sensual thoughts, non-hateful thoughts, non-hurting thoughts and right view” and furthermore seems to bear no relationship to anything else in the sutta. Yet there it is, tacked on. The ancient Suttas have a complex history with much editing and insertion often by lesser minds long forgotten. The Suttas must always be read for the system that shines forth, the consistent message. What is remarkable is that wayward passages are not even more common. We have to conclude that such a remark was a later insertion and not the words of the Buddha.

The Gardudhammas are a set of eight rules allegedly imposed by the Buddha in response to his step-mother Mahapajapati as her lobbying on behalf of the establishment of the Bhikkhuni Sangha finally succeeded. They are recorded in the Vinaya as follows:

1. A nun who has been ordained even for a hundred years must greet respectfully, rise up from her seat, salute with joined palms, do proper homage to a monk ordained but that day.
2. A nun must not spend the rains in a residence where there are no monks
3. Every half month a nun should desire two things from the Order of Monks : the asking as to the date of the uposatha day, and the coming for the exhortation.
4. After the rains a nun must ‘invite’ before both Orders in respect of three matters, namely what was seen, what was heard, what was suspected.
5. A nun, offending against an important rule, must undergo manatta discipline for half a month before both Orders.
6. When, as a probationer, she has trained in the six rules for two years, she should seek higher ordination from both Orders.
7. A Monk must not be abused or reviled in any way by a nun.
8. From today , admonition of monks by nuns is forbidden, admonition of nuns by monks is not forbidden. – I.B. Horner, Book of the Discipline, V.354-55

As in the case of isolated statements, there is evidence that suggests that these rules, or at least some of them, are not authentic. See, for instance, Ajahn Sujato, Bhikkhuni Vinaya Studies, which can be googled on-line and is very thorough. Ven. Sujato makes an intriguing case that the Buddha might have imposed these rules specifically on Mahapajapati to curb her Sakyan pride. Although many inconsistencies have been pointed out with other statements in the Vinaya and with the equivalents or lack of equivalents in the Bhikkhuni Patimokkha, this research is as yet inconclusive and still a topic of much contention. Because the Garudhammas have been taken seriously throughout the history of Buddhism they certainly shaped historical Buddhist attitudes toward women and demand close evaluation.

The Vinaya also tells us that Buddha at first resisted Mahapajapati’s lobbying effort until Ananda interceded on her behalf and elicited the famous statement from the Buddha reported last week that women’s capabilities for attainment and awakening were equivalent to men’s. It should be noted that the Buddha never refuses to found a Bhikkhuni Sangha, he simply puts Mahapajapati off with the words, “Don’t ask that.” But after he agrees to begin ordaining nuns he expresses some immediate regret concerning his decision.

If, Ānanda, women had not obtained the going forth from home into homelessness in the Dhamma and discipline proclaimed by the Truth-finder, the Dhamma would have lasted long. The true Dhamma would have endured for a thousand years. But because women have gone forth . . . in the Dhamma and discipline proclaimed by the Truth-finder, now the Dhamma will not last long. The true Dhamma will endure only for five hundred years. Even, Ānanda, as those households which have many women and few men easily fall prey to robbers, to pot-thieves . . . in whatever dhamma and discipline women obtain the going forth . . . that dhamma will not last long. Even as when the disease known as white bones (mildew) attacks a whole field of rice, that field of rice does not last long, even so, in whatever dhamma and discipline women obtain the going forth . . . that dhamma will not last long.

Even as when the disease known as red rust attacks a whole field of sugar-cane, that field of sugar-cane will not last long, even so, in whatever dhamma and discipline women obtain the going forth . . . that dhamma will not last long. Even as a man, looking forward, may build a dyke to a great reservoir so that the water may not over-flow, even so, were the Eight Garudhammas for the nuns laid down by me, looking forward, not to be transgressed during their lives.”

Strong words. Again, some scholarship has questioned the authenticity of this statement. For instance, it is unusual for the Buddha to make a prediction about future history, one that also turns out to be way off base. During the First Council, a meeting of monks after the death of the Buddha to go over the teachings, some of the monks are reported to have reprimanded Ananada for his role in lobbying for the establishment of the Bhikkhuni Sangha.

