I vow to taste the truth that thou didst tithe us worse. Does anyone have the list that went around that where everyone signed? Do you have it somewhere? Not with you. Not with you. I don't know where it is. Well, I just, um, it looks like a different group. Or just in different chairs. That could be. Why don't we do it again? Why don't we just, if everyone could just write their name again, that would be good. That's okay. I wanted to get a nice count so I could get some Xeroxing done, but I didn't want to overdo it, so. You weren't here last week. Okay. Last week we left off at a point where we were talking about anecdotal, some anecdotal material about instances where as women or as men,

[01:04]

knowing women, we felt our spiritual and religious aspirations or needs were not, were missed. Or something from your religion or background, your background, your original religion. So there were a few people from last week who we didn't get around to. And anyone here, I know it's, I don't want to put anyone on the spot and no one needs to sort of divulge terribly personal material. It's just if something occurs to you that you would like to let other people hear about that illustrates how women and their religious lives have oftentimes, it's been a miss rather than a meeting. So would anyone, maybe those of you who were here last week and maybe have been thinking about it, if you'd like to add to this conversation.

[02:07]

Yes. Well, I missed last week, but I heard about it. Oh, okay. And I first thought I had no religious background at all, though I'm Jewish. But then I realized that for me, women work in all, any ceremony. For instance, Passover, which is a meal, the men did all praying and the women did the cooking and the serving. In fact, they never even sat down at the table. They were just passing food around and the men were in it. So for me, the Jewish religion was a male, totally man's religion. And women's role was simply to cook meals and perform those parts of it that made the rituals happen. Thank you. Anyone else who's thought of it, been thinking about it from last week, would like to say something?

[03:16]

Yeah. Well, I was born Jewish and my parents weren't very religious. They had seen the Holocaust through it and lost faith in God and religion. But my stepfather was Catholic and he'd gone to a seminary until he was 18 and he wanted to be a Catholic priest. And then he changed his mind and became a lawyer instead. But his sister, he came from an Irish Catholic family in Pennsylvania. And his sister is like two of them. They got pregnant at 16 and had babies. You know, it's just like this Catholic school, girls in trouble thing. And he came into, he met me when I was, I think, eight and I was pretty wild. And so he just automatically came in and started threatening that I was going to go to a convent if I ever got into trouble. So for me it was like all through high school.

[04:19]

It's like, you guys, I can't do that because if I get in trouble, I have to go to a convent. And I'm Jewish. And so for me it was, I had to say something over my head. Like, whatever, you're going to have to be religious. And so for them I think it's kind of ironic that I self-imposed this sort of monastic training upon myself. Neither Catholic nor Jewish. But that was interesting for me. And my mom just kind of went along with it. So, I mean, I've had very powerful women in my family. And so I never felt that there was a man-woman thing. That was really my closest connection to them. Thank you. Maybe one more? Somebody who's thought about a baby? Oh! Okay. Well, I kind of grew up Catholic. I went to catechism and made First Holy Communion, but I don't remember any of it.

[05:21]

Which is kind of strange. And I think my mother would be the primary, you know, religious influence. Although she wasn't really religious. Although she was Catholic. She kept calling herself Catholic. Although she liked Mary Mackleman the best because she was a wild woman. She grew to like her. So I got the idea that for women it was very repressive. That they... And I also was threatened with parochial school. And so... That was my presentation. Thank you. So... From some of the comments from last week and this week, too...

[06:24]

One person in particular, Tayo, what Tayo said, I thought really illustrated beautifully last week. Do you mind, Tayo? No. Tayo said he was very involved in the Methodist Church. He was over at the... It was like Zen Center a little bit. He was over there all the time working. There was endless things to do and all sorts of things to plan, I imagine, to really get involved. And it never occurred to him, maybe until last week, that there were no women around. None of these were... You were in high school, yes? Just never... It didn't even cross his mind, you know. It was just normal. I mean, just a regular normal thing. It didn't make any blip until maybe he needed treats or something. And then you kind of wonder, well, where are they? This is not an accusation at all. I'm trying to kind of bring up something for all of us to look at, which is that we live in and inherited an androcentric point of view.

[07:34]

Now, I want to give us some terms that some of you might be familiar with and other people may not be familiar with. But, let's see, I've got three notebooks going here. Androcentric. The word androcentric gets male-centered. Andro comes from the Greek for man. Andro... I'll just read this so you can kind of get it exactly. Androcentric is a mode of consciousness, a thought form, a method of gathering information, and classifying women's place in the male-defined scheme of things. So, this is a way of viewing reality, a way of viewing the world, from a male-centered point of view. And it's so pervasive that it's just normal.

[08:37]

It's just, it doesn't occur that, in many cases, it doesn't even occur that there's something off, because it's accepted as the norm in all areas. And I'll get into that in a little bit. Now, patriarchy is the social institution, an institutional form that goes along with androcentrism. So, if you have an androcentric model, patriarchy follows from that, which is kind of in the institutions where male dominate in all sorts of institutions, educational, religious, social institutions. So, in a patriarchy, there's a gender hierarchy of men over women that kind of goes along with that. Now, misogyny is a term that's very specific also, but it's sometimes used kind of loosely.

[09:38]

But misogyny means hatred of women. You know, the GYN, like gynecological, or gynocentric is women-centered. Misogyny means literally hatred or fear of women or femininity. And a true misogynist hates and fears all women and anything connected with women. So, it's a real hatred. Now, I think, Tayo, if I may just go on with you, I don't think Tayo was in any way a misogynist, you know, hating women. It's just, or in most cases, misogyny is not as prevalent as one might think. Well, I guess I could say it is prevalent, but what's more prevalent is just androcentric, where it's just male-centered. It's not that you hate women. It's just that in their place, they're fine.

