Instructions
Write a summary response of the below reading and highlight key
issues, themes, or questions that you feel are important to these readings.
Numerous world literatures share the motif of humans experiencing a change of sex. In some
cases, a gender reversal may be desirable for personal reasons. In some religious circles, on
the other hand, changing one’s sex— particularly if born female— is considered essential for
salvation. Some Hindu and Buddhist soteriological texts, for instance, argue the necessity of
females to adopt male bodies before complete emancipation can be reached. Further, even
when actual physical transformation of sex is deemed unnecessary, in both Hindu and
Buddhist scriptural traditions, key spiritual concepts of transcendence are linked with
symbology that has been likened “male” or “masculine,” such that women are specifically
admonished to purge themselves of “women’s” characteristics and “become male” in gender
orientation to become enlightened.
I am interested here in offering a broadly drawn picture of why this religious gender
transformation, whether in body or in mind, is or was thought to be necessary, and how such
concepts have influenced both men’s and women’s experience. In doing so, I also seek to
demonstrate certain Hindu and Buddhist theories of embodiment in general, and gendered
embodiment in particular. Throughout, I will discuss a number of pertinent themes interwoven
in both traditions. These include perceived dichotomies of gender, matter and spirit,
ascetic/philosophical and devotional approaches to salvation, and immediate or distant
salvation. In the first section I explain Hindu religious theories. In the second, in addition to
describing Buddhist theories, I draw conclusions comparing and contrasting Buddhist and
Hindu concepts of gender and salvation. GENDER AND SALVATION IN HINDUISM Belief in
the superiority of male birth undergirds most Hindu salvation schemes. Hindu literature even
up to today accepts that a change from woman to man is virtually always desirable, while the
reverse is undesirable: paradoxical exceptions merely tend to prove this rule.
“Hinduism” is a widely accepted heuristic term which encompasses within it a variety of
South Asian-based traditions, but virtually all of them claim as their common heritage four
sets of Sanskrit literature they view to be sacred: . – – the Sam hita s ( c. 1400– 1000 BCE),
Bra hmanas ( c. 1000– 700 BCE), – ranyakas ( c. 800– 600 BCE), and Upanis . ads ( c. 800–
500 BCE). Those people of north India who composed the earliest set of scriptures agreed
today to be Hindu actually called themselves – rya [n]s, followers of the “superior” path. Aryan
religion is also known as Vedic, so named after its literature, collectively referred to as the
Veda [s], repository[ies] of “knowledge.” I must introduce at this point an immediate caveat.
Although they are now perceived as significant contributors to concepts of gender and
salvation for all Hindus, these sets of scriptures were in fact popularized only in the modern
era by non-Indian Orientalists and Indian Nationalists, who used them as resources to
facilitate their own group’s divergent agendas. Further, the texts reflect a minority view from
their very creation. Their authors omitted discussion of the religious experience of those that
did not fall within their self-conceived elite groups, and, even today, most of their passages
hold little import for the vast majority of those people who have come to be called “Hindu.”
Since, however, the texts have assumed such vast importance in the construction of a Hindu
identity since the nineteenth century, examining them for their views on gender change
remains a significant task in its own right. 2 Thus, while they give insight to a dominant view,
this view derives from what was originally a minority, nevertheless, and its value is still
contested.
The Aryans did promote patriarchal traditions (for example, elevation of males, patrilineality,
and patrilocality), but women could themselves attain salvation. As wives and mothers,
women were important to men’s religious . – goals as well. Their first set of texts are the
collections of hymns or Sam hita s ( c. . – 1400– 1000 BCE). The Sam hitas suggest an
appreciation of both femininity and the complementarity between husband and wife. 3 Both
domestic and public rituals, for instance, depended on the copresence of husband and wife,
and pairing of them was believed to be divinely ordered. No Hindu scripture henceforth
offered an alternative view of sexuality and gender construction other than natural
heterosexuality. 4 The maintenance of harmony between husband and wife was a primary
concern of Vedic verses, one which perdures into the – present as a major feature of later stri
dharma, or women’s religious duty. Human women appeared often in didactic scriptures as
good wives who contributed importantly to the trivarga, or three modes of worldly life which
together constituted a mode of salvation. Through their ideal behavior, women supported
dharma, the divine order of the family, society, and the cosmos. In producing sons, they
contributed to artha, material wealth. Through their aesthetics, they symbolized the well being of the family as a whole, and inspired – the third aim of worldly life, ka ma or desire and
pleasure. Such affirmative evaluations of women’s contributions continued into later ages. At
least within
. – the Sam hita s, salvation was conceived as a joint venture of husband and wife. A
woman’s gender, while it defined her contributions, did not render her incapable of salvation
per se . This positive evaluation of women shifts somewhat in the more hierarchical religious
concepts recorded in the second set of Hindu texts, the – – Bra hmanas . ( c. 1000– 700
BCE). The Bra hmanas . posited greater disparities – – between birth-groups (jati s) and the
increasing importance of a son as the – deliverer of his father to heaven. Later Bra hmanas .