In any case the early Buddhist Sangha seems to have thrived and by the time of King Ashoka, the 3^rd Century BC emperor of much of India and great exponent and supporter of Buddhism, nearly to have achieved gender equality! King Ashoka gives us a unique snapshot of the state of Buddhism in India a couple of centuries after the Buddha through his edicts and stone inscriptions, the earliest written texts related to Buddhism. In these many contemporary monks and nuns are named for their accomplishments as teachers, scholars and good works, including Ashoka’s own daughter, Ven. Sanghamitta, who founded the bhikkhuni sangha in Sri Lanka. What is striking is how prominent the nuns are in these inscriptions, apparently appearing almost as often as monks, evidence at least of King Ashoka’s high regard for the Bhikkhuni Sangha. Yet after King Ashoka there is suddenly hardly a mention of bhikkhunis in the historical literature; their role as teachers, philosophers or sisters of great attainment is hardly known. Moreover the Bhikkhuni Sangha died out in much of Southern Asia and was never established in Tibet.

Sources of Inequality. So, what happened to the Buddha’s enlightened perspective toward women and nuns that we discussed last week? This includes his high regard for women’s capabilities for spiritual attainment and his thorough efforts at nurturing and protecting the nuns’ sangha that nuns might have exactly the same opportunities for practice as their monastic brothers. Can we reconcile that perspective with the Buddha’s reluctance to establish the Bhikkhuni Sangha, with the unequal garudhamma rules (assuming at least part of the traditional account is authentic), and with the lower status of nuns in much of the traditional and modern Buddhist world?

It is clear that the source of the apparent contradiction has been one way or another an ongoing tension between the Essential ideal and the Folk Buddhist understanding of the roles and capabilities of women. Folk Buddhism has managed to overrun Essential Buddhism at certain points. I have no doubt that much of this has manifested in creative editing of the ancient texts. However, I would like to consider an alternative perspective to the apparent contradiction that may clear up whatever remains after later editing has been accounted for.

The monastic Sangha is a complex institution. Although it provides the nun or monk with a valuable opportunity for study, practice and independence from the normal concerns of society so that the monastic soak in the Essential perspective, the Sangha functions within the context of a wider Buddhist community drenched in the Folk perspective. First the monastic Sangha is fragilely dependent on the lay community for all of its material needs. And second, the monastic Sangha traditionally provides the teachers for the lay community. This requires that the Sangha harmonize with the wider community, while called upon to uphold Essential Buddhism also functioning in a Folk Buddhist context.

The Buddha in establishing the monastic code showed every sensitivity to this dual perspective of the monastic life, holding firm where the integrity of Essential Buddhism was at stake, yet giving way to the expectations of a Folk Buddhist community where harmony and the reputation of the Sangha requires it. At least some of the gender inequality of Buddhism may have arisen in this context. Next week I will provide a speculative but plausible scenario for how this might have played out in the Buddha’s design of the monastic code.

Last Quarter Moon, Uposatha, June 12, 2012            Series Index

Please see my essay What did the Buddha think of Women? for an updated version of this post.

Gender Equality in American Folk Buddhism (2)

It is not always necessary to go back to the Buddha to discover the Essential Buddhist wisdom about things, but that is a reliable recourse. I think in the case of gender differences it may be necessary because some form of gender inequality is very pronounced in most Asian cultures and has penetrated even the circles of adepts who do not always represent the Buddha’s intentions accurately.

The Buddha’s position on gender equality is in fact remarkably clear and unsullied when we consider the Folk Culture in which the Buddha lived. But then he was the Buddha. But before we discuss the state gender equality in Essential Buddhism let’s look at the state of gender equality in that Folk Culture.

The status of women in Buddha’s India. From my reading I gather that in early Vedic India women enjoyed a status fairly equal to men, but that by the Buddha’s time it was in decline and declined further over the next millennium. India had also become a highly stratified society, in which each person is born into a social caste with no prospect of upward mobility. By the Buddha’s time women were generally in childhood subject to their father’s will, in adulthood to their husband’s and as widows to their son’s, having few rights to property other than to be something like property themselves. Women who were independent of masculine authority were commonly regarded as prostitutes, and that designation carried over frequently to nuns because of their relative independence.

It is worth considering also how ascetic practices may lead to additional antagonism against women. Ascetic traditions such as Jainism and later monastic Buddhism give careful attention to controlling the passions, in particular and particularly challenging sexual passion (see my “Sex, Sin and Buddhism” if the motivation for doing so as part of Buddhist practice does not yet make sense). Passions are interior factors of mind, yet we tend to externalize things. Just as when anger arises in our minds we like to think, “He made me angry,” and when we have doubts about our potential and motives for practice we like to think, “Mara is at hand,” in the same way when overwhelmed with lust but intentionally as a matter of practice trying not just to go with the flow like a normal person would, an ascetic could easily fall into the thought, “She made me lustful,” or “She has no right to look so darn cute.” (The rare female ascetic, by the way, could just as well fall into similar thoughts by substituting “he” for “she.”) Although there is a weakness in the practice of one who substitutes lust with aversion in this way, it can easily happen. What is more, communities of ascetics with this tendency who live in relative isolation from women could easily fall into encouraging a kind of collective antagonism toward women.