[10:44]

But if they start moving into these other areas, then, like someone was describing seeing a woman as being an altar girl or doing something in the service, it was like, gee, how surprising. It was jarring. So, those are terms that we'll be using here in the class. So, I just wanted to get those defined. Now, I want to go further with this androcentric. This is all, by the way, thanks to Rita Gross and this book, Buddhism After Patriarchy, which if anybody would like to order this, it's a very excellent book, and I didn't want to order a bunch of them in the bookstore without knowing who would like to have this. It's not necessary. I don't want to say anybody has to buy any of these books. I think the class can go fine without, but you might find it interesting what she has to say. So, in the androcentric model of humanity,

[11:47]

it's got three kind of characteristics. One is, I've sort of named them, that the male is the norm. The male norm and the human norm are collapsed together into one thing. So, maleness and humanness are seen as just one and the same, just like we say mankind rather than humankind. Well, now that that's changed, so we are saying more humankind, or people are making a point to say he and she. But for years and years and years, the he was used for both men and women, and mankind is still used, you know, or man with a capital M. So they get collapsed together, humankind, man and human. And what happens then is that human experience, if it's being studied, like the way this works in scholarship, let's say, or medicine, is you do various tests for a new medicine.

[12:50]

You do it on a control group. You do your experiment, and it's on men. Men are the subjects. And then you all know about this. The results come out, and it's said that this medicine can be used for all adults. But it's not all adults. It was tested on men, and it's very specific to men and their bodies and their hormones and the whole thing. And it's not, but it's not for women. And in an androcentric view of humanity, they're collapsed together. So man and human is just collapsed, and this is changing now. There is more attention being made to this kind of thing where you have to do a separate test for women or there's going to be big problems. So this awareness of a distinction

[13:51]

between maleness and humanity is clouded over. It's kind of like it's kind of all the same, really. And then femaleness is viewed as kind of an exception to the norm. So in scholarship, for example, well, Rita Gross is a good example. She was in graduate school in religion, and Mercier, I never know how to pronounce his name, Mercier Eliade, is that how you pronounce it? Do you know who he is? He studied a lot of religion and myth. Anyway, he was her advisor, I guess, and she wanted to do a study of this particular tribe about the women's religion, and she couldn't find any information about women's religion in the tribe. She found lots about the men's sacred activities, and they supposedly, what she could find in the research

[14:51]

was that women were viewed as unclean and various things about women. Now, she tried to find more material about what women were doing in their religion, and it turned out that there was a whole separate world of women's religious practice in this tribe that was not studied because they studied the men, and that was the religion of the tribe. But actually, they were very, each had their own full-blown world of ritual and custom and everything. And to study that tribe, you have to study both. If you just study one, you're really leaving out 50% of the life of this tribe. So when she passed in her paper, he said, you should do this for your dissertation. This was for her master's, I guess. And she said, androcentrically,

[15:52]

but I don't want to because I'd like to do something important. And she realized how for her, and in androcentric model, women are seen as kind of peripheral. You have a chapter at the end of the book which goes about women's customs, or maybe there's some footnotes about the tribe that women do such and such. But it's not taken up in scholarship as a full-blown study in and of itself with its own worth and its own place. So there's lots and lots of research. That's, I'm going to close this. That if you look at it, only tells half the story. So did she have an awakening here? She did. She had a major awakening. And when she tried to do this in a university setting,

[16:58]

this was in the 60s, I guess, she came up against a lot of problems because they said, but why do you have to study that? We've already studied the religion of the yada yada. And because it's a mode of thinking, and it's so normal that if somebody brings up that there may be some other way, it's very... What's the word? Threatening. It can be very threatening to the whole academic world built on this way of seeing the world. And it means that a lot of scholarship is really half finished. Yes? You need to close this window if you don't want to open it. It's over there. Oh, OK. It was just a little tiny draft.

[18:00]

I know it will get too hot. Thank you. OK, so I'm going to look at my notes here again. So this collapsing of the human and the male as the norm, as one. And then the female is seen as an object or outside or something that's an exception. Then how research is done in this way. And then the third characteristic is... Well, I guess I covered it. This thing about them being the exterior, an object. So there's an example where it says the Egyptian's view of women is yarya. Now, that's a kind of... You might just read that and feel fine. Egyptian's view of women is yarya. But that makes the Egyptians one thing. And then the women Egyptians are sort of some other species

[19:03]

that sort of lives in the same country or something. This kind of thing is just... This is a profound... For me, it is a profound and thunder-strucking... That's not a word. It is now. It is a thunderous shift in your way of viewing and reading and hearing what people are saying. It's a major kind of event. Now, Buddhism... The study of Buddhism has a quadruple androcentrism. This is what Rita Gross says. So I'm kind of going along with this. Let me wait on that, the quadruple androcentrism, because I want to go back. I just felt that I want to give a brief history of religion from 30,000 B.C. up until the present. So this...

[20:05]

Are you familiar with this? Everyone has seen this, right? This is called... The Willendorf goddess, sometimes called Venus, but Venus doesn't do it justice. And this is about 30,000 years old, over 30,000 years old. This is from the Paleolithic. You pass this on. And... So some of you are familiar with this material, but maybe some of you are not, so I just kind of want to go through this. The Paleolithic is, you know, those cave paintings and these things. Now, because of androcentrism, when the researchers look at these kinds of things, like the cave paintings, for example, they say... They look at them with the mind that says there's a male god and it's a warrior god,

[21:05]

and so they... Is there chalk by that board? I just want to illustrate this. So they look at this cave painting, they see these long things, and they say arrows, these are arrows, and these are for weapons, these are weapons, and they have something like that, and... like that, and they don't really recognize what that is, but they say that's an arrow, okay? Some kind of arrow, it must be a weapon. But some... research archaeologists, especially Maria Quintas, who's done a lot of work on this, but other people too, look more carefully. This was a man who looked more carefully and said, this couldn't be an arrow. If you were shooting this arrow going this way, these barbs, it wouldn't go in,

[22:06]

it's something else. He thought it was some kind of grass or plant-like. So, it totally shifts what you're seeing. If you, in your mind, think male god, warrior, arrows, then you see what you see. But basically, there was no weaponry shown in some of these really old things. It was grasses and plants and animals. So, this just knocked me out. Those bars going the other way. So, from 30,000 BC, that's the Paleolithic, and then about 10,000 years ago is the Neolithic. And the Neolithic is agriculture, so stopping the hunting and gathering and settling down and farming. What else went on there?

