Today, this is the 12th lecture in our course on Asian Buddhism hosted by the Nomata Center
of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hamburg in collaboration with the Darmelram Institute
of Liberal Art in Taiwan.
And today it is my great pleasure to welcome Van Merten, who is going to talk to us on
the topic of gender constructions and gender relations from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective.
Jemba Zhedrin got her PhD in 2009 from the University of Hamburg's Department of India
in Tibet with a dissertation on Vepmapa, a Buddhist jury scholar of the 14th century,
the forgotten arrival of Madam Maka philosophy in Tibet.
Since 2010, she is a principal investigator on the ordination of nuns in the Tibetan Buddhist
canon and its presentation in Tibetan commentaries at the University of Hamburg funded by the
Deutsche Forschungskumanschaft, the FK.
She is a visiting professorship at the Academy of World Religions of Hamburg in 2012.
Since 2013, she is a full-time postdoc research fellow at the Academy of World Religions University
of Hamburg Project Religion and Dialogue in Modern Societies, funded by the German Federal
Ministry for Education Research in BNBF.
And with that short introduction, now I hand over to Jemba Zhedrin.
Yeah, thank you very much.
First of all, my thanks to the venerable Bante Analayo for his invitation on behalf of the
Numata Center for Buddhist Studies and the Dhamadram Institute of Liberal Arts.
Since the 2007 Hamburg International Congress on Buddhist Women's Role in the Sangha for
almost 10 years, Bante devoted large parts of his time to support the Bhiksuni Movement
through his academic publications.
And I would like to take the opportunity to thank you very much for this.
Thank you, Bante.
This is really, may all the Dharma flourish by your efforts.
In addition to Bante's introduction, I would like to state that I also studied Sanskrit
and Pali, and since I'm working in the Academy of World Religions, that means my approach
to discuss gender constructions and gender relations is an interdisciplinary one, and
could be regarded as the one of a Buddhist feminist or queer theologian.
So even if the focus today lays on Tibetan Buddhism, I will not limit myself to these
sources, but consider what I call the three mainstream traditions of Buddhism.
So what is the aim of my lecture?
My lecture will show how the female gender for centuries is being put into question and
newly constructed, and how the attitude towards women is ambivalent or ambitious till today.
How the Buddha organized Buddhist communities and its impact on gender relations.
How for centuries, hierarchization and exclusion took place.
How the understanding of emptiness, shunyata, and the view of non-duality can have a major
impact on the construction of gender.
And how the understanding of tantric meditation practice derives from androgyny.
I will argue that around the year 2000, we have reached a crucial point, and thus tak
by a female Buddha, and the notion of a queer Buddha, as Susan Mosik is presenting it, have
become very important.
By the three mainstream traditions, I mean the three living traditions of Buddhism we
find today.
Here you can see a map of the spread of Buddhism, I will not go into the details now.
But we have Theravada Buddhism, East Asian Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism.
Theravada Buddhism we find in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and parts of Vietnam.
And East Asian Buddhism, widely referred to as Mahayana or Paramitayana, including Zen,
Thailand, etc.
We find in Vietnam, Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan.
And then Tibetan Buddhism, including Vajrayana Buddhism is considered a later school of Mahayana,
which we find in Tibet, Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, the Indian Himalayan region, Southern Russia,
and Mongolia.
Before I start my talk, let me give an overview what to expect the next maybe 45 to 60 minutes.
I will try to keep myself brief, so that we have some possibility for discussion in the
end.
I have five key points I want to address.
First, the state of research and discussion, second, the reflections on gender constructions
and gender relations in Buddhism.
And in this context, I will also address the binary sex system, ambivalent attitude toward
LGBTQ, subordination of women, and exclusion of those who do not fit into this binary system.
Then the key point three will be, ultimately, everything is empty, are gender-specific differences
really insignificant?
And number four, can women become a Buddha, the Buddha, a man, or queer?