proposed that one must be “born again” through initiation into Vedic ritual to be saved.
Initiation was reserved for members of the top three classes or varn . as. (literally “color”),
thus excluding from heaven the fourth varn . a —the Sudras, or members of the servant
class. Further, one had to undergo rigorous training at the home of a teacher after initiation to
gain the expertise necessary to perform rituals and hymns properly. Although domestic and
public rituals continued to be performed for various goals, including the acquisition of wealth,
progeny, and health, domestic rituals were increasingly seen as inferior to the more
elaborate rituals directed towards the maintenance of the universe which required
professional overseers to complete properly. Greater stress came to be placed on the need
for elaborate ritual intervention to attain life after death in heaven, which was coupled with
the emphasis that males perform such sacrifices, sponsored by and presided over by
legitimate sons with the aid of priests.
This led to a considerable widening of the gulf between men’s and women’s educational
levels. For instance, while – boys of the highest (Bra hmin) class were enjoined to study and
accommodated, girls were educated only optionally. Given the new prerequisite for legitimate
sons in the quest for heaven, greater emphasis was also laid on controlling women’s
sexuality. Eventually, women’s chastity was equated with “purity,” which came to be viewed
as a proper substitute for female education. A man’s status became closely related to his
wife’s purity/chastity, increasing further need for greater control of women’s sexuality. These
developments contributed to the increasingly more common view that women were ignorant
and incapable— even if chaste and – honored— by their very nature. By the late Bra hmana .
era ( c. 800– 700 BCE), women came to be viewed as a source of pollution through
menstruation and childbirth; hence, their dangerous nature was both physical and
temperamental. The third and fourth sets of Hindu texts, the – ra T yakas ( c. 800– 600 BCE)
and Upani U ads ( c. 800– 500 BCE), introduced new religious goals and philosophical
concepts of the material and spiritual which had great repercussions on salvation theories for
women. Most of these promoted a new vision of human destiny: all persons are subject to
continual rebirth, and . – hence are trapped in sam sa ra (the perpetual, cyclical rounds of
phenomenal, worldly existence). Concomitantly, the religious goal shifted. The trivarga was
expanded to include a fourth dimension: mok U a, or release from rebirth.
In some cases, mok U a was escape to a heaven with a/the god(s), not all that unlike visions
found in earlier Hindu scripture, but more commonly, mok U a meant escaping the cycle of
rebirth entirely. The many Upani U ads accepted as authoritative expound various views;
some are deeply theological, others speculative and monistic. Most Upani U ads
incorporated early S & mkhya dualism (variously dated, but the seeds of which devalued
prakr . ti, which came to be viewed as an aspect of the puru U a. The date c. 500 BCE)
which posited two eternal principles: matter or prakr . ti, which was feminine and the material
cause of the universe, and spirit or puru U a (literally, “man”) which was the masculine
consciousness. These – Upani U ads puru U a was identified with the a tman or individual
soul, which was ultimately identical with the immaterial, spiritual essence of the universe,
Brahman. Brahman was an all-pervasive, eternal, and fully real principle; the world was
material, temporary, and therefore, to a degree, a lower level of reality which should be
transcended in mok U a. Female fertility came to be equated with sexuality, which itself was
deemed the delusory force or power of prakr . ti. If left uncontrolled, sexuality/ prakr . ti would
obstruct the path to enlightenment.