[23:07]

Domesticated animals. They had certain technologies for pottery, weaving of clothes, sewing clothes, so they weren't wearing skins and that kind of thing. The arts flourished. The Neolithic was an extremely peaceful time, and this lasted for thousands of years, the Neolithic, where they had the technology to make weapons. They had metallurgy, but in the Neolithic, they made jewelry and figures, beautiful figures and ritual items and things out of metal, as well as all this pottery. Now, the Neolithic, and we're talking about 30,000 years, so then 20,000 years, between that first Villendorf coming along,

[24:08]

and 10,000 years, which is the Neolithic, this was all during these thousands and thousands of years, was all the excavations that they found show that there was a goddess worshipped. There was a female life force worshipped. And this is all throughout Europe, all throughout the Near East, and other places. So let's see. In about 6,000 B.C., they uncovered a lot of excavations in Anatolia. Yes? Do you know the population at that time, Neolithic period-wise? Are we talking about 100,000 or millions? Do you have any sense of the number? Well, I know that some of these cities were very populated,

[25:11]

and they actually made dwellings that were beautifully laid out. Did I talk about this last week? No, I talked about it in the women sitting on... So they were thriving towns. This is before Sumer, and this is like 2,000 years before what we have been taught was the beginning of Western civilization, and the tigers, Euphrates. This is way before that. This is what these excavations have found. So I don't know what the population was, but they had towns, that there was town planning, they were beautifully laid out, they were not up high for defense, they were in beautiful valleys. Because there was no war, they found no instance of war for like thousands of years in these places. There was a peaceful life together, and it was a female, it was a gynocentric, well, I don't like to use that word because it implies that the female was the norm,

[26:16]

and I think that's... Leigh and Isla used the word partnership. Partnership, yeah. She kind of coined the word a gylanee, which is female and male working together in partnership. Like the graves, there's not much difference between the men's graves and the women's graves in terms of what's put in the graves. There aren't, during this time, enormous amounts of wealth in certain graves. It's pretty egalitarian, equalitarian, she likes the word. This is Riani Eisler in Chalice and the Blade, if you're familiar with that book. What was that in Chalice? Chalice and the Blade, which is another kind of thunderous book. Let's get that. So there was not warfare. There was a lot of ritual.

[27:18]

There's beautiful, like in Crete, for example, the art reached a high, high, high degree of beauty, beautiful, natural, you know. They uncovered the throne room and there's these dolphins playing and there's beautiful statues. This was all uncovered in the early 1900s. And this was all, the feminine, the female goddess was, that's all there was really, I mean, until much later. And this was, we're talking about thousands of years, thousands of years, where the ritual and the life, there were these little shrines everywhere. It wasn't just you go to the temple, it was in people's homes. Let's see, there's other fascinating things, like they had indoor plumbing with flush toilets in Crete. Beautiful plumbing that still works, these clay pipes and sewage systems.

[28:21]

Anyway, it was very highly developed. So even though it was goddess, the time of the goddess, but does Rianne Isley say this was an equalitarian time? Partnership, she feels there was partnership. It was, each had their own, they worked together, there was not, the feeling from all the evidence, the gender issues were not one of dominance, but of partnership, where they worked together. So women weren't dominant either. Right. The fact that they were in, were the most powerful, had to do with responsibility, taking responsibility for others. This is, they document this by various things that they found. There were things like orphanages, and you take responsibility, that was how they used their power.

[29:23]

So it wasn't power over, it was power meaning taking care of, like sort of bodhisattva, responsibility for others. So that seems to be what, from all that they uncovered, what these societies were like in the Neolithic. So then what happened, was that in about the 5th millennium, these nomadic bands from the steeps, the steppes, who had horses, the agricultural Neolithic in Europe and the Near East, didn't have horses. And these people also had metallurgy, but they used it to make weapons. So imagine living in this kind of peaceful time for hundreds and hundreds of years,

[30:23]

and then these people arrive on horseback with these swords, and there was mass slaughters. They made these forays into these Neolithic agricultural communities, that they can document, where they find mass graves. And then in the Bible, we're talking about, let's see, the Hebrew tribes conquered Canaan in 1320 BC, and in 1450 BC, the Aryan language speaking people conquered India. So Crete was in like 3000, and then they were finally defeated in 1400, right around the time that the Aryans went into India. Now India was also goddess, and one thing that's interesting about that is that they didn't go down to the south of India. They never conquered the south of India, the Aryan speaking.

[31:23]

And the people in the south of India still to this day are more goddess-centered. And I'll tell you something else interesting about that a little later. So anyway, these nomadic bands, these tribes came and just, they worshipped a male god of might and the sword. This is why the book is called The Chalice and the Blade. That's what she's looking at. And over millennia, I mean over some time, they destroyed these places, and civilization kind of came to a halt. All this art and all these, they destroyed and burnt these palaces, and they had all these beautiful things in it. And then you began to see things like graves with a male figure, and then all these children and women buried in there and all this stuff. Sort of like in India when the widows,

[32:26]

I can't remember what it's called, where the man dies and the widow has to be sati. So these kinds of practices they began to find later. And then also depictions of weaponry and depictions of frescoes of conquering and having the people who are conquered impaled on stakes alive. They have this in the art as showing the might of the ruler. This all happened, this is much later. And in the Bible you can read how the Hebrews, I think they were supposed to go in and not leave man, woman, or child alive when they conquered some of these nations. And these were goddess-worshiping peoples that the Hebrews conquered. They had those idols, right, that you're not supposed to bow down to. That's what they were, these idols. They were goddess figures. And they were all over.