And number five, androgyny, the unification of masculine and feminine traits in each person.
So I come to my first point, state of research and discussion.
Rita Gross is convinced that Buddhism is sexist, but not irreparable, similarly to Christian
and Jewish feminist theologians.
Gross argues that since the fundamental teaching and symbols of Buddhism are essentially eduitarian
and liberating, Buddhism is actually reconstructable.
The teaching of the Buddha is equally relevant for and applicable to all beings.
In her view, Christian feminist thought is far more developed than its Buddhist counterpart.
The questions faced and most strategies employed are very similar.
In order to bring together Buddhism and feminism, she developed a simple and clear Buddhist
definition of feminism, that is, the radical practice of the core humanity of women and
men.
Buddhist feminist theology has to be just and, like feminism, in order to lead to true
transformation, it needs to become an ongoing practice of changing one's language, expectations,
and ideas.
Thus Buddhism has just to be true to itself.
So in summary, we can say, if we take Buddhism seriously, actually there should be no gender
discrimination.
Sorry, I have to go back one slide I missed, sorry, actually I wanted to start with more
general about religion and gender, sorry for the confusion.
Gender is historically, socially, and religiously constructed in different ways.
The role and image of the sexes in the different cultures vary widely and are continually subjected
to change.
There exists what Ursula King calls a double blindness.
That means humanity, social, and natural sciences are blind with regard to religion, and sciences
of religions are blind with regard to gender.
So religion and gender are not stable, but trans-historical categories.
Often however, they are regarded as part of a natural order, normatively specified by
the sacred texts.
So the rules of men and women, sometimes we hear from, especially when you are in the
interface dialogue, just recently when I went to the European, to the Council of Europe,
one of the theologians there mentioned that roles of men and women are not indefinitely
interchangeable.
So there is the question whether there is something that the nature of men and women
is completely different and how it differs.
So this is an extended discussion within the different theologies.
It would be interesting to learn more about this within the Buddhist tradition.
So what I can say here coming from the research I have taken note of so far is that religion
and gender are not stable, but trans-historical categories.
Often however, they are regarded as patients.
So even if we accept that from the point of physical existence, there are differences
between men and women, the question is whether there is any difference when it comes to spirituality
or religious, to the religion and spiritual growth and our striving for liberation.
Since the late 20th century, feminism aims to create an awareness of women's full humanness.
Others argue that concepts such as women's subjectivity and equality are rooted in Western
way of thinking and must be relativized according to culture and religion.
So there is a tension between the different views on this.
As I mentioned already, Rita Gross argues that since the fundamental teachings and symbols
of Buddhism are essentially agilitarian and liberating, Buddhism is reconstructable.
Elizabeth Harris, for example, states that through the lens of gender studies,
there's clearly a need to rediscover women's histories, to reinterpret holy texts,
to campaign for equal rights, to explore the nature of consciousness and the construction
of identity and to affirm the body, especially this letter to explore the nature of consciousness
and the construction of identity and affirming the body.
These are the discussions that derive from the question whether there is a difference
when it comes to the spiritual growth of men and women within the religion, whether there is a
difference of men and women or not, and what is the difference or is not the difference.
And Raiko Unuma, she stresses that a sense of separation and complementarity of the two
genders is pervasive throughout early Buddhist literature. We will hear on this more later.
So let me see the next sheet.
Yeah, another important research to be considered is that of Alan Sponberg,
especially his hermeneutical considerations of the four distinct attitudes towards women and the
feminine are, in my view, very important. So dialogical inclusion refers to the inclusion
of women with regard to salvation. Women, as well as men, can gain our hardship or liberation or,
in other words, Nirvana, the cessation of suffering. Institutional androcentrism means
that institutionally and in decision making relevant context, the structures are dictated
and dominated by men. Women may follow their vocation as a nun, but only within a carefully
regulated institutional structure, which safeguards and reaffirms the social standards of male
authority and female subordination. Here it is important to note that the Buddha himself has
introduced the possibility of full ordination, Upasampada, for women, as well as for men.
