Images of Women in Early Buddhism and Christian Gnosticism - Report Example

Topic: Summarizing the Argument and Considering Areas for Further Research Topic/Background - What is the topic of the article? On which event, issue, institution, phenomenon, and/or person does the author focus? In which time period did the subject of the essay exist or take place? In which geographical area? What background information did the author find it necessary to provide? Images of Women in Early Buddhism and Christian Gnosticism Though we tend to think of Eastern and Western religions as separate and distinct traditions, their ancient scriptures exhibit some remarkable similarities. In particular, the authors of early Buddhist and Christian Gnostic scriptures saw human beings as trapped by their insatiable appetite for sensual pleasures in a cycle of birth and death. As a way of escaping the bondage of the human condition, the scriptures of both traditions prescribed ascetic practices. This paper is concerned primarily with the shared attitudes of these ascetic authors towards women. They perceived women as less rational than men and more susceptible to the weaknesses of the flesh; their writings vilified womens bodies as "impure “and "defective" by nature. These texts associate women with the body and all of its unpleasant functions. In contrast to men, women were symbols of sensual mentality. Liberation for women involved a transformation of the female body and a repudiation of their female nature. Why should these negative attitudes towards women persist when we know that women actively supported and participated in the religious life of both Buddhist and Gnostic communities? To answer this question, we must first examine the context in which these apparent misogynist statements occur. The texts selected for analysis include material from the third century B.C.E. compilation of Buddhist monks and nuns verses, the Theragath and the Therigatha, from some of the earliest Mahayana sutras and the treatises of the philosophers Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, composed between the first and third centuries C.E., and material from the Nag Hammadi collection of Gnostictexts, written about the same time as the early Mahayana literature.Two major images of women emerge from these Buddhist and Gnostic texts:(1) women as sensual, seductive, and capable of entrapping others in the cycle of birth and death; and (2) women as compassionate, wise, and capable of enlightening others and leading them towards the divine realm. 2. Problem - What problem does the author attempt to solve? How does this problem lead the author to ask the following question? The material I have chosen to examine falls into four categories: (1) Buddhist and Gnostic myths about the fall of humanity, (2) Buddhist and Gnostic attitudes towards women’s bodies, (3) transformation of womens bodies, and (4) the transformative power of feminine insight/wisdom. 3. Research Question - What research question does the author pose? Buddhist and Gnostic scriptures assume the existence of a state of perfection that is stable, incorporeal, luminous, and asexual. Yet the authors of these texts are confronted with the imperfect world of human beings, a realm in which impermanence, corporeality, darkness, and sexuality prevail. Consequently, elaborate myths were put forth to explain how the current degenerate state of humanity came about. Both sets of "literary myths" reveal similar patterns of binary opposition. Buddhist and Gnostic myths of the fall describe the development of dualistic distinctions: heaven/earth, light/darkness, life/death, rest/motion, in-corporeality/corporeality, asexuality/sexuality, and male/female. The fall of humanity signifies the completion of a change in status, a change from residence in heaven to residence on earth, from possession of luminous, incorporeal, and asexual natures to the possession of dark, corporeal, sexual natures. However, the aspect of these myths that most concerns us here is their tendency to associate the fall with an awareness of sexuality and the implication that the greater share of the blame for the fall belongs to women (or the feminine). 4. Thesis - What is the answer to the author’s research question or the solution to the problem that s/he poses? Where does the author state/re-state the thesis? According to an early Buddhist myth, the divine realm of self-luminous and incorporeal beings, who fed only on joy, after a long period of time, inevitably began to disintegrate. The earth formed a scum on the surface of the waters, and, when beings ate that earth, they lost their luminosity and acquired corporeal bodies. Soon after they ate this earthly food, sexual differences appeared on their bodies, and following on these sexual differences came lust and sexual intercourse.1 In analyzing this myth, it is important to note that the word which this text uses to denote the earth is feminine in gender (pathavi). The well-known correlation between the fecundity of the earth and the fertility of women would suggest that this is no grammatical accident. These beings desire for earth and their enjoyment of her substance brought about sexual differences. The desire and enjoyment that the awareness of these sexual differences generated further accelerated the downfall. Tasting the earth, that is, the feminine, culminated in the fallen state of humanity. 