[33:27]

Excuse me, was Baal female? Probably, B-A-A-L. I always thought it was a male figure. I don't actually know for sure, but probably, probably. I think it's in Rihanna's book that she talks about how they thought there were all these tombs for the man and they thought that they were God and then there were these women, these servers all around underneath. And then, yeah, somebody's gone back and re-examined this through different eyes and they found out those were all goddesses. They weren't servants. They interpreted all the data. That's right. I just read a whole bunch about Crete because we did this workshop and talked about the labyrinth and we were working with the Minotaur. And you have to really sort out because it talks about Crete as if King Minos, who was way, way at the end, right before they were conquered by the Greeks, and Crete had been woman-centered.

[34:35]

You know those statues that have bare breasts and they hold up the snakes? Those are the goddess figures of Crete. The bull, the Minotaur, they actually had in Crete these sacred bulls and I forgot to say this on Saturday, but there were these frescoes of men and women, young people, grabbing the horns of the bull and flipping over. They would rush at the bull, grab the horns and do somersaults over their back and catch each other. This was like these ritual dances, men and women together as part of sacred, you know. So this is all to say that, you know, I just kind of wanted to give everyone a sense of this background of humanity, of the sacred spiritual life of humanity for thousands and thousands of years. And then these tribes come and the world turns upside down. I mean, can you imagine living that way

[35:36]

and having lived that way for so long and then the whole thing turning around? And the goddesses became, you know, wives, you know, Zeus' wife, and all the Greek and Roman goddesses became subservient or consorts or that kind of thing. So with that as a kind of background, then we come to Buddhism, you know, women in Buddhism. So the quadruple, the quadruple androcentrism of Buddhism. So the first of the four is there's an androcentric consciousness in even choosing, or set of values, in choosing which documents are saved,

[36:37]

which stories are preserved, which statements are going to be passed down, you know. So, you know, as you know, there's very few like koans with women in them and the lineage is all men. So this is a point of view. It's not necessarily that there weren't stories to be written down or statements, but they were chosen, you know, it's a choice. And then the second of these four is even when women's stories were preserved, which we do have, which we'll talk about tonight, we have the first Buddhist women, a translation of the Therigatha, which is the Therion, women elders, and it's their poems of enlightenment, they were arhats that lived during the Buddhist time and became nuns then.

[37:38]

So even though these are preserved, later traditions tend to ignore these in favor of male stories. So even at... There's this article that I just read that talks more about the ignoring of certain stories. And then the third is that Western scholarship on Buddhism is quite androcentric, and so it agrees with these Buddhist records because rather than questioning and saying, well, what about the 51%? And what about the nuns? They must have been active and lively. There was no questioning, you just took what was preserved rather than delving back, because Western scholarship is... And not only is the scholarship, but contemporary Buddhism also is... Well, as Rita Gross says, unrelenting in its androcentrism. Let's see, where do I want to go from here?

[38:50]

I want to go here. Um... So I think I'd like to talk about the first Buddhist nuns. How about that? Does anybody know who the first Buddhist nun was? Her name? Mahakasyapa. Say it again? Mahakasyapa. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure if it's Mahapajapati or Mahapajapati. I actually am not sure where the accent is. That's her name. And she was... Do you know who she was? How she was related to the Buddha? She was his mother's sister. That's right. So the Buddha's mother's name was Maya,

[39:56]

and Maya and Pajapati. Pajapati means leader of a great assembly. Maha. Great leader of a great assembly. That's her name. They were sisters, and they both married Suddhodana, the Buddha's father. So he had two wives. And they came from a clan called the Koliyan clan, which is different than the Shakya clan, but it was nearby. And Queen Maya, nobody knows why, but after giving birth to the Buddha, she died about seven days later. So here was the baby, Gotama Shakyamuni. And her sister, I guess it was the custom, took care for the baby. And it says that she nursed her, so she had two of her own children. She had Nanda and Suddhodana herself. These were her kids. And one of them must have been around that age because she was able to nurse the baby. Unless she did that thing

[40:58]

where you could get the milk going. I don't think she probably did that. There is some way. Men have been able to get milk, right? Yeah. So you all know the story of the Buddha's life, pretty much, yes? You know, there's an alternate version, which is, in terms of androcentrism, what's chosen to be like the story, there's another story where he doesn't leave his sleeping wife and baby and slip out the back jack. Laughter There's always that feeling that, doesn't that kind of, it always kind of feels... Didn't you call the baby Little Feather? Rahula Feather, yes. And the mother must have been Big Feather. Laughter This is the story. This is the folklore of Buddhism, you could say.

[42:00]

It's a very useful tale for our own personal practice. For each of us, I'm sure, we can relate to a lot of different aspects of that tale. And meeting with Mara and leaving home and all that. So that's fine. But there is another version, just to let you know, there's actually a couple versions. One is where he's not even married, he leaves his parents crying, you know. Please don't go, son. Which, you know, that also has its own power. And then there's the version where he decides to go and he comes back and tells Maya and tells her all about it and about his, you know, need to fulfill his spiritual life. And they make love that night. And she actually conceives this night of his leave-taking. And then he does leave her. She doesn't want him to go. And he leaves her with the idea that he is doing it for her, you know, for the benefit of all beings and for her that he'll come back and be able to help her.

[43:03]

So she gets pregnant, she's pregnant, and all the time she's pregnant for the whole six years that he is on his quest, and she has parallel difficulties. Like when he's doing his ascetic things and not eating very much, she hears about they send a messenger from the palace and finds him and, oh, he's only eating one sesame seed a day, and, oh, she doesn't want to eat either, and then they feel like she's got to eat for the baby's sake. And right about the time when he decides to eat and she decides to eat, it's this whole parallel thing. And then the night of his enlightenment, she gives birth. He's sitting through the watches of the night with Mara coming, and she is going through labor and gives birth. So it's another version, and it kind of brings up some other aspects of an individual's spiritual life.