In the highly regarded and influential Advaita [non-dual] philosophy, which is rooted in the
more monistic Upani U ads, prakr . ti and puru U a are not distinguished from the highest
point of realization, and gender, too, is ultimately irrelevant. Gendered constructions are
ephemeral, or in philosophical or ascetic approaches, serve as tools or ideological hooks
meant to assist one to eventually transcend distinctions. 5 Yet this ideal realization is known
by the tradition to be a rare insight, and Advaita philosophical discourses still employ
gendered terminologies and values. Thus, philosophical treatises admonish followers to
destroy attachment to the “female” material element and hold fast to, and become, fully spirit
or puru U a —literally, “male.” Thus, while the word brahman is a neuter noun, the epitome of
human behavior or the spirit, in addition to underlying the dominant modes of action for its
realization, is directly modeled on the masculine and male experience. Classical Hinduism
attempted to synthesize all four sets of texts even as it added new elements. It affirmed the
necessity of traditional Vedic study, but its purpose was to prepare the student for greater
tasks in the enlightenment quest, such as philosophical rumination, asceticism, and
meditation, which together lead to enlightenment. Realization succeeds in attaining the
ultimate goal: freeing the individual soul from a cycle of rebirth in material worlds (including
rebirth in heaven). Classical Hinduism thus deemphasizes family and early Vedic ritual
performance conducted in pursuit of worldly aims and a life in heaven with the gods.
Women’s participation in Classical Hinduism gradually grew increasingly restricted. During
the early Upani U adic age, upper class women could be initiated into Vedic learning and
devote themselves to study. By the time of the dharma texts ( c . 400– 100 BCE), women
were classified into two categories:
– – – – – – – brahmava dini s and sadyodvadha s or sadyodva ha s . Brahmava dini s were
those women who remained lifelong students, becoming “knowledgeable in Brahman ”
Ordinary renunciation involved wandering celibate alone, and by – – definition, an unprotected
woman was unchaste. Thus, Brahmava dini s underwent initiation, and conducted their
study, fire rituals, and begging, but within the confines of the parental home, leaving later
interpreters to debate as to whether they had actually attained complete enlightenment. The
sadyodvadh * s also underwent initiation, but their study lasted only eight or nine years until
their marriage. By c . 300– 200 BCE, the initiation ritual for women came to be only a
formality, and girls were immediately married. For instance, Manu, the prominent codifier of
law whose work has held an enviable position of enormous authority in Hinduism,
recommended that no Vedic mantras be recited on the occasion of girls’ initiations. 6
Initiation without Vedic mantras being recited therein or taught after the ritual was a
contradiction in terms, of course, and so more straightforward authors of dharma texts such
as Y & jñavalkya began to simply prohibit the ceremony altogether for girls. By the first
century BCE, marriage was interpreted to be the equivalent of initiation for women, serving
her husband came to be equated with residing with a teacher, and household duties were
substituted for the service of the sacrificial fire. – Women’s proper religious behavior ( stri
dharma ) was patiyoga. Patiyoga is union with, or discipline under, one’s husband or pati,
literally “ruler” or “lord.” It combined sacrifice, asceticism (yoga), and devotion (bhakti), all –
under the auspices of stri dharma, that is, directing all one’s religious actions to the worship
of the husband.
