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3. A Feminist Exegesis of Non-Self: Constitution of Personhood and Identity
- State University of New York Press
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59 Socio-Ethical Dimensions of Early Buddhism BCE both indicated the prominence of the bhikkhun¥-s prior to that time and explained the decline of the Bhikkhun¥ Sangha afterwards: Nuns were so prominent that monks kept promulgating rules to keep them in check . . . Monks would have had no need to make special rules to limit nuns’ actions and rights if nuns hadn’t already shown monks how independent they could be. . . . It seems likely that the nuns lost their impact because the monks asserted their own primacy in the Sangha, and created regulations that would keep the women permanently in their place.136 The appearance of the eight revered conditions for the bhikkhun¥-s in the first century BCE was therefore probably the bhikkhu-s’ reaction to the active and independent roles that the bhikkhun¥-s had played in the first few hundred years of Buddhism. One cannot conclusively attribute all of the discriminatory regulations against women to the male compilers in the first century BCE, though. The Buddha parted with the self-mortifying asceticism that was the norm amongst wandering renunciates at the time, and taught the “middle way” of neither indulgence nor asceticism. This incurred accusations of laxity in discipline from other wandering ascetics as well as from the laity who equated sanctity with the severity of practices.137 The admission of women among male renunciates would have further subjected the Buddhist Sangha to criticisms and attacks, considering that celibacy was the norm amongst the anti-Bråhmanic renunciates at the time of the Buddha, and renunciation was generally seen as a men’s preserve. It was therefore possible that the Buddha himself might have chosen to respond to those criticisms by complying with the patriarchal norms and putting more restrictions on women. That is, in his dealings with criticisms, the Buddha himself might have been androcentric and patriarchal in that he followed the patriarchal norms of his time that reflected mainly male concerns and male biases. Being androcentric and patriarchal, however, is not the same as being misogynist, and the Buddha was not misogynist even if one takes the Påli Canon to be his exact words. To say the least, he did unequivocally affirm the equal potentials of women in reaching nibbåna, and he did establish the Bhikkhun¥ Sangha.138 Regardless of the Buddha’s own stance, which remains unverifiable , it seems that the requirement of celibacy was the main reason for many of the regulations about and against women. Aside from 60 This-Worldly Nibbåna guarding the reputation of the Buddhist Sangha consisting of both male and female renunciates, the male compilers of the Canon were also preoccupied with keeping their own sexual desires contained, which was evidenced in the numerous cautions against women’s power over men in the Nikåya texts. For instance, it was recorded that the Buddha instructed the bhikkhu-s to be wary of the sight, sound, scent, taste or touch of a woman.139 On occasions the caution took a misogynist tone and womankind was compared to a black snake: “she is unclean, bad-smelling, timid, fearful and betrays friends.”140 Noteworthy is that these misogynist tones are found in the Anguttara Nikåya, the collection that focused on personal edification and catered to the upper-class males who were most concerned with self-purification. More importantly, the bhikkhun¥-s were instructed to be wary of the sight, sound, scent, taste, or touch of a man as well. There were accounts of men seducing or raping bhikkhun¥-s, just as there were accounts of women tempting bhikkhu-s. What was expressed in these passages, then, was not so much that women by nature were temptresses, but that sexual desires could be dangerously powerful. As a result, celibates of both sexes would need repeated cautions and warnings.141 The fact that the cautions against feminine wiles exceeded the cautions against male temptations both in number and in the severity of language does not prove that early Buddhism as a whole was misogynist. First, as discussed in Chapter 1, the Canon was compiled mostly in male hands and intended mainly for a male audience, and so the messages unsurprisingly betrayed androcentrism. Second, there were (and still are) far more women lay followers than men, and therefore in fulfilling the requirement of maintaining contact with the laity on a daily basis142 the bhikkhu-s might have experienced more temptations than the bhikkhun¥-s and...