5. Claims - What claims does the author develop and support in making his/her overall argument? The Christian heresiologist Irenaeus in Adversus haerses attributes a similar myth to the Gnostics. This myth relates that Adam and Eve once had bodiesthat were luminous and incorporeal and that the act of eating the forbidden fruit led to their loss of the luminous divine substance and to their expulsion from heaven. After the fall, their bodies became dark and material. They sated themselves with earthly food, sexual intercourse followed, and Cain was conceived. While none of the mythological accounts of the fall in the Nag Hammad collection corresponds directly with the myth that Irenaeus recounts, a similar myth in the Apocryphon of John speaks of the perfect, divine realm from which a series of luminous beings emanate. 6. Evidence - What evidence is provided to support each claim? (In writing your summary, be specific when naming the evidence used by author.) Is this evidence: facts, examples, metaphors, case studies, statistics, and testimonies? Something else? According to this text, the fall occurs when the female power Sophia ("Wisdom") chooses to create a being on her own. This created being, in possession of a portion of his mothers light and power, creates the archons, which assist him in the creation of man. These jealous archons conspire to make mans body material, and from his material body they create woman. The woman, Eve, according to another text entitled On the Origin of the World, succumbs to temptation and tempts Adam as well, with the result that "they saw that they were naked and they became enamored of one another. Other tractates, The Book of Thomas the Contender and The Gospel of Philip, associate the act of eating from the tree of knowledge with the bestial transformation of the body and with the procreation of beasts by sexual intercourse. Tasting the forbidden fruit, an act initiated by the woman Eve, resulted in the fall; and, as in the Buddhist myth of humanitys fall, knowledge of sexual differences, sexual desire, and sexual intercourse all are associated withhumanitys present degenerate condition. Both the Buddhist and Gnostic accounts of the fall have in common the following sequence of events: a deliberate act of eating brings about the transformation of originally luminous, incorporeal, and asexual nature into one that is now dark, material, and sexual. This transformation, in turn, brings about an awakening of sexual desire and the subsequent satisfaction of this desire through sexual intercourse. These scriptures imply that, since sexuality was involved in the fall, abstention from sexual pleasures will weaken the ties that bind humanity to the lower material world and thus enable seekers after enlightenment to ascend to the luminous state of perfection forfeited by their ancestors. The theme of liberation from the bondage of desire dominated the works of many Buddhist monks. Their use of womens bodies as metaphors for desire derives from the example set by the legendary accounts of the Buddhas life. In these legends, the event that decisively turns the young prince Siddhartha’s thoughts away from sensual pleasures and towards the religious life is the sight of the sleeping, slobbering and snoring female musicians and dancers, provided for his amusement by his doting father. Voluptuous women again confront him years later on the eve of his enlightenment. Delight, Discontent, and Desire, the daughters of the Buddhas evil adversary, Mara ("Death"), also failto distract him from his quest for enlightenment. These tales of nocturnal temptation, which have their parallels in Christian ascetic writings, also, in St. Antonys demons, for instance, inspired much of the Buddhist misogynist statements. The monk Nagasamala describes a dancing girl as being "like a snare of death spread out." Nor is this negative appraisal of the charms of womens bodies confined to monks, for the nun Vimala says: I adorned this body, painted well, Accosting fools, I stood at the brothels door, Like a hunter, after laying out the snare. According to tradition, this particular nun had tried to ensnare the elder Moggallana. His censure of her led to her repentance and eventual entrance into the order of nuns. These intemperate attacks on the impurity of womens bodies and sexual intercourse continue in the works of Mahayana monks. "Just as a