Once women’s marriage became equated with initiation, a widespread belief developed by
the first century BCE that women who were unlearned, unable to recite so much as the
hymns of daily prayer— even if – . of Bra hmin birth and marriage— were not unlike S udras,
who were automatically excluded from Vedic sacrifice. This association may have been
facilitated in part by the rise of inter-caste marriages between twiceborn . (hence “Aryan”)
males and Sudra females; once these men married – tensions with Bra hmin priests arose as
to whether the non-twicethem, born women could cosponsor Vedic sacrifices. Perhaps in
part to by-pass the potential problem of distinguishing between “Aryan” and “nonAryan”
women, c . 200 BCE the dharma scholar Ati œ & yana declared that all women were
ineligible to participate so that none would be offended. 7 His view eventually came to be the
dominant one. However, this negative view of women in Vedic ritual and initiation into study
and renunciation was tempered by the continued appreciation of woman as wife and mother,
and the positive evaluation of female chastity and purity. Marriage came to be seen as a far
more transformative event for women than men. When women marry, their lineage and
bodies are believed literally to change; they become members of their husband’s lineages. 8
While for men
marriage is important to sire a legitimate son to repay the debt he owes his ancestors (
putradharma , or the dharma of [siring] a son) and to light his own cremation pyre to save
him from hells reserved for the issueless, marriage does not effect essential changes of his
nature. 9 The inescapable link of women to marriage and consequently, patiyoga , led to
dramatic consequences regarding Hindu concepts of gender and soteriology. Women’s lives
were henceforth divided into three phases: maidenhood, marriage, and— should the
husband die first— either self- immolation on the husband’s funeral pyre (becoming a sati , a
“truthful/ virtuous woman”), or widowhood. 10 In contrast, the ideal life-cycle of upper- caste
Hindu males had four stages or a œ ramas: studentship, householdership, forest dwelling,
and renunciation. The only time period when males and females shared a complementarity
was householdership, although women were to share vicariously the benefits of a husband’s
asceticism during the latter two stages, and more rarely, if allowed by her husband, by
ascetic practice conducted alongside him. Women were taught to prolong and value
householding, whereas men were taught to escape and devalue it. Indeed, a man’s
depreciation of the world was in many ways symbolized by woman: she embodied sexuality,
reproduction, and family, in essence, embodiment itself, the major obstacle to liberation. Yet
even though male celibacy is a major religious virtue, to become an ascetic without first
having experienced marriage and parenthood is to act contrary to the even more stringent
social and religious norms of putradharma . Thus, men were caught between two opposing
values: marriage was obligatory, but renunciation was a higher calling.
Almost all Hindu philosophical systems which stressed asceticism and wisdom viewed
women as either ineligible by nature, or incompetent, for the higher stages of discipline
necessary for complete release. Thus, women’s best option became either heaven,
understood at this point as a temporary reward for good behavior, or a higher rebirth, that is,
accompanying her husband in later births and eventually becoming male herself in a distant
future life when she would finally be capable of pursuing final liberation. Bhakti, or devotional
worship, soon eclipsed Classical Hinduism’s fusion of Vedic sacrifice, learning, and Upani U
adic renunciation. Bhakti for women stressed devotion not only to one’s husband, but also to
a benevolent, allpowerful deity. In contrast to the postponed freedom necessitated by a
woman’s gender in Classical Hinduism, bhakti admitted the possibility of immediate, ultimate
deliverance. And unlike the temporary heavens stylized for good wives in the Upani U ads,
the deity’s heaven was not merely a temporary reward for good conduct, but salvation itself.
The prerequisites necessary for pursuing release in the Upani U ads (lengthy education,
male gender, and twice-born status) were unnecessary in bhakti . In addition, unlike Vedic
sacrifice, women and low-caste persons could offer food, songs, and prayer in private
worship services. Indeed, the most famous female bhaktas.
or exemplary devotees were those who refused to marry, and thus could focus on their
chosen deity without the distraction of husband-worship still deemed incumbent on the good
wife. Bhakti and patiyoga do not necessarily conflict, however, and they continue to coexist
as the dominant forms of women’s religious experience in Hinduism. They effectively by pass exclusivist, male-dominated forms of asceticism even as they integrate self-abnegation,
which is a form of renunciation. Thus, while women have been devalued and excluded by
their nature from certain paths, alternate, gender-geared forms of Hindu soteriology allow for
their release as women. Further, the majority of people who fall in “lower-caste” group
categories now called Hindu were relatively unaffected by what the scriptures had to say in
the first place. They practiced their own unique forms of religion, with often widely varying
experiences for both genders, many of which held far less oppressive views of women.