It is interesting that in American Folk Culture, in which the idea of curbing lust generally makes no reasonable sense at all, I often observe a further level of externalization. Monastic vows enforce a degree of gender separation as a matter of protecting the mind. If you are a woman and look like you are about to hug me, or even shake my hand, I will politely inform you that the monastic code prohibits this. Try it. However, I find that if I leave it at that, many so inclined women seem to be offended by this “blatantly misogynist practice.” That is until I reassuringly point out that nuns follow exactly the same rule, except that they substitute “he” for “she.”

The Buddha‘s Support of Women and Nuns. Across the board, the Buddha was the great leveler of social distinctions. Caste distinctions, for instance, disappear altogether in the Sangha; brahmins and warriors practice alongside drones and untouchables. Even distinctions between species are downplayed. Consistently the Buddha’s approach is one of boundless kindness and compassion toward all beings, even those who have done great harm, such as King Ajatasattu, who had killed his own father to seize his throne, yet is taken on by the Buddha as a disciple. The Buddha’s approach to organizing the Sangha was similarly kind. Although monks were expected to accept the authority of the Buddha and the Vinaya, punishment for transgressions were minimal and there was little in the way of a command structure.

The message that shines through in the discourses is in fact that the Buddha had nothing but kindness and respect for women, and this in spite of the Folk Culture in which he lived. How could it be otherwise? Here are some pointers to the Buddha’s attitude concerning women.

(1) The Buddha, on learning of King Pasenadi of Kosala was displeased that his queen had just given birth to a daughter rather than the desired son, reassured the king as follows:

“A woman, O lord of the people, may turn out better than a man. She may be wise and virtuous, a devoted wife, revering her mother-in-law.” – SN 3.16

(2) The Buddha offered advice to householders which includes the respective duties of husbands and wives. Notice in the following that they are stated in reciprocal rather than hierarchical terms (the part about “ornaments” is cute).

“In five ways should a wife as Western quarter, be ministered to by her husband: by respect, by courtesy, by faithfulness, by handing over authority to her, by providing her with ornaments. In these five ways does the wife minister to by her husband as the Western quarter, love him: her duties are well-performed by hospitality to kin of both, by faithfulness, by watching over the goods he brings and by skill and industry in discharging all business.”– DN 31

(3) The Buddha clearly stated that women have the same potential for awakening that men have.

“Women, Ananda, having gone forth are able to realize the fruit of stream-attainment or the fruit of once-returning or the fruit of non-returning or arahantship”

The bhikkhuni Sona had in the Suttas an encounter with Mara, who characteristically tries to dissuade her from the path, in this case claiming a woman cannot attain awakening. Sona knowing better replies,

What does womanhood matter at all, when the mind is concentrated well, when knowledge flows on steadily as one sees correctly into Dhamma. One to whom it might occur, ‘I am a woman’ or ‘I am a man’ or ‘I’m anything at all’ is fit for Mara to address. – SN 5.2

(4) The Buddha trusted women to offer testimony as witnesses to possible sexual transgressions by monks. Accordingly we find two somewhat peculiar rules, the indefinite (aniyata) rules, in the bhikkhus’ Patimokkha that explicitly require consideration by a sangha of the testimony of trusted women. If these rules did not fly in the face of the norms the prevailing folk culture to distrust women the rules would not have been necessary.

(5) The Buddha created a parallel nuns’ order about five years after the start of the monks’ order. In the mythical encounters in which Mara suggests to the Buddha that he check out of worldly existence early rather than later, now that he had attained awakening, the Buddha replies that he must first ensure the survival of the sasana be firmly establishing a fourfold assembly (parisaa) of bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, male lay disciples and female lay disciples. Given how important completing the fourfold assembly was to the Buddha, the current missing tooth can only detract from the smile of the Theravada or Tibetan tradition.

Although women ascetics were apparently rare at the Buddha’s time, there was at least one precedent in the Jain nuns’ order. Not only did bhikkhuni ordination in Buddhism give women the opportunity to opt out of an oppressive patriarchal system, but to partake in almost equal partnership with their monk brothers in the Third Gem, which in the time of the Buddha must have been received as an enormous honor. It meant that Buddhist men along with women would now take refuge in a Sangha consisting of both men and women.