fool lusts for an ornamented pot of filth," Nagarjuna says, "so foolish, deluded people lust for women." His disciple Aryadeva concurs, reviling men who lust after women as being no better than dogs. Drawing upon the analogy between eating earth and enjoying sexual pleasures, developed in the myth of the fall cited above, he compares men who delight in sexual pleasures to worms which feed on filth. The point of view presented in these works perceives women as bound by sexual intercourse and its result, the birth of children. "Women die insatiable and indefatigable in respect to two things, O monks," the venerable Kaccana says. "Which two? Sexual intercourse and giving birth." Sexual intercourse and the birth of children were condemned as impediments to full participation in the religious life for both men and women. Early Buddhist scriptures recommended celibacy and the renunciation of family life for both sexes, based on the example set by the Buddha himself when he left behind his wife and son Rahula ("Impediment") to take up the homeless life. Negative attitudes towards sexual intercourse and childbearing occur also in the Christian Gnostic scriptures. It is these activities of sexual intercourse and procreation that Elaine Pagels suggests Jesus had in mind when he urged his disciples, including Mary Magdalene, to "destroy the works of femaleness" in The Dialogue of the Savior."1 The Paraphrase of Shem stresses the bestial nature of both sexual intercourse and childbirth: "For in the place where their darkness and their fire mixed with each other beasts were brought forth. ‘This tractate and others refer to sexual intercourse as "impure" and as “unclean rubbing." Moreover, the Gnostics, like the Buddhists, repudiate sexual intercourse not only because the act defiles the body but because of its association with suffering. "As long as the soul keeps running about everywhere copulating with whomever she meets and defiling her," The Exegesis on the Soul reports, "she exists suffering, her just deserts." Buddhist and Gnostics alike share the notion that defilement and suffering ensue from passionate involvement with the material world. Both Buddhist and Gnostic ascetics condemn sexual intercourse for two reasons. First, any sexual contact with a womans body defiles a man. Second, sexual intercourse can result in the birth of a child, further strengthening the ties to this imperfect world. TRANSFORMATION OF WOMENS BODIES Defilement, suffering, and incessant motion characterize the inferior realm of sexual desire, the lowest of all the multiple levels of existence, according to the Buddhist and Gnostic cosmologies. The higher levels of existence, in which material form and sexual desire are absent, are pure, blissful, and at rest. Ascension to these pure realms is possible only after the rejection of sexual desire in favor of sexual abstinence, and a shift in attention from the stimuli given in sensory experience towards the noetic experience of meditative trance. Both Buddhist and Gnostic writers consider this shift in attention as a transition from "female" thought processes, that is, those associated with sexual desires, to "male" ones, that is, those associated with meditative trance. The example of Gopika illustrates the early Buddhist belief that a woman must cultivate a "male" mind prior to entering heaven. "She abandoned a womans mentality and cultivated a mans mentality," the Discourse on Sakkas Questions (Sakkapatnasuttanta) relates, "and after her death and the breaking apart of her body, she was reborn into heaven, Sakkas world, into fellowship with the thirty-three gods, into son ship with us." This passage and later ones in the early Mahayana literature claim that a womans rebirth as a male is a prerequisite for entrance into heaven, the pure lands, or for becoming a Buddha. In the satra, Perfection of Insight in Eight Thousand Lines (Astasahasrikaprajnaparamita) the Buddha predicts that a goddess of the Ganges will be reborn eventually as the Tathagata SuvargapuSpa( "Golden Flower").But first she must undergo a change of sex. The Buddha tells his favorite disciple Ananda: "This goddess of the Ganges will change her female nature and acquire a male nature; after her death, she will be reborn in the Buddha field of the Tathagata, Arhat, Fully-Enlightened Buddha AkSobhya, in the world system called Delight. In another Mahayana satra, the princess Visuddhisraddha ("Pure Faith") asks the Buddha what a woman must do to transform her female body. TheBuddha replies that a woman must avoid envy, stinginess, flattery, anger, betruthful, slander no one, abandon desire and wrong views, and revere the Buddha and his Teaching, make offerings to monks and brahmins, give up attachment to home and family, accept the precepts, have no evil thoughts, be indifferent to her female body, persist in the intention to seek enlightenment and the qualities of