This is the highest consecration in the context of monastic communities.
Since the 1970s, there is a worldwide movement to revive full or higher ordination for Buddhist
nuns. I really hope that this will not only further equal opportunities and religious equality
for women, but also promote the appreciation of the role of women in the society as a whole.
Thus, it would help to improve the human rights situation in terms of gender equality for most of
Asia. I had given you for preparation my article on this issue, so no need to go into this here
further. And then the fourth, ascetic misogyny relates to the individual, not to the institutional
level. It's about men's fear of the feminine. A man may fear, for example, that a woman could
endanger his chaste lifestyle as a monk. Such fear often manifests itself in some extremely
woman-hostile statements. Rather than realizing that the causes for desire lie in one's own mind,
they are projected in and identified with the object of desire and this are the women.
From a gender perspective, sociological androgyny seems to be the most interesting category,
because it takes into account gender difference and has the potential to produce equality.
Buddhahood is understood as a symbol of the union of male and female characteristic traits.
I will come back to this later. I agree with Spohnberg when he states with regard to Buddhist
literature, we have a rich multi-vocality, not a simple inconsistent ambivalence. Rather than
seeking a doctrinal reconciliation or justification for this inconsistency of views in the literature,
instead we must seek to understand the social and intellectual dynamics of the early community of
Buddhists that led to such a discordant juxtaposition of views. Next I come to my second key point,
reflections on gender constructions and gender relations from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective.
In this section I want to raise three central questions. Number one, are there any statements
about sex or gender in the early Buddhist texts at all and if so, which and how many
sexes does Buddhism acknowledge? Second, do classical Buddhist texts make a distinction
between biological and social gender? And number three, what is the impact of such a categorization
on Buddhist attitudes towards LGBTQ subordination of women and exclusion of those who do not fit
into the binary system? My reflections are rooted in the Tibetan Buddhist self-understanding.
The self-understanding of Tibetan Buddhism can be compared to the rungs of a letter.
The foundation of our practice is the Sravakayana. On this basis one may practice the common Mahayana
or Paramitayana while Vajrayana is understood as a teaching only for advanced practitioners.
Thus Tibetan Buddhism tends to be inclusive which but also tends to go with some claim for superiority
which for sure I do not share. So then we come to the next. In principle the Buddhist community is
organized as two-sex system. The Abhidhamakosha written by Vasubandhu in the 4th 5th century
contains a list of 22 faculties in Sanskrit India. Among them are femininity and musculinity.
Thus a distinction is made between female and male sex or sex characteristic. Both fall into the
category bhava with a long a. In Sanskrit according to Monier Williams, bhava stems from bu and also
means becoming, being, existing, occurring, appearance. From a gender perspective the letter
a more dynamic understanding of the term would be better than as nature which seems to imply
that gender is something fixed which cannot change. A third gender is not given in this context.
Vasubandhu explains in the Abhidhamakosha bhasha that due to these two faculties beings from the
two categories of male and female and that they differ with regard to physical form, voice,
and manner of being. With regard to manner of being, Buddhaghosa explains in the Ata Salini
that boys games are not the same as girls games. Thus Buddhism obviously attributes certain gender
stereotype behaviors to biological sex. As I said until today the Buddhist community is
uniformly organized as two sex system although exceptions are discussed. I'll come back to this
later. Originally the Buddhist community consisted of four assemblies as it is still or again the
case in some places today. These four assemblies or disciple ships chattu paushat are monks, nuns,
laymen, and laywomen. That is the basic social hierarchical structure until today at least in
theory. The Buddha founded an order of nuns but soon it was subordinated to the order of monks.
Nevertheless a principal subordination of women was not intended because laymen are allowed to
bow to nuns. Nevertheless gender definitely plays a role and leads to the segregation of the sexes.