[44:06]

But it kind of honors the gal he left behind in a certain way and what she might have been going through in her spiritual quest. So anyway, that version is pretty interesting, I think. But after he does have his enlightenment, he comes back about five years later to his family, and Pajapati, Mahapajapati, his dad is a little bit cold to him, you know, because he wanted him to take over the country. But she is very taken with him and wants to receive the teachings. And then later, her son, his son, that is Rahula, and her two children all enter the order. And her husband dies, Suddhodana passes away,

[45:12]

and during that time there were some upheavals. In fact, the Kolyan clan and the Shakya clan have this kind of a battle and this is her family and his family and all the two tribes, and the Buddha tries to stop that battle. I think you might know that story. And he's able to at one point, and then it happens anyway, and lots of these people are killed, which are kinsmen of hers. And the women, you know, in Indian society at that time, you were under your father's roof or your husband's roof, and if you didn't have a male, you know, overseer, not overseer, but protector, you were kind of outside of society in some way. So there are a lot of these women who were left without, this is according to Susan Murcott's study, were kind of left without a position in society.

[46:17]

And also his harem, Gautama Shakyamuni Buddha had a harem, and they were kind of without a protector either. So a lot of these women came to Mahaprajapati and said, we too would like to go into the homeless life and renounce the world and practice in this way. Can you ask the Buddha for permission for us to take ordination too? So she was seen as kind of an influential person. I mean, the Buddha was her son. So all these women came. Let's see, I don't want to read the whole thing. So Mahaprajapati Gautami went to the place where the Buddha was, approached and greeted him, and standing at a respectful distance, spoke to him.

[47:20]

It would be good, Lord, if women could be allowed to renounce their homes and enter into the homeless state under the Dharma and discipline of the Tathagata. And he says, enough Gautami, don't set your heart on women being allowed to do this. A second and a third time, Pajapati, this was before she was Mahapajapati, Pajapati made the same request in the same words and received the same reply. And thinking that the Blessed One would not allow women to enter into homelessness, she bowed to him and, keeping her right side towards him, departed in tears. Then the Blessed One set out for Vesali. Pajapati cut off her hair, put on saffron-colored robes, and headed for Vesali with a number of Shakyan women. She arrived at Kutagara Hall in the great grove

[48:23]

with swollen feet and covered with dust, weeping, she stood there outside the hall. I don't know how far that was to walk. Seeing her standing there, the Venerable Ananda asked, why are you crying? Because Ananda, the Blessed One, does not permit women to renounce their homes and enter into the homeless state under the Dharma and discipline proclaimed by the Tathagata. Then the Venerable Ananda went to the Buddha, bowed before him, and took his seat to one side. He said, Pajapati is standing outside under the entrance porch with swollen feet, covered with dust, and crying because you do not permit women to renounce their homes and enter into the homeless state. It would be good, Lord, if women were to have permission to do this. Enough, Ananda, don't set your heart on women being allowed to do this.

[49:25]

A second and a third time, Ananda made the same request, in the same words, and received the same reply. Good old Ananda. Then Ananda thought, the Blessed One does not give his permission. Let me try asking on other grounds. This is the first and only instance where the Buddha was persuaded to change his mind. That's recorded in all the scriptures, where he actually pronounced something, said something, and changed his mind. It was Ananda who helped with this. So he says, let me try asking on other grounds. Are women able, Lord, when they have entered into homelessness, to realize the fruits of stream-entry, once-returning, non-returning, and arhatship? Yes, Ananda, they are able. If women then are able to realize perfection,

[50:28]

and since Pajapati was of great service to you, she was your aunt, nurse, foster mother, when your mother died, she even suckled you at her own breast, it would be good if women could be allowed to enter into homelessness. There's probably a pause there. If then, Ananda, Pajapati accepts the eight special rules, let that be reckoned as her ordination. So he changed his mind and allowed. I'll tell you about the eight special rules in a second. So the Buddha, he refused to allow and he refused his stepmother and aunt and this woman who was very important to him three times, and he refused Ananda three times,

[51:30]

and what do you think about that? Well, it's amazing that they brought that down. What does that mean? This is in something called the Kula Vaga, it's a Pali scripture, Kula Vaga. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's in there. Kula Vaga. It looks like these first women were of the Shakyan clan or the Kholian clan and were a little bit at loose ends, but we don't know about every one of them. Some of them may have, well, we actually have the record, their poems, so some of them did leave their husbands or had a death, maybe their husband died and they were turned towards the Dharma that way. I don't know about that.

[52:36]

I don't recall reading a poem where they left children. So, what's interesting, well, one thing that I find interesting is that this particular story of his refusal and all that is much more remembered and told about than the actual writings of the Theri at that time. We don't know their poems by heart. These are not things that are talked about a lot, these Enlightenment poems from the Buddhist time, you know, 500 B.C. But this particular story of his refusal was definitely passed down. This is what I mean by that kind of, to look at it with what was preserved and what was retold. Yes. In terms of how the retelling and remembering, I feel like, I'm just sort of tracking my own feelings, as you were going through earlier the history,

[53:37]

I could feel this incredible fear coming up. I mean, just thinking, this is not okay, talking like that. I mean, I could feel panic, actually. So, thinking about what's okay, what's not okay, you know. But I felt last week when Thayo spoke, I don't know, it was wonderful, actually. Because there was some, for me it's like the beginning of consciousness or something. But that's for both, sort of a transcendent thing. And I think the same thing in this story, actually what seems to be the emphasis is the Buddhist refusal, or even wherever women's status is the answer is not. But actually Ananda is kind of glossed over. So I sort of see Ananda and Thayo, or that Thayo story in a way, parallel.