the Great Man, and regard worldly life as being like an illusion or a dream. She agrees to these conditions and the Buddha then predicts that Visuddhisraddha and her companions will be reborn in the Tusita heaven as men and attain Buddhahood. Other Mahayana sutras associate the transformation of the female body with an act of truth. In The Questions Concerning the Daughter Sumati (Sumatidarikaprccha) but, he precocious eight year old daughter of a layman and the Bodhisattva ManjusrI discuss the emptiness of all things. When he asks, "Why havent you changed your female body?" she retorts that the femaleness of her body is untenable, for things are neither male nor female. She then performs an act of truth: If it is true that I will become a Buddha, then may I now change into a man. In confirmation of the truth of her declaration, the requested transformation takes place. In this passage, the sexual transformation underscores the awareness that the terms "male" and "female" attach to forms, conventionally held to be male or female, but which ultimately have no real immutable nature of their own. Christian Gnostic scriptures also indicate that entrance into heaven requires the transformation of females into males. In The Gospel of Thomas Jesus says of Mary: I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Mary herself tells the disciples in The Gospel of Mary that instead of weeping for the Savior they ought to "praise his greatness, for he has prepared us and made us into men." This preparation, as the tractate Zostrianos suggests, consists of strengthening the intellectual part of the soul as it ascends to the higher realms. Zostrianos, the narrator of the text that bears his name, recounts how he was brought to "the first-appearing, great, male, perfect Mind." He urges all people to "flee from the madness and bondage of femininity and choose for yourselves the salvation of masculinity. This tractate and others in the Nag Hammadi collection suggest that leaving behind the female nature entails a rejection of the passions, that is, anger, envy, jealousy, desire, and greed. The adoption of the masculine nature signifies an orientation towards the passionless state of perfection. Yet entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, according to The Gospel of Thomas, comes "when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male be not male nor the female be female.” Ultimately, the distinctions "male" and "female" do not apply. Given the tendency in these Buddhist and Gnostic scriptures to associate women with imperfection, the scriptures then decreed that women must become men. In many instances, this transformation involved a transition in mental attitude from a preoccupation with sexuality to a concern with spirituality, and hence a figurative rather than a literal transformation. However, even though ascetic practices do not literally make women into men, asceticism seems rooted in fear and disgust for womens bodily functions. Fasting will stop a womans menstrual flow; sexual abstinence will prevent her from bearing children. Shaving off a womans hair and enjoining her to wear shapeless garments, identical to those worn by monks, also contribute to the impression that women were expected to transform their female nature, physically as well as mentally. THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF FEMININE INSIGHT/WISDOM The acquisition of insight (panna, prajan), a term grammatically feminine, makes possible the transformation of women into men. The early Buddhist scriptures describe insight as an understanding that searches out and discerns the truth about the nature of things. Her light casts out darkness; and, as a sword, she cuts through lust, hatred, and delusion, the defilements that bind beings to the cycle of birth and death. Just as the Buddha drew out the arrow of intelligence and so defeated Mara and his armies, the nun Soma takes aim at Mara, who had attempted to disrupt her meditative concentration. In reply to his taunt that a woman has just enough intelligence to test if rice is cooked by rolling it between her two fingers, she says: What could a womans nature do to us, When mind is well-concentrated, When knowledge remains In someone who has thorough insight Into the Teaching? Everywhere pleasure is destroyed, The mass of darkness pierced through Thus know, 0 Evil One, you are defeated, Death. 