For the admission into the order the Vinaya prescribes a clear identification either as a
woman or as a man. Monks and nuns live separately and in joint ceremonies not only in religious ones
men and women sit separately from each other. Yet in Theravada as well as in Tibetan Buddhism
fully ordained nuns somehow got lost and the highest religious leadership positions are
currently exclusively filled by men. Unlike the time of the Buddha when women perhaps
similar to the female apostrophe in the Jesus movement used to play important roles. At the
end of the discourse of the chattu paushat sutra for example the Buddha sent out these
four assemblies to spread his teaching for the well-being and the happiness of divine and human
beings. In this context I like to clarify some widespread misunderstandings. In Tibetan Buddhism
women can become teachers nuns or yoginis while either living in partnership having a family
or living as a nun in a female religious order or living as a hermit in reclusion in a cave or
in any other secluded area. And in Tibetan Buddhism we do have female lamas like his
imminency Sakya Jitsen Jimi Luding who is a lama and a upasika and his imminency
Mindraling Jitsen Khandrojempuchi who is a lama and a Sramanerika. So here we need to understand
you can see that on the picture that her imminency Sakya Jitsen Jimi Luding
she's also wearing a kind of robe the red robe but she has long hair and she's wearing sleeves.
So this means she's not a nun but she is a lay woman and she has a family she has children but
still she's considered to be a lama while his imminency Mindraling Jitsen Khandrojempuchi
she is a Sramanerika, a novice nun but also considered to be a lama. So this is no problem
and this has always existed in the Tibetan history there are not so many of them but you find them
and one just needs to understand that the term lama does not necessarily that somebody is
ordained in the sense of the Vinaya as a monk or nun. So sometimes you hear this notion that
in the Tibetan tradition monks can marry and this is actually at least for the part of Tibetan
Buddhism I have studied for the last 35 years not the case. So being a lama is we may have
some exception as Alexander van Rossbad has shown in Nepal there indeed we have such kind of
phenomena but this doesn't belong to Tibetan Buddhism this is Nevada Buddhism. So then
in history we did have some bhikshunis who were lamas and who were also highly realized
yoginis like Samding Doje Padmo. His holiness the Dalai Lama in his autobiography mentions
an encounter with the 12th reincarnation of the Tibetan saint Samding Doje Padmo. This saint lived
in the 15th century and was born as princess Chukidronme of Guntang. She received a higher
ordination Upasampada as a nun by monks alone and at the time she was considered to be a highly
realized yogini. She's the only nun known to us who headed a monastery for monks the Samding
monastery in central Tibet but for sure similar to his holiness Sakya Trinzen the head of the Sakya
tradition when a lay person is there considered to be the head of a monastery or a bhikshuni is
considered to be the head of the monastery this doesn't count for the Vinaya rituals so whenever
there is something that needs to be done like ordination and so on instruction on Vinaya then
there are others in the monasteries who are taking over this function this also needs to be understood.
Now let us come back to the Buddhist community based on the two sex system and
let's take a look to the situation of women at the time of the Buddha. Women had in many
respects at least as nuns equal opportunities as men to go their way to liberation. In Tibetan
Buddhism we believe in rebirth and this means we believe in the mind stream that continues from
life to life. The nature of mind remains always the same until enlightenment what changes is the body
rebirth takes place as male or as female or as LGBTQ no distinction is made in the mind training
in regard to how to practice as a woman or as a man and we just concentrate on the precious
human rebirth and how to use the precious human rebirth to lead a meaningful life.
A particular passage in the Vinaya clearly shows that there is no essential difference between men
and women it is a regulation how to proceed in case of natural sex change what to do when a
monk suddenly becomes a woman or vice versa in other words what to do when the biological sex
changes has the person to be newly ordained or does the ordination remain valid the Buddha decided
that a reordination is not necessary the person is simply transferred to the other community
and from now on has to keep the slightly different rules of the opposite sex
but the vow Tibetan Dompa or Sanskrit Samvara whether men or woman is the same.