Descriptions of gender reversal in Classical Hinduism almost always depict change as a
progression from inferior female to superior male in later lifetimes as a reward or outcome of
good behavior, or a regression from superior male to inferior female in later lifetimes as a
punishment or result of bad behavior. In bhakti, gender reversals may actually occur where
male devotees adopt feminine modes of being to become closer to the divine. This type of
gender reversal is predicated on the common belief in Hindu culture that women are more
emotional, and therefore capable of deeper love for the deity. Males within the Vallabha sect
in southern India, for instance, impersonate women to win the attention of the god Krishna,
recalling tales of his affairs with the milkmaids, and imagining physical union with Krishna in
an erotic symbolization of the union of the soul with its lord. 11
11 Thus, whereas women’s temperament is a detriment for ascetic paths, it can be an
advantage in devotional ones, so that a female mind is deliberately inculcated— restricted, of
course, to relating with the divine. In worship of female deities, males may adopt feminine
dress and mannerisms, either in imitation, or in some cases, because of possession by the
goddess. Legend has it that when the famous nineteenth-century Bengali saint Ramakrishna
became a woman in his blissful devotion to the goddess, he began to menstruate, but such
bodily transformation is clearly an exception. Gender reversals described in bhakti are not in
physical or bodily form, but in the sense of play-acting: men really are not expected to
become women. – This type of salvific cross-dressing is in keeping with Hindu notions of li
la¯, – – or “divine play.” The term li la connotes both amusing diversion or sport, – – and drama
or game playing. Li la refers both to the divine imitating human form or taking on
manifestations unlike their true nature, and humans – – imitating divine form. The universe
itself is often considered to be divine li la , or the sport of gods and goddesses,
simultaneously being and not being – – “divine.” Likewise, in their own li la s, human actors
might imitate the divine, and by so doing, actually “become” them, even without any specific
physical
transformation. This transformation is regarded as “true” enough such that, in certain
contexts, other devotees worship these players as divine – – embodiments. Formal li la
performances intended for public viewing may stipulate that only males may act out the parts
of the gods and goddesses. Since there are both male and female deities in India, male
human actors imitating the divine may adopt either gender. However, I have not found many
instances of women becoming male in imitation of male deities; rather, because of the
elevation of women as the more emotional of the two genders, female bhaktas focus on male
divinities through various modes of intense male-female interaction, whether acting as the
mother, lover, servant, and so on, of the male deity. In the case of goddess worship, women
may respond to her as their mother, or less commonly, act as her vehicle for possession,
becoming themselves “mothers.” 12 Hindu Tantric philosophy (originating CE c . fifth
century), posits that one need not escape from the world to be enlightened, nor undergo
asceticism which denies sexuality. Indeed, the very aspects of the phenomenal world held by
mainstream Hindus to be polluting or liminal are valorized as essential means to attaining
enlightenment. Thus, its religious practice utilizes wine, meat, fish, symbolic hand gestures
and figures, and sexual intercourse. 13 In this system, since women’s bodies are not
obstacles to enlightenment, changing sex is not a prominent theme. Hindu Tantra
underscores the fact that perceptions of the world, sexuality, and women’s bodies are
consistently linked in Hindu religious thought.
Buddhism originated within the same general cultural milieu as the Ara T yakas ( c . 800–
600 BCE) and Upani U ads ( c . 800– 500 BCE), the third and fourth sets of scriptures which
introduced new religious goals and philosophical concepts in Hindu salvation schemes. The
Buddha ( c . ?563– 483 BCE) formulated Four Noble Truths which even today remain the
core Buddhist teaching. The first explains that “everything is dukkha, unsatisfactory or
suffering.” Dukkha is the first of three characterizations of the world, and connotes the misery
of human existence: unfulfilled desire, anxiety, pain, disease, old age, and death. The world
and humans are also transitory; they have no abiding permanence. All things in the world are
composed of a mixture of five components, the combination of which shift and change from
one moment to the next. One’s whole being is in a state of constant flux, hence there can be
no permanent, abiding, unchanging soul. No permanent entity transmigrates from body to
body. Rather, the Law of Karma (literally, “action”) teaches that each act of thought, word, or
deed causes an accumulation of volitions to further action. These volitions to further action
result in future thoughts, words, and deeds. The nature of each individual is thus the result of
past action by the karmic impulses
carried by that individual, and what one will become is conditioned by action undertaken in
the present. Rebirth is merely the result of karmic impulses, not the transmigration of an
essential self, as it is perceived in Hinduism. The second truth explains that the reason why
people are unsatisfied with existence is because they desire a multitude of things, continued
life, and a permanent essence that might remain after death. The third truth affirms that
where – there is no desire, there is no suffering. This absence of suffering is nirva T a, the
“extinction” of desire. The fourth truth explains the eightfold path to – achieving nirva T a
which causes the cessation of dukkha . In Hinduism, the world and material themselves, and
attachment to them, are often symbolized by the feminine and by women; so it is in
Buddhism. Buddhist texts use women as a metaphor for the karmic energy that maintains
suffering in the world because they embody birth, thus representing suffering, death, and
rebirth. Further, women are believed to be more grossly implicated in the ensnarements of
the world than men, and are thus reasoned to have a more difficult time untangling
themselves from it. 14
Buddhism is usually split into two major divisions: Theravada (Way of the Elders) and the
later Mahayana (Great Vehicle). Within the Mahayana, a third branch developed called
Vajrayana, a form of Buddhist Tantra (originating CE c. fifth-sixth century). Like Hindu Tantra,
it also posits that one need not escape from the world to be enlightened nor undergo celibate
asceticism, and its religious practice thus also utilizes wine, meat, fish, symbolic gestures
and figures, and sexual intercourse. Again, as with Hindu Tantra, since women’s bodies are
not obstacles to enlightenment in Buddhist Tantra, changing sex is not a prominent theme.