(6) The Buddha took care, like a wise parent, to protected nuns from dangers that beset nuns as they took on the itinerant ascetic lifestyle. These dangers came not only from highway men and rapists, but also from the poor fellow who would see some lovely creature, modest of attire, bald of head and dignified of deportment, enter the village day after day for alms, fall in love and then through slather of charm and sumptuous gift of meal undertake to overcome a few of her more irksome vows. The Buddha built protective guidelines into the Patimokkha in order to secure for the nuns in spite of their greater vulnerability the same opportunities on the path of practice enjoyed by the monks.

For instance, special rules prohibit that bhikkhunis accept or consume food offered by lusting men, others that they avoid certain situations that might compromise their safety, others that they maintain modesty of dress and never bathe naked, that they reside during the rains retreat in the protective vicinity of monks even while maintaining a respectful distance from them. Likewise special rules prohibit the bhikkhus, who though limited by vow are themselves often subject to the flames of lust, from giving gifts to bhikkhunis, traveling with bhikkhunis except under controlled conditions or visiting the bhikkhunis in their quarters unauthorized or at night.

(7) The Buddha also took care to protect the nuns from becoming domestic servants of the monks, for instance, ceding choice alms to monks or darning their robes when they might otherwise be meditating. The danger here is clear: Monks of limited attainment and raised into a patriarchal culture could easily fall into accustomed patterns of asserting male authority, and nuns likewise raised into that same culture could easily acquiesce, in effect having opted out of one patriarchal system only to find themselves falling in another.

The Buddha’s solution to this eventuality is to prohibit the bhikkhunis from certain behaviors of servant and more importantly to prohibit monks from accepting services from the bhikkhunis. The bhikkhunis’ Patimokkha, for instance, contains the rule:

Should any bhikkhuni, when a bhikkhu is eating, attend on him with water or a fan, it is to be confessed.

The bhikkhus’ Patimokkha was made even more thorough in this regard. It prohibits us from having cloth prepared or a robe washed by a bhikkhuni on our behalf, or from accepting robe cloth from a bhikkhuni except in exchange, or from accepting food that a bhikkhuni might have given or gained for us indirectly. In short, it systematically proscribes allowing a well-meaning bhikkhuni from falling into the role of serving us. It is instructive to observe however that nuns in Theravada countries quite commonly fall into the role of domestic servants to monks, exactly as the Buddha clearly feared. The reason that this is allowed to happen is that these modern nuns are not bhikkhunis, but of lesser ordination, and therefore fall outside of the rules that the Buddha formulated on behalf of bhikkhunis.

(8) The Buddha extolled the accomplishments of the bhikkunis. At least one nun, Dhammadinna, is found in the Suttas teaching in the Buddha’s stead, to which the Buddha comments that he would have explained the topic at hand in exactly the same way. The Therigati, a section of the Khuddaka Nikaya in the Suttas, is a collection of poems from early enlightened nuns said to be the only canonical text in all the world’s religions dealing first-hand with women’s spiritual experiences.

Gender Equality in Essential Buddhism. I fear the last couple of posts might strike one as a bit of a tangent. Some weeks ago I characterized American Folk Buddhism as concerned with gender equality and then segued into the question, How about Essential Buddhism? I hope by now I have established that in this regard American Folk Buddhism is in close accord with Essential Buddhism, and that much of Asian Folk Buddhism has not been. I conclude that,

Essential Buddhism is concerned with securing for women exactly the same opportunities and respect that men enjoy in spite of prevailing folk attitudes and in spite of inherent gender differences. – “American Folk Buddhism (11)”

The validity of this conclusion is clear in the courageous and systematic attention the Buddha gave to the potential obstacles to this purpose. The Buddha that shines forth from the Suttas is invariably one of complete purity of purpose, always looking for the benefit of all, really all, and incapable of even the slightest hint of bias or unkind thought.

Nonetheless the record of Buddhism in this regard is often besmirched and real evidence is often cited in support of this besmirchment, evidence that I have thus far conveniently suppressed except for one casual inclusion of the phrase “almost equal” above, but no longer! The evidence is largely in the degree of oversight or mentorship the Bhikkhu Sangha is given over the Bhikkhuni Sangha, and in the placement of nuns in a lower position in the hierarchy of formal respect. It is also in the history of much of Asian Folk Buddhism in which the nuns’ sangha is notably often invisible. Next week I will argue that this evidence is accounted for purely out of pragmatic considerations that had a certain force in the folk culture in which the Buddha lived, to the extent that it originated with the Buddha at all. What else could it be when everything else speaks of the Buddha’s consistent and systematic support of nuns and women?