7. Counter-evidence/ Counter-argument - Where does the author refer to points of view different from his/her own? Where does s/he address counter-evidence or counter-arguments? Label the evidence. Insight here is the power that effects the transformation of mentality bound up with sensual desires and leaves in its place a mentality focused on spiritual attainment. The change of sex depicted in the early Mahayana literature also occurs because of insight. Insight into the truth that all things ultimately are the same, resemble magical illusions, and are thus empty of a true, no transformable nature of their own, renders possible the transformation of women into men and men into women, as in the passage from The Teachings of Vimalakirti(Vimalakirtinirdefa) when the goddess uses her magical power to transform the monk Sariputra so that he appears in her form and she in his. The Mahayana perfection of insight literature extolls the virtue of perfecting this insight. This literature personifies the perfection of insight as female, as being the "mother of all the Buddhas." The Perfection of Insight in Eight Thousand Lines emphasizes her creative powers as a mother: "She is the mother, the creator of Tathagatas, Arhats, Fully Enlightened Buddhas, the revealer of omniscience, the one who makes the world visible. She is described also as a source of light, driving out the darkness brought on by defilement and erroneous opinions. The protective support of perfect insight is compared in this text to a plank from a ship, wrecked in the middle of the ocean, which enables the person who holds fast to it to cross safely over to the other shore. The Christian Gnostic scriptures also personify wisdom as female, reflecting the fact that the Greek term for wisdom (sophia) also is feminine in gender. The Gnostic texts attribute creative power to wisdom; she is referred to as "mother of the living." Her creative power and light pass on in diminished quantities to her offspring. When he arrogantly proclaims himself "God" and says: If anything else exists before me let it appear, she immediately "stretched forth her finger, and introduced light into matter, and she followed it down intothe region of chaos. " 8. Rebuttal - Where does the author give reasons to explain the weakness of the counter-evidence/ counter-argument, or explain why his/her claims are stronger than others’ claims? According to many Gnostic tractates, particles or seeds of light trapped within material bodies derive from the light of Wisdom which filtered down in the process of creation. Wisdoms light illumines beings and makes possible their grasp of the truth. A vision in the form of a woman appeared to Marcus and told him: "I wish to show you truth herself; for I have brought her down from above so that you may see her without a veil." Irenaeus relates that the followers of Marcus and Valentinus prayed to the divine mother as "mystical, eternal Silence," "she who was before all things," "grace," and "incorruptible wisdom." Other Gnostics, according to his account, say that Wisdom felt compassion for Adam and Eve and transmitted to them a portion of her light so that "they recognized that they were naked and knew the material nature of the body, and they knew that they bore the burden of death; but they were patient, recognizing that the body contained them only for a while." The mother saved what was her own: the particles of light. 9. Significance/implications - Where does the author explain why his/her question or thesis is significant or suggests implications of his/her argument? Both Buddhist and Gnostic scriptures speak of the power of insight/wisdom to transform material bondage into spiritual freedom. She illumines the truth so that beings may ascend to the perfect luminous realm, and thereby escape death and reincarnation. And both traditions describe insight/wisdom in feminine terms as a creative, nurturing mother. Topic: Summarizing the Argument and Considering Areas for Further Research The quest for enlightenment is possible, both for men and women, only through individual effort with the correct spiritual procedure for self-realization. This is the sum and substance of the Karen Christiana Lang’s arguments. In that state of enlightenment, one directly experiences illumination within. According to the author, the early Buddhist and Christian Gnostic supposition that creatures were once incandescent disembodied and genderless means the same. Achieving the state of perfection is a process, and the inquisitive one pursues that process for attaining enlightenment. Both traditions articulate extreme, rather perverted views of about sex and in the initial part of her paper the author argues that women command no respect whatsoever and their existence is inferior as compared to men viewed from all ends. To curb the sexual desire is supposed to be the supreme objective of life. According to those traditions, body is the storehouse of negativities as such both the traditions advocate ascetic practices and it tantamount to severe punishment for the body in the form of fasting and abstinence. The appearance of the body is described by them as dark, gross and it is material in form. Earthly food and sexual intercourse are termed as negativities. These are all mind-level arguments and do not find favor with both the traditions. The practice of meditation is the spiritual effort to transcend the