[54:39]

Because in a way, I mean it's not just Thayo's we're picking on, but because in a way the same thing that's, especially if you have an androcentric society, both the person that is the suppressor is also the one that is the liberator, or has the potential in a way to, especially if you're very male, in this story that we're male-oriented, also has to be, maybe through, I don't know, has to be men that also open it as well. That's a very interesting point. Ananda actually was the one, not actually Buddha, not actually woman, but a third person who came through. I think that's true. And this is, you know, in going through this, it's very important not to accuse, during that time, what they were going through,

[55:42]

what their society was like, what their culture was like, but to actually study it and get an accurate picture. So usually it isn't, because of this norm, because it's the norm, it doesn't really fall to the males to kind of push for this. Mahapajapati walked and walked and dust-covered and swollen feet and crying. That's what I feel, and Rita Rose feels, pushed Ananda over. He saw that. He didn't go to the Buddha and say, gee, I bet women would really appreciate being able to go and study Dharma in this way. It's so helpful to people. Let's have an order of women. It wasn't Ananda's idea. It comes from the women and their perseverance and their sincerity, but she mentions the Dalai Lama. He supports the Tibetan women, the word for woman in Tibetan is low birth.

[56:42]

There's various difficulties with nuns in Buddhist countries now, and the Dalai Lama supports this, but it didn't originate from him. Let's do something about the women. It comes from the women. Women themselves feel it and want to make these changes and bring them in. But Ananda was open enough and moved, and I think of him as a heart, kind of compassionate guy, that he was really moved by that. The Buddha, what the Buddha was, I mean, we can theorize. He probably, some possible things are, he knew that if you had a male and a female order together, there's going to be a lot more organizational difficulties. And the laity are going to start getting involved, thinking that the people aren't keeping their vows. There's a lot of difficulty to have both. And his...

[57:46]

Separate bathrooms. Separate bathrooms, right. The main difference of Western Buddhism between Asian Buddhism and Western Buddhism is that women have full access to the teachings and all the practice opportunities, pretty much. That's the main difference between Asian Buddhism and Western Buddhism, that women from the start have had this opportunity. Do you feel that's true? Do I feel that's true? In your life. Yes, I actually do, although in terms of androcentrism, just anecdotally from Zen Center, I remember the first woman shuso. It was like a big deal. There was going to be a woman shuso at Tassajara. And who was going to be the first woman shuso? And who was going to be the first woman who was going to do a Dharma talk? That was like hot stuff. Now when I think about it now, it's like...

[58:47]

I felt that too was like a big deal to have a woman shuso. Isn't that funny? I mean, now, because we're so used... I think right now it's like, who's ready to be shuso? I really don't think it does matter or it doesn't come up. But what does come up, for example, someone said to me, I'm doing the lecture scheduling, and I had, I think, me, Galen, and Fu, and then Norman, and they said, oh, three women in a row, you know, lecturing. What is this? Nobody would ever have said, ever, boy, you've got three men talking in a row? Ed Brown, Norman, and Rev in a row? What's going on here? So it's like, you hear it, it's like, what a thing to say. And it had to do with scheduling, and they could do it, and he couldn't, she couldn't, so you've got your lecturers in line. But that's what I mean. It's like you begin to sort of hear

[59:48]

a comment like that, and it's part of this androcentric view, and I think we all share in it. It's like what you were just saying, Sonia, about feeling like what's going to happen, something bad is going to happen, because when you start saying this stuff, you begin to feel very exposed and very vulnerable, and like something's going to happen to you if you proceed yes-self. I was wondering what Suzuki Roshi's health was like. Well, he, um, he had one female disciple, Angie Runyon, who was ordained kind of right about the end of his life. But, I mean, he had Tasshar be male and female together, you know, right from the start, and I think he basically was pretty impressed with the spirit of American Zen and these young people who were just ready to do all this stuff with beginner's mind, right? And they were bound and determined.

[60:50]

In fact, there was no male and female shower. It was all one bath time when Tasshar first started. Everybody just showered and bathed together, which he asked to be changed. Because there were problems. He's a bunch of hippies. A bunch of hippies, that's right. So there were certain things he was ready, you know, if they want to bathe together, I guess it was unheard of in Japan, you know. So there was a lot of, um, he was willing to try, and then he'd say, no, we bathe separately, you know, things like that. But he had, you know, some people feel, shall I say this? There is a legacy, Suzuki Roshi's legacy, there is a kind of, um, there have been difficulties in terms of power abuse in the male-female realm,

[61:50]

teacher-student realm, and so forth. And some people actually have, don't quote me on this, this is a kind of theory, which I'm just throwing out, that Suzuki Roshi, you know, actually, someone felt that he didn't understand this area of American life, the sexuality, and all of that time, and he didn't get involved in a certain way. It wasn't brought into the practice life as much as it could have. This is someone's, you know, some feeling that some people have, because of various things that happened later. So, you know, I don't know what to say about that exactly. I have that feeling about Thich Nhat Hanh also. Something about Asian culture really does seek through a different lens. I was wondering, going back to the fertility period, the goddess religion, is it possible that part of this

[62:52]

has to do with the role that, if you have a religion in which there's a lot of ritual, in which somebody has to, for example, an abbot, has to really devote himself to do a kind of like administration, versus what I picture the goddess religion as being, that it's something that women can participate more because they're bearing children. You know what I'm saying? Kind of a separation of duties. In other words, if you have, I don't know what the goddess religion was like. Did they have women, I know that there were women priests. Could they, priestesses, could they also have children around while they were doing their duties around the temple? Because in most religions, it's a full-time job to be in these administrative positions. It's really hard to take care of children

[63:53]

and be a priest. I wonder how much the hierarchical male way that religions developed around the way men and women's functions were supported. Let's see if we can back up. I think in those early times, this was not a problem. It's just this was this is the way the women do it. They do it like this, and it includes this, this, and this. But as that got destroyed, and the question of even whether women, later on, even though the Buddha said right here, yes, women can attain everything, perfection, arhatship, stream-winner, all these things. Yes, they have the full capacity. But later on, that's even changed.