Although there is no essential difference between men and women the biological sex however is
significant too there are situations that prescribe to make sure that the person has
the right sex again our source is the Vinaya in the Moolasa Vastivada ordination manual for women
it is described how nuns should assure themselves of the correctness of the sexual characteristic
of a new candidate when bathing and dressing they should have a look whether it is indeed a woman
who has asked for admission into the order in addition there is a list of impediments to
ordination on the basis of which it has to be clarified whether anything presents an obstacle
for ordination the very first question is are you a woman and the candidate responds i'm a woman
if she is not you can't continue with the ritual other questions follow and indicate that cases of
her mere criticism that is having two sexes as well as a sexuality in the sense of complete
absence of sex character characteristics rule out the possibility of ordination homosexuality
however is no impediment to ordination the monastic lifestyle anyway requires a life of complete
sexual abstinence nevertheless for lay people with regard to homosexuality considering the
cultural context of ancient india one of the lay precepts how to refrain from sexual misconduct
has to be interpreted contextually in line with the universal declaration of human rights today
another question in this context is how to deal with the third gender as already mentioned if the
sex is not distinct one can neither become a monk or a nun and is thus de facto excluded from this
path towards salvation i have no information whether such exclusion matches with the social
realities in the various traditions today in particular from thailand we hear about monastic
orders with transsexual monks so-called lady boys having the third sex at a vinaya conference in
sanat a terra vada monk asked whether this is also a problem in the tibetan tradition but there
was no response but anyway asking whether there's also a problem with this in the tibetan tradition
implies that third gender people have been admitted to the order there so but this would
need some field research in this field to find out
so we have seen that in some ways sex agenda matters how does this spiritually go along the
mahayana teachings of emptiness a term common to east asian as well as tibetan buddhism
um
there are several buddhist texts about the teaching of no self an atma that present
gender differences as irrelevant and ultimately insignificant thus gender is differently
constructed or uh um how do you say deconstructed they uh they state that the terms men and women
are just a designation here perhaps we can draw a parallel to the deconstructivistic approach of
yudit badla and her reading of speech act theory in her understanding social and biological gender
our performative gender is only real to the extent that it is performed from a tibetan buddhist
perspective one understanding of dependent arising pratitya samudpada is that everything exists on
mere designation that is things merely exist dependently in terms of or in relation to verbal
and mental labeling although the term shunya ta emptiness may not occur in the pali canon the idea
seems to be rooted in early buddhist literature this is the way i read and understand the story
of the nun soma who settled at the foot of a tree for meditation mara the evil tries to convince
her that women have only a two-finger wisdom but soma drives him away sharply retorting that
mara could harm only those who think i am a woman or i am a man or i am anything at all
this implies that she has attained the path of seeing darshana maga and realize that ultimately
everything is empty nevertheless one has to be aware that the notion of emptiness can easily
lead to misuse when wrongly understood as nullifying conventional realities conventionally
gender does exist and matters one should not use the tamed teaching of no self of anatma to make
women believe that they are bad practitioners if they become socially engaged for gender equality
but encourage them to fight for it skillfully in the maha yana exists the idea that wisdom
prajna the insight into ultimate reality and skillful means upaya have to go hand in hand
this idea has been further shaped and deepened and seems to have opened the door for a new
understanding of buddhahood with the advent of the early maha yana sutras about the first century
um well before we said ad but according to the study and articles of uber hartman i think we
can now say in general bc a shift in regard to the aim of salvation can be observed the maha yana
propagates the path of bodhisattvas who strive for buddhahood this leads to the question whether
women too can attain enlightenment in terms of perfect buddhahood a number of maha yana sutras
teach that by virtue of spiritual attainment a female bodhisattva must change gender in order
to achieve buddhahood otherwise she cannot obtain buddhahood in this life we can find this uh
discussed in diana powell 1979 but there's also some more reasoned research on this uh by the