mind-barrier to reach the state of bliss wherein peace and happiness alone reign. Many Gnostics believe that the Divine can be directly experienced, if one follows the prescribed procedure of meditation and contemplation which will lead to the goal of experiencing the divinity directly. At that point, the Self merges with the divinity and separateness between the two vanishes completely. That is known as the state of self-realization. Gnostic approach to spiritual realization is simple and straightforward and does not involve tension-creating and laborious procedures. Scriptures and sermons take the backseat as compared to the process of direct-experiencing. It is not possible to experience the divine through scriptures or transmit the divine experience through words. No secrecy is involved in this spiritual procedure but the level of transcendence is beyond arguments and counterarguments. The author states that the ascetic writers of the era compare mind to the masculine and body to the feminine. The later is the abode of sexual desires. When one transcends the mind, one is able to make contact with the supreme reality whose nature is luminous, stable, incorporeal, and asexual state of perfection. Beyond this there is nothing to know, as it is the ultimate state. Buddhist and Gnostic scriptures articulate the same process and the ultimate objective to be reached are identical and they highlight the dualistic distinctions between male/female. They prescribe spiritual practices to awaken the inner world of an individual are more or less identical in both the traditions. In answering humanity’s fall from perfection, Buddhist and Gnostic myths take the leading role to articulate their viewpoints about the inferior position of women by linking it with the parallels of the fructification of the Earth and the enjoyment of the woman’s sexuality and the fruits that generate on account of the beneficence of earth. The association of earth with blackness, corporeality, and contamination led to these same merits being applied analogously to women. And taking their cues from these mythological connotations, Buddhist and Gnostic writers employed women as proper metaphors for the deficiencies of this world. Although the ascetic writers of both traditions embodied the deficiencies of this world by their explanations of the contaminations and flaws of women’s bodies, they envisioned their denunciation to apply to all human bodies as being fundamentally "bags of dung." According to Nagarjuna the construct of male bodies is no better than that of women. But these writers never questioned the ability of women to attain spiritual accomplishments. The condemnation of the female body has nothing to do with their status in the society in secular and spiritual terms. The Buddhist scriptures contain many instances of the spiritual attainments of ordinary women and women preachers. So also the works of conventional Christian writers Tertullian and Irenaeus admit, reluctantly though, that women occupied important positions in the Gnostic community. Thus women enjoyed well-deserved positions in the Buddhist and Gnostic communities and they had the opportunity to teach and study. Mention is also made in the article about the necessity of the transformation of women as men for getting self-transformation. This transformation is not in the physical sense of the term. It relates to the enlightenment in the inner world that is to be achieved through spiritual techniques and the procedure for women and men are the same. As such the proposition that women are not equal to men and they are the source of all evils is incorrect and misinterpretations of revelations as per the two traditions. Both the traditions do not mean disrespect to women in the true sense of the term. Through the various stages of the arguments the author has elucidated the fallacy involved in the mind-level arguments in both the traditions. She points out that each such mind-level argument is liable to be contradicted through another mind-level argument. When one transcends the mind, the issue of man-women relationship from the level of transcendence, in both the traditions, the woman emerges as a respectable entity, and challenges men in all areas with equal merit. In the initial part of the article, the woman was compared to earth and earth was elaborated as dark and the source of negativities. But in the concluding part of the article, both Buddhist and Gnostic scriptures mention earth as the creative, nurturing mother and praise her benevolence and rate the spiritual power of the women as equal to that of men and it is possible for women to attain the state of perfect luminous realm. Work Cited Lang, Karen Christiana. Images of Women in Early Buddhism and Christian Gnosticism: Source: Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 2 (1982), pp. 94-105Published by: University of Hawaii Press. Read More