[64:54]

To think that someone could say women don't even have the capacity, they've got to change into a male body. So the state of mind that's able to say that in the face of these thousands of years where the full functioning was complete. It's not fertility. This is not fertility. This is the goddess religion. Often they say these little fertility gods. It's not just fertility. It's a cyclical thing which includes abundance, and birth, and all that, and nurturing, and caring for, and planting, and animals, and death. Death is right in there. The burial mounds were in these caves that were shaped like uteruses with blood, okra, and then there was regeneration. So it's this cyclical thing. So it's not just fertility. That's actually a, I don't know about perversion exactly, but this is from the male point of view

[65:57]

of what it is. It's much more than that. It includes death. That's equal. Equal life and death. The life, the sword that gives and takes life, that was the double axe. It's the sword that gives and takes life. So this was a very full, round, light and dark. So with that in mind, I'm not an archaeologist or anything, but I think as that progressed, and it was very women are not, they can't do that unless you, let's see. Yes, if you have children, it's very hard to be a home leaver and wander around and beg for food. So you make some choices there, but to say that you can't or when your children are grown that you're not allowed to be a home leaver is kind of another story. Or that home leaving is better. Or that home leaving is better. Yeah, but if someone wants to be a

[66:58]

home leaver, to be, then you have that opportunity is open to you as well. It's almost like Arlene's question comes out of somebody who's been raised. Right. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, you wouldn't ask that question. That's the thing that Sonia brought up that's so frightening is how much of it I find in myself. Even after spending a fair amount of time studying this stuff, it's still, I'm so wet to it. Yeah. Well, that's why, as you can tell, because my voice gets very emotional, it's so important. I feel like this study for me personally has been so important in terms of awakening my, you know, the part of ego which is sort of gender based, you know, is a whole study in and of itself in terms of what we assume and our concepts, you know, that we're working with always in Buddhism, and to have these whole set that are totally unexamined,

[68:00]

you know. So that's what this class is trying to do. Yes. So are you saying that because maybe the man took care of the children? Would you say a little bit more what you mean, Ron? You mean back in the goddess times? What's the word that we've been using? Androcentric? Yeah. Being androcentric because we're not considering that maybe the men took care of the children. Is that what you're saying? Or more that in those goddess temples, we're just wondering how the women took care of the men. In other words, if the religion wouldn't separate out, wouldn't exclude what women do. The way they do in our world. You know, you don't even, in some places, you can't even bring children into the church or the temples. There's no place for them.

[69:01]

I thought the question was who would take care, how would the women take care of the children while they were performing these things, and I thought that you were saying it was androcentricism because we weren't saying, well, probably the men took care of the children while the women were doing it. I was thinking to even think that women couldn't do it all. The way it's done is the way women do it. Well, I think, we don't exactly know how the children were taken care of, but if it's a partnership, then you work it out. Somehow, there's child care. It's included, everything is included. There's some hand over here. I had my hand up and I think it was answered because I felt like your question was based in Western art, how we think of how it can be. I was thinking along those lines, too, that now there

[70:01]

are women who are, for example, rabbis who have children, and their husbands do help take care of the children, and the community does as well because everyone feels it's important for them to take on that role. Same with you at Green Gulch. Another woman at Green Gulch had a lot of responsibility. You have children. The community helps. The men help. I think there is a change that's happening. I was telling you that the memorial service that Hu did, that Hu was at the altar and Sabrina was sitting in her lap and chattering away. I felt this was so astounding and so beautiful that this priest could be a mother and that her child could be there in her lap. The fact that we see that as astounding, like at Norman's mountain

[71:01]

seat ceremony, he had his two boys that he's working with, little boys, ask questions and his wife, Kathy, his wife, Kathy Fisher, spoke at the end. She said this great thing. How many of you were there? She talked about how Norman was like Buanna, this gorilla, who was gentle, loved children, could calm people. He'd go into these fighting gorillas and sit there. Buanna. And then they'd calm down and then he'd go out. She thought Norman was just like that. Anyway, she gave this great thing right at the end. Very zen. Kathy's a priest too. It was great. But then, I won't say who, but one of the Japanese priests came up and said, you know, the fact that Norman thanked his wife. He made this comment. He said, very unusual that you thanked your wife. Because Norman thanked all these people and Kathy most of all for supporting him and being his Dharma buddy. And this was

[72:01]

brought out as how unusual that he should thank his wife. And that children, it was unusual that children, it was the first time I'd seen a mountain seed ceremony, that was my third, where children asked questions in the mando part. Anyway, this is, you know, it is astounding. We are astounded because it's not, we're not used to it. Let's see, how are we doing for time? Quarter to or so. I wanted to present some more things. Do you want to talk some more? Should I keep going a little bit? Or do you want to keep going? So this thing about the androcentric scholarship makes much of the story of the reluctance to ordain. You know, this receives a lot of attention. Buddha was reluctant to ordain rather than the songs of the Therigata, which I already said. Now, he also said, and this is supposedly a later

[73:02]

accretion, is that the word? That happened according to one scholar about 500 years later, there's another thing that he said which he predicts, if women joined the order, then the Buddha Dharma would have lasted so many thousand years, but now it will only last 500 years because women are going to join. This, from the internal, however they study this, the feeling is that this was later. This happened when the Mahayana was on the rise and it was threatening the early Buddhism. It's not Theravada. Theravada was just one of about 17 different schools and its canon was preserved. The other ones were destroyed when the Muslims destroyed all the temples and the monasteries in India. So it's really more accurate to say early Indian Buddhism rather than Theravada because it's really just one, but we do have the Theravada canon.