veneval dama dina i think with the journal of buddhist ethics you can download there according
to other maha yana sutras such gender transformation or change of sex is unnecessary the vimala
piotrina disha sutra makes in a very humorous way somehow fun about the self-importance of some
monks and it enjoys particular popularity you will be familiar with it thus multivocality
with regard to the female body becomes again here also in the corpus of maha yana literature
obvious and in this context i feel it's also interesting to see that um the the notion of
gender transformation is not exclusively to the maha yana literature but can already be found
in the vinaya and we had uh upload a text on this from the pali vinaya uh compile compiled by
petra kiefer pulse which you can still find on the congress on buddhist women's
website if you want to read it we have also identified the respective source in the
mula savas divada vinaya but that's not online yet
um
yeah now i come to my hero tara the uh liberator a female buddha so i think what is uh special
about the tara i mean it's quite late uh i don't know whether one could still consider it
early buddhism or not i mean from the tibetan buddhist perspective um i think tibetans themselves
or traditional tibetan lamas would consider it to be the word of the buddha the tara tantra is
part of the kangyo of the words of the buddha in the tibetan buddhist tree pitaka and it is
considered early from a historical critical point of view i wouldn't share this um anyway
the point here is that quite early i mean in the sixth seventh century we have uh tara and this
tara tantra came together with atisha in the 11th century to tibet and what i really personally
like about uh tara is that she became enlightened in the body of a woman so uh there is this story
going along with uh with um this practice of tara um in the golden rosary by tara nata uh explained
that um tara is it's a legion but a nice nice one uh tara she
had in a previous life so it's constructed similar to the jataka's in the previous life
before she became a buddha she was a princess with the name yeshidaba moon of wisdom and
uh she made very good progress on her spiritual path and uh the monks who were around her
at a certain point suggested to her that uh because of the huge amount of marriage a religious
marriage she has made she should make a dedication of all these merit to become reborn as a man
and at this point uh yeshidaba she uh laughed and similar to soma in a way said that there is
no such distinction between men and women and uh that um actually there are so many who have
attained buddhahood in the body of a man but she will show that one can achieve this in the body
of woman and therefore she made a pledge a promise that from now on until she receives
samyak sambuddha she will practice as a woman in the body of a woman and show that this is possible
so this is a very good role model we have in buddhism for women if they are searching for
role models to inspire them on their way and i mean in this connection there is this discussion
whether the buddha is a man or not and i mean when trained in the tibetan buddhist tradition
i mean i became a nun in 1981 and the first 15 years before i embarked on an academic training
i got a traditional training with a tibetan geisha geisha tuk
nawang at the tibetan center in hamburg and i remember when he was correcting me saying
well this is not possible you cannot refer to the buddha as man or woman because this terminology
belongs to those who are in samsara not to those who have reached the path of seeing and have become
ayas so saints you cannot refer to the buddha as a man or as a woman and there is this discussion
of the 32 characteristics of a man which bikoanalayo has shown is reaching back to a pre-buddhist
time and so actually i think he's going to come out with another publication next year on this
topic so he will know much better than me on this issue but i feel that
it's clear from from what i have seen so far that these are the 32 characteristics that were
ascribed to a chakravatin in the indian ancient culture and somehow these have also been ascribed
to the buddha so there seems to be some room for negotiation if we consider
the social and historical context that this is something that needs to be interpreted and has
to be seen on that background so what i feel is very interesting that susan rozic it's an article
i came along with recently she argues even that the buddha is omniboded omnisexed and omnigendered
and she reads intentionally against the sexist discourse of a narrative concerning the previous
birth of the historical buddha shakya moni rethinking it in butler's terms what kind of body
matter so i mean this is really a paper i can only recommend if you haven't read it yet i mean
where the only one i have seen so far that really in very much detail deals with yudit butler's
approach with who is the leading expert on gender issues in western gender studies and
trying to get it together with a text that is early quite early and i think does not only belong to
the mahayana literature but really to the early buddhist literature and she speaks about a