15 Mahayana adds many other works to the Theravadin scriptural corpus and departs from
earlier doctrine in ways that have important implications for our topic. I will briefly sketch
some outlines of both divisions here, particularly as facets may pertain to gender. The
Theravada Cnllavagga portrays the Buddha to have reluctantly established a female
monastic community only after being approached several times by disciples and his widowed
aunt. He predicted that as a result of its creation, the dharma (here understood as Buddhist
teachings) would last only five hundred instead of one thousand years. He also specified that
nuns would be required to observe eight special rules mandating their subordination to all
monks as a precondition for admittance. Thus, while the Buddha’s initiation of a nuns’ order
confirms that women are capable of gaining the insights required for liberation, he also
implicitly expressed or at least recognized endemic cultural prejudices concerning women’s
“materiality,” inferior spiritual capacities, and their purported negative influence on men in the
spiritual quest. These views are confirmed in the ancient conviction that women were by their
gender incapable of the full range of enlightenment experiences possible. There are five
states of existence in the world for which a female’s body renders her unqualified: she is
barred from becoming a Buddha, a universal
monarch (a person ready either to attain supreme temporal authority or Buddhahood), a Œ
akra-god (Indra, king of gods), Brahm & -god (creator and – lord of the Brahm & worlds), or a
Ma ra (lord of love and death, who tempts and destroys). 16 Both a Buddha and the
universal monarch conform to the – Great Man (Maha purusa) . physique, among whose
thirty-two characteristic marks is possession of a sheath-covered penis. 17 Buddhist
soteriological texts thus share certain similarities with Hindu works on gender. They also
presume sex changes across multiple lifetimes, and male births are generally regarded as
superior to female. Further, female imitation of “male” behavior is in a broad sense presumed
to be necessary for success along the spiritual path, and, like Hinduism, Buddhist female
renunciants are subject to different, stricter rules than males. The Therigatha, “Songs of the
Women Elders,” includes numerous biographies and poems detailing nuns’ efforts and
expressions of attaining enlightenment. However, only several centuries after Buddha’s
death the . monastic sangha or community became increasingly less open to both the laity
and female renunciants. The Buddhist conviction that women could not gain enlightenment
grew popular in India at the very time period as similar beliefs came to be accepted in
Classical Hinduism. Though the nuns’ order was transmitted to many places in South and
Southeast Asia, for a variety of reasons, an order of fully ordained nuns did not survive in the
Theravada countries. Gendered rules of initiation preclude women from being initiated by
monks. Since Theravadins generally believe full monasticism to be necessary to gain the
insight necessary for nirv &T a, women cannot attain enlightenment in Theravada traditions
while still embodied as women.
Contemporaneous with and parallel to the rise of bhakti within Classical Hinduism, a new
development emerged within Buddhism that like bhakti was less hierarchical and more
universal in scope than the dominant tradition. . Mahayana Buddhism deliberately
emphasized the larger sangha, that is, the community composed of lay people of both sexes
in addition to monks and nuns. At the time of their split, there were many in both Theravada
and Mahayana Buddhist camps who expressed negative attitudes towards women.