[74:03]

So the eight special rules, I'd just like to go over those because he said, yes, the women can do it if they say yes to these eight special rules and these are they. Number one, a nun, even of a hundred years standing, shall respectfully greet, rise up in the presence of, bow down before, and perform all proper duties toward a monk ordained even a day. That's the first of the rules. Now Mahapashapati lived to be 120 and she had a lot of, she was a great teacher, she had a lot of disciples, but if a young novice monk was ordained that day she would have to rise up and bow down to him. That particular rule she asked in one version, she asked

[75:06]

if that could be rescinded. At one point she said it would be good, oh Lord, if that first rule, let's see where is it? Oh, I don't have it. You got it, where she says that? Should I read that? Yeah, why don't you read that? I would ask one thing of the blessed one Ananda. It would be good if the blessed one would allow making salutations, standing up in the presence of another, paying reverence, and the proper performance of duties to take place equally between both bhikshus and bhikshunis bhikshunis according to seniority and the venerable Ananda went to the blessed one and repeated her words to him This is impossible Ananda, and I cannot allow it. Even those teachers of false doctrines don't permit such conduct in relation to women. How much less can the Tathagata allow it?

[76:08]

So the Buddha you know, this is very interesting this is, you know, thank you Rita Gross she's really, really gotten into this she says the home leavers you know, they left everything behind all their old life, everything clothing, their food, you know they carried one needle and a robe and they wandered, they left everything behind except the gender thing except the male-female dominance thing that was the they retained that don't you find that interesting? that was one of the that was the only thing in terms of their old life that was left in place now this is something interesting let me read some more of the eight special the eight rules the second one A nun is not to spend the rainy season in a district where there is no monk so if you go to practice period, you can't have just a women's practice period

[77:13]

you've got to have a monk around ok every half moon a nun is to await two things from the order of monks the date of the Upasata that's the Bodhisattva ceremony well, it's what the Bodhisattva ceremony was based on, the Upasata ceremony and the time the monks will come to give teaching, so they got together on that full moon and the new moon for this ceremony but they had to have monks there for the confession and that after the rain retreats this is number four, the nuns are to hold Pavarana that's to inquire as to whether any faults have been committed before both sanghas, that of the monks and that of the nuns, in respect to what has been seen, what has been heard and what has been suspected so they have these ceremonies, if someone's been breaking the precepts, they have a lot of precepts, not just the, there's like 250 plus then you say you know, so and so, or I have broken and they have to do that with both sanghas they can't just, it's not official

[78:14]

if they just do it by themselves the fifth is a nun who has been guilty of a serious offense must undergo the Manatha discipline before both sanghas, that of the monks and that of the nuns and that's a kind of way by which they give not penance exactly, but expiation or expulsion from the order whatever number six, when a novice has trained for two years in the six precepts the first five precepts, plus the precept of taking one meal a day before noon she should seek ordination from both sanghas, so you can't just get ordained by the woman another woman, nun, you have to get her from the male as well which is, that particular rule has affected the order greatly, because you have the full ordination of women has been lost in Theravada countries and Thailand and these places, they don't have full ordination

[79:16]

the only place they have it now is Taiwan, where you can go and get full ordination, where they erect the ordination platform and there's a proper both sanghas to do it a nun is not to revile or abuse a monk under any circumstances, number seven number eight admonition by nuns of monks is forbidden, admonition of nuns by monks is not forbidden so these eight special rules, now this is interesting about them there is no inherent barrier to spiritual practice in these rules, they're like these social things okay, so we got to get up, we got to bow you can't, you know, they got to be here when we say that sign, but there was there was no hindrance that these rules had to actually doing your dhalsan practice or doing your practices, carrying out your vows, there's no, the rules do not get in the way of that they got they were not given

[80:17]

inferior spiritual instruction they got the exact same meditation instruction as the male okay, so they also wore the same outfits, they shaved their head, they had a separate kind of, you know you're only supposed to have a certain number of rows but they also had a garment for when they were menstruating so that was like their extra thing they got to have but other than that everything was the same, their lifestyle they had the exact same practices and this is interesting the monastic code protected nuns from monks who might demand that they do their washing for them, or sewing, or do cleaning or fix them food or something like that, there were specific things in the code that said monks couldn't ask the nuns to do that kind of stuff for them so they were protected from being you know, prevailed upon to do these housewifely duties for the order of monks but there was this formal subordination in terms of you know, seniority, that they had to have male

[81:19]

presence for nations and things like that and that had kind of subtle ways that undermined the order over the years and for example, because you couldn't admonish, like that one about not admonishing a monk, a nun couldn't admonish, which meant that a teacher there weren't teachers did not get developed they couldn't they couldn't be in a position where they could do what needed to be done vis-a-vis they could in a nun's order and admonish or do whatever, but they couldn't with the men with the monks, so there were never great women teachers of both groups which also meant that the laity, which is often drawn to the great teachers, right we know how this happens gave them less economic support so the nun's order got less economic support

[82:21]

and there were never these great teachers and scholars and so forth that were recognized so this over time had kind of a subtle eroding effect on the order just that first one or just that not admonishing and also this thing about seniority, where you didn't receive the respect within the community and so this had effects outside the community as well and also in Buddhism because lineages are so important if you didn't have students who you know, male and female students I'm sorry, I was just wondering if you could repeat number 7 again number 7 number 7 um a nun is not to revile or abuse a monk under any circumstances well, I mean I would hope that nobody would revile or abuse

[83:23]

I mean it doesn't say a monk can revile and abuse, they're just you know, if someone loses their temper, the nun isn't allowed to under any circumstances you know oh, it's 9 o'clock so can I ask one question? yes I'm curious when I was in school I got the history of the world through a very androcentric catholic church kind of deal so did the women that are younger hear more about the paleolithic time? no

[84:24]

read The Chalice and the Blade I really highly recommend it I think for the most part no, that we didn't hear more about it, but I think universities now there's much more access to those kinds of information okay, so we'll chant our closing dedication dedication may they be our intention

[85:06]

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