queer buddha differently abled buddha low caste or dalit buddha blue color buddha black buddha
latino or latina buddha the question is not whether and how such buddhas exist the question
is whether and how such buddhas or bodhisattvas attain symbolic legitimacy and intelligibility
buddhist tradition values difference as much as it values the transcendence of difference
so
next i just see here what biko annala yo says there's so much written now biko annala thank
you for the kind words that there's nobody for discussion but i need to go ahead
smiley and then certainly not early buddhism what was this referring to i don't know what he said
biko annalia the 32 marks are generally gender neutral some are masculine but several others are
feminine overall pace powers the impression is of enduring well anyway the i mean one of the 32
marks is a male organ so i think we have to go deeper into this terminology and find out what
is really referring to bikuni dama dina powers john a ball of women images of musculinity sex in
the body of in the room yes this is one of the i mean he was on our gender panel in viena
and he was talking about it wondering why nobody has taken it up so far and i think
the new annala may take it up just giving the reference to powers book referred to by the new
annala yes thank you and biko annala you took tara oh there's so much sorry i haven't seen this
now it gets uh the point is not that the buddha was not a man but that the image is not one of
musculinity and the nature of the buddha's private parts i argue is about being able to retract it
well this we can maybe discuss at the end moving forward to hearing more about this so i i try to
shift over to my fifth key point androgyny buddhahood is um understood as the unification
of musculine and feminine traits in each person as mentioned in the beginning from a gender
perspective sociological androgyny seems to be the most interesting category because it takes
into account gender difference and has the potential to produce equality buddhahood is
understood as a symbol of the union of male and female characteristic traits nevertheless the
mother of all buddhas is considered to be female but let me say this before i come to the next
sheet i mean when you see this tantric depiction of a male buddha in unification with a female
buddha as you find it only in the vajrayana tradition especially in the tibetan buddhist
tradition i mean when you receive for example like me as a buddhist nun an initiation in such
higher yoga tantra practice then you are instructed to meditate that you are having both of you are
you are this whole thing what you see on the picture i mean you are the male part and you
are the female part so it's really i mean taken on this level of meditation only at least in the
tibetan gilupa tradition and it is really uh that you yourself imagine to be both the male and the
female uh dating and but as i mentioned um the mother of all buddhas is considered to be a female
prajna parameter is worshipped as the mother of all buddhas like tara in tibetan buddhism
she is referred to as chomnendema bhagavati so this is the female form of bhagavan she is
considered to be a fully enlightened buddha but for sure within the um three kaya theory
uh she is not namanakaya but sambogakaya as raiko unuma points out the tendency toward
androgyny and gender equality in matters of the dharma must be balanced since prajna is a feminine
noun wisdom itself is also seen as a feminine quality and is often paired with a musculine
quality equally necessary for the attainment of buddhahood compassionate skillful means of upaya
which is a musculine noun the attainment of buddhahood is then envisioned symbolically
as the union of male and female forces whose complementarity and independence are emphasized
this type of gender symbolism becomes significantly more pronounced however with the advent of tantra
and here
um women can attain full enlightenment in this lifetime i mean uh sonkapa the founder of the
tibetan giluk tradition based on several cycles of tantras such as the kunyasa maja tantra the
shakrasambara tantra and the hivajra tantra emphasizes that uh women can attain full
enlightenment in this lifetime this is in detail discussed by yale benter in a recent publication
2015 so now i come to my conclusion in sum as mentioned in the beginning through the lens of
gender studies there is clearly a need to rediscover women's histories to foster feminist analysis and
reconstruction to reinterpret or reread the authoritative texts to consider equal opportunities
for women to explore the nature of consciousness to better understand the construction of male and
female identity to affirm and appreciate the female body to make the female more visible
and to strengthen acting in history as many buddhist tend to do we should instead understand them
as narrative texts as a myth in order to remain relevant for today's societies the texts need to
be seen against their contextual background and interpreted according to their textual as well as