However, “no one who strongly advocated women’s positive qualities seems to have been in
the camp of the more conservative, older forms of Buddhism.” 19 In Mahayana, “salvation”
was possible even while living within the confines of ordinary society. The Theravada goal of
personal enlightenment (arhatship) required complete renunciation of the world and entrance
into the monastic san . gha . Mahayana texts substituted the goal of bodhisattva hood for
arhat-ship . A bodhisattva develops both the proper insight into the true nature of things, as
well as a correlative compassion for those still benighted. Having realized the
interconnectedness of all things— and in later Mahayana, the ultimate emptiness of all
phenomena— the bodhisattva thus vows to continue returning to states of embodiment to
facilitate the enlightenment of
all. Mahayanists thus assert a profoundly positive world view, even while maintaining its
ultimate emptiness. Their claims about the value of the world are dramatically illustrated in
allegorical texts which portray enlightened females and laypersons teaching hopelessly dull
Theravada monks. Mahayana thus both inherited and amended Theravada teachings on
gender. Popular Buddhism in both divisions, like the popular Hinduisms of early Vedic ritual
and later Bhakti, realizes that because of the difficulty of attaining enlightenment, most
people will remain within the realm of sam . – sa ra . It thus incorporates rituals designed to
ease and prolong life in the world, and a model of gradual spiritual progress which
restructures bad karma to good, as it were, called the way of merit (punya) . . References to
the misfortunes of female rebirth abound. 20 Since female birth is more painful and less
meritorious than male birth, many rituals are designed to insure that future births be male,
even though Mahayana affirms the possibility of women attaining enlightenment. Likewise, in
the Pure Land Mahayana tradition’s Land of Bliss – – Scripture (Sukha vati vyu -ha Su -tra),
the problem of female rebirth is solved by the great Buddha Amitabha by eliminating it
entirely. With his great powers, he established a place for his followers to work on their
salvation called the Western Paradise. This paradise is easily reached through devotion to
him, and since the circumstances of unfortunate births are too difficult to overcome for most
people, Amitabha ensured that his is a land where no unfortunate births of any kind will
occur, including female births; not even the name of “woman” will be heard there. Pure
Land’s popularity led to the common practice in Japan of giving women practitioners male
names during funeral ceremonies on the assumption that since there are no females in the
next life in the Pure Land, at death they become male. 21 In the less well-known Eastern
Paradise of the Buddha Ak U obhya, women are wonderfully beautiful, freed from the curse
of menstruation, and— being a place devoid of sexual desire or jealousy— become pregnant
without sexual intercourse. Thus, the problem of female rebirth can either be avoided in its
entirety, or by removing its biological or physical constraints and incumbent sexual desires.
22 Pure Land Buddhism thus depreciates the female human body to such an extent that
rebirth as a man is expressly promised, or womanhood is shorn of supposedly negative
female traits which cause suffering. Recall that the Buddha is believed to have predicted that
the dharma would decline after a certain period. Pure Land Buddhism posits that the world
itself is now in that predicted state of decline. All embodied creatures suffer under this
entropy, and women more than men. In this theory of embodiment, the dharma cannot be
fulfilled by people of unfortunate birth. Thus, the promise of a male-only or male-like paradise
appealed to those who believed that embodiment in this world at this time in the female
gender were three strikes that by definition meant losing one’s
place at bat. By escape to a pure world, in the future, in a fortunate birth, salvation could be
assured. The proscriptions of females from the five births whose characteristic marks
included male physiology are continued in some Mahayana texts. While there are
exceptions, most maintain that bodhisattvas in the final rebirths are always male, for
instance, and those Mahayana s * tras or sacred scriptures which do not hold emptiness as a
major teaching, such as the The Lotus of the True – Law Scripture (Saddharmapundari ka S *
tra), do seem to suggest that change of sex is necessary if a woman is to take the final step
to Buddhahood. Other texts rejected this view of gender and enlightenment. For those –
pursuing the way of perfected understanding (prajña ), gender is irrelevant, because from the
point of view of ultimate truth, gender is like all such distinctions: an empty construct. 23 The
only position consistent with today’s standard Mahayana doctrine of the emptiness of all
phenomena is that only the ignorant make distinctions between the religious aspirations and
intellectual and spiritual capacities of men and women. 24 In Mahayana texts positing
fundamental emptiness, a striking illustration of this point is the magical and instantaneous
“physical” sex change. These changes almost always involve females becoming males.
