Women and Shin Buddhism: Contemporary Responses to a Challenging Doctrine

There is a challenging teaching regarding women's bodies found in the Pure Land Sutras, which are authoritative for Shin Buddhism: the thirty-fifth vow of Dharmākara Buddha, which reads, "If, when I attain Buddhahood, women in the immeasurable and inconceivable Buddha lands of the 10 directions who, having heard my Name, rejoice in faith, awaken aspiration for enlightenment, and wish to renounce womanhood, should after death be reborn again as women, may I not attain perfect enlightenment." In this article, I explore five different twentieth/twenty-first-century responses to this teaching, and the kinds of discrimination against women it has helped foster. I hope to show that contemporary women are actively engaged in resisting traditional negative interpretations and fostering new roles for themselves that are transformative for Shin Buddhism as a whole, both in doctrine and practice.