to their social historical and cultural context before being applied to our time and situation
the question we have to ask ourselves is and this i learned from Judaism what can the text
tell me it's not so much about what does the text tell what does it mean at that time of the buddha
this is a different question which for sure um historical critical study uh does enlarge but
the point is you want to keep the text relevant for today so we have to ask what can the text
tell me a contemporary follower of the buddha to get the answer we have to filter the essence
buddhist principles such as dependent arising non-violence to avoid suffering and to practice
love and compassion should lead our way and enable buddhist to reconstruct what is missing
neglect what is obsolete and clarify what could lead to misunderstanding and it would have to
promote freedom from gender roles gender stereotypes and oppression thank you very
much for your attention so now i see again what because another you said here the other point was
the Tara is not yes i i guess from from your point of view sixth seventh century is definitely
not early buddhism this i can understand i just wanted to make sure that from tibetan buddhist
self-understanding this we always need to consider too uh whether it's a historical
effect or not i agree with you it's not but for them i mean um it is quite early because buddhism
became only transmitted to tibet starting from the seventh eighth century as i had shown on my
map in the beginning so for them still sixth seventh century in ancient india appears to be
early so it's also relative and depends on the person
thank you very much to you and yet we would call that middle period that's interesting i mean
can you tell me i mean i was actually searching for it i remember um i mean i have to be careful
i don't say the name but i i remember i had asked one scholar uh what do we really mean by early
buddhism and uh this scholar said to me well i would say until abhidhamakusha vasubandhu this
time we could consider to be uh early but um then i think there's another discussion that seems to
say it's more the nikayas are early buddhism or can you explain a bit on this or is this not the
right place to to say this i mean would be interesting for me middle period usually is
considered to end with the closure of the reduction of the vinayas and the formation of
mahayana sutras there can be some difference but i would use the term early buddhism for the period
up to ashoka interesting so different yeah yeah that's interesting i mean um it seems that
there are i i don't know how we are doing it you know when we are in this manuscript projects here
in in um in hanbok was this a huge manuscript project i mean um i think it's also considered
to be very early buddhist manuscripts there can be some differences but i would use it on
dhammadhina usually up to fifth century this while this mentions the term was defined like that by
show yeah this is what i had heard from this one scholar this would be around the time of abhidhamakusha
proto-vajrayana is normally not considered part of middle period
okay yeah thank you that's very interesting so is there anything from your side
sorry that um i missed the possibility to be available at the today afternoon but we had some
technical problem we tried for hours and um now we finally made it the dates we discussed refer
to the arising of ideas not to manuscripts which of course will be later yeah hmm
oh yeah okay this is also important to make this distinction yeah yeah right
Sri Lankan pioneer manuscripts of the 90s so you could still continue with this text yeah but
difficult to prove isn't it i mean uh i i think uh in this i i believe in the southern part
manuscripts are much more difficult to um to keep because of the weather then uh and the climate
then in the northern part
yeah they were fully fledged mahayana communities already in the middle period
well i just remember you know this um this uh talk uh jens uberhardmann was giving here
in hamburg sometime back when in relation to the banyan statues in afghanistan they had this new
findings and he said that this has completely changed the
present stand of our knowledge because due to this new ways of um sorry i i like the vocabulary
to this new ways of how to find technical possibilities to find out
from which time the manuscripts stem they can say that these very early mahayana texts found there
have to be dated about first or second century b.c so um this is uh i mean this would mean that
it was already there there must have been some mahayana communities at that time already
so it depends on communities text and areas yes this radio carbon dating thank you
okay
yeah how are we with regard to time it's only one hour so because we don't have uh so many
uh people attending i was hoping we have more time for discussion but
there are no questions yes there are no questions so then we can uh finish then i thank you very
much for inviting me and hope that this lecture will be of some benefit and apologize for all
shortcomings and looking forward to contact me also by email if you have any question thank you
thank you thank you too