Their transformations do not prove that women cannot attain enlightenment, however, or that
bodhisattvas or buddhas cannot be female; rather, magical sex changes underscore the
already realized state of the woman who changes herself which proves the irrelevance and
falsity of gender distinctions. Females change their bodies only in response to challenges to
their understanding, and transformations are only possible on the women first reaching the
insight that no dharmas (constituents of reality) whatever are born, that none therefore has a
fixed reality or anything to define, and that since dharmas are as fluid or as deceptive as – –
illusion (ma ya ), they are fundamentally impossible to apprehend as distinct entities. 25
Thus, the women who adopt male bodies are demonstrably capable of enlightenment while
embodied as women, as the very change is contingent on realization. Changing the female
body is a Buddhist narrative device which directly confronts earlier views of women’s spiritual
limitations. It challenges the notion that women’s bodies are visible evidence that they have
not reached a high level of spiritual maturity and cannot therefore be candidates for
Buddhahood. But in a sense, maleness is not merely physical in philosophical Mahayana
Buddhism. Diana Paul has suggested that in many such works, it is not only one’s female
physique that must change, but also one’s “woman’s thoughts,” that is, her woman’s nature
and mental attitude. A “male attitude” means being unattached to sexuality and responsible
for one’s actions, whereas being a female did not entail such detachment and responsibility.
26 In some Indian Buddhist texts, it is stated that female physiology and its concomitant
sexual
“power” result in a physiological weakness of will, such that to advance on the spiritual path
one must not only seek rebirth in a male body, but a woman must also renounce and
eradicate her sexual power, which ties her to sexual desire and therefore is seen as inferior
and an obstacle. Once this power is removed, a male rebirth is possible, during which male
sexual power can be destroyed and Buddhahood obtained. In Buddhahood, the male form is
retained: the male body represents perfection of the mind. Transformation of sex thus
represents a transition from the imperfection, impurity, and immorality of human beings,
represented by the female body, to the mental perfection of bodhisattvas and buddhas,
represented by the male body. 27 To a degree, the male is not truly embodied or even
gendered; he is unmarked, beyond gender. Thus, in both Hinduism and Buddhism, women
and femininity symbolize the world or worldliness, and men and masculinity symbolize the
“unmarked” or transcendence. Further, when one speaks of gender in both traditions, one
must pay attention to more than just physical manifestation, since ways of thinking, action,
and modes of perception have been understood in terms of gendered categories. Even in
Buddhist texts stressing the emptiness of all things, or Hindu scriptures espousing the
illusion or falsity of distinctions, the mode of ultimate being is still predicated on what the
tradition has identified and valorized as the masculine. On the whole, when phenomenal
reality or the world is devalued, so is female embodiment. When phenomenal reality is
valued or perceived as useful to religious quest, female embodiment is not an impediment to
salvation. A key determinant in the perception of women’s nature in the religious quest for
both Hindu and Buddhist traditions is thus their understanding of the phenomenal world. A
brief review of some of the traditions noted here illustrates this point. Popular Hindu
devotional approaches which affirm the ability to be saved by deities during one’s lifetime on
earth have not only denied that being female is an obstacle, but some assert it may even be
an advantage. Bhakti demands attachment and affection, both of which are identified as
feminine— they are “women’s thoughts,” predispositions, or feelings. Similarly, those
Mahayana philosophies which fused the realms of transmigration and enlightenment, and
which also saw liberation within and through the world despite its ultimate unreality, deemed
that being a woman was not necessarily an obstacle to enlightenment, and their magical sex
changes demonstrate this insight. In contrast, in popular Buddhist devotional forms such as
the Pure Land, in which detachment is seen as impossible for all while living in the current
world, an alternate, gendered view emerges. Instead, one must pray to transcendental
figures capable of assisting those living in the age of the decay of the dharma for rebirth in a
pure place. In the two Pure Lands, one offers a direct gender change for females to male
bodies, and the other allows for the transmutation of a woman’s earthly, biological, and
temperamental constraints due to her gender. Both claim to be better worlds; the first is an
ideal single sex culture of males, and the other boasts a pseudo-androgyny where women
become as men, that is, beautiful, nonmenstruous, non-sexual, and able to create by their
own power. Depending on their point of view of dichotomies, and, in particular, the
phenomenal world, Hindu and Buddhist soteriological stances may allow for women to gain
salvation as women, or they may assert the necessity of a female becoming male to
experience the pinnacle of human destiny.
Reference
Ramet. (1996). Gender reversals and gender cultures : anthropological and historical
perspectives. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203428931
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