Barbara McHugh – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: Buddhist Misogyny Revisited – Part I by Barbara McHugh

Recently, I wrote a novel about the Buddha’s wife disguising herself as a man to join his religious community. When I showed the manuscript to a Buddhist friend, whose knowledge and practice I respect greatly, he expressed apprehension that it violated the basic myth of Buddhism. I assumed he meant that my storyline of gender deception strays too far from the versions of the Buddha’s life as recorded in the traditional canon, which adherents regard as the Buddha’s inviolable teachings. The last thing I wanted to do was to misrepresent these teachings.

What does it mean “to violate a myth”? If I had portrayed the Buddha as a psycho-killer or wife-beater, I could appreciate this charge, but I had presented an enlightened Buddha whose values were in alignment with standard scripture and the mores of his day. The change I made was to tell the story from a woman’s point of view, and to do so, I modified some of the traditional legends and created new material to make my choices plausible. Predictably, my modifications came up against many of the stories’ misogynistic elements.

For instance, in the canon, the Buddha initially refuses to admit women to the monastic order. Eventually his attendant Ananda persuades him, but then the Buddha adds 104 extra rules for nuns, eight of which (the Garudammas) clearly put women in an inferior position. One rule states: “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.” The Buddha also told Ananda that thanks to the admission of women, the Dharma (the teachings and practices of Buddhism) would die out after only 500 years.

Buddhist Misogyny Revisited – Part II by Barbara McHugh

Read Part I here first…

Webster defines myth as “a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon,” and in this way myths tell us who we are. Unfortunately, they include stories, from Adam and Eve to Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, that define women by using criteria such as gullibility, passivity, and the size of their feet.

But today women are shining light on the likes of Circe, Mary Magdalene, and Briseus, the young woman dismissed by Homer as an impediment to Achilles’s higher purposes. These stories counter the traditional narratives that restrict women, as well as men, to roles that rob them of their full humanity. In my novel, Bride of the Buddha, the Buddha’s wife embarks on a spiritual journey of her own. When her quest leads her to the Buddha’s all-male sangha, she disguises herself as a monk, eventually becoming Ananda, who in the scriptures is the Buddha’s attendant, the one who struggles with all the questions unenlightened practitioners face today. The answers to these questions cannot be stated as propositions; they must be felt and lived. Hopefully, my version of Ananda suggests new possibilities for feeling and living these responses. If this “violates” the myth, it does not violate the Buddha’s fundamental views.

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