What You Can Learn from the Buddha's Wife and Aunt | Pamela Weiss
Pamela Weiss, Dharma teacher and author of "A Bigger Sky," discusses the hidden wisdom of women around the Buddha, exploring how Buddhism became masculine-tilted and the benefits of integrating feminine energy into practice and life.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
Introduction to Hidden Women in Buddhist History
Pamela Weiss's Personal Motivation for Research
The Oppressive Situation of Theravada Nuns
Questioning the Buddha's Reluctance to Admit Women
The Absence of Women in Traditional Buddhist Lineage Chants
Rethinking the Buddha's Awakening: Nourishment and Connection
Yasodhara: The Buddha's Wife and Practice in Daily Life
Mahapajapati: The Buddha's Aunt and Founder of the Nun Sangha
Ananda's Role as an Ally for Women's Admission
Mahapajapati's Teaching: Seeing Everyone as a Future Buddha
Maya: The Buddha's Mother and the Acknowledgment of Mortality
Insights from the Therigatha: Heartfulness and Grounded Awakening
Love as a Fundamental Force of Connection
Bringing Feminine Energy into Modern Mindfulness and Buddhism
The Harm of Cultural Tilt Towards Masculine Energies
7 Key Concepts
Fourfold Sangha
The Buddha's reputed vision for a community comprising lay women, lay men, monks, and nuns, indicating an early intention for inclusivity in the spiritual path.
Feminine Perspective on Awakening
An alternative view of the Buddha's path that emphasizes nourishment, connection, tenderness, and a 'coming down and in' to experience, rather than a solo, harsh, transcendent striving.
Patriarchy in Buddhism
The historical tilt in Buddhist traditions and teachings towards masculine qualities and a male lineage, which has resulted in the omission of women's stories and can be harmful to everyone regardless of gender.
Masculine and Feminine Energies
Concepts (not tied to gender) representing qualities like hard/soft, light/dark, fast/slow, active/passive, and penetrating/receptive. An imbalance in these energies, especially a cultural tilt towards masculine, can lead to individual and societal sickness.
Theravada Buddhism
Considered the oldest school of Buddhism, its teachings were passed down orally for at least 200 years before being written by primarily male monastic scribes, leading to potential adaptations and omissions in the historical record.
Therigatha
A collection of poems, also referred to as 'songs of awakening,' from early Buddhist nuns. These poems offer insights into their understanding of enlightenment, often characterized by heartfulness and a grounded approach to practice.
Love as a Force
A concept distinguishing love not merely as an emotion or feeling, but as a fundamental, energetic fabric of the world itself. It represents the deep connection that holds everything together, akin to a mysterious force.
7 Questions Answered
Much of the Buddha's teachings were passed down orally for at least 200 years before being written by primarily male monastic scribes, who had their own perspectives and agendas, leading to the omission or downplaying of women's stories.
It's unclear what the Buddha actually said or intended, as nothing was written down for centuries. While some later accounts suggest reluctance or restrictive rules, the Buddha was also reputed to have wanted a fourfold Sangha including lay women and nuns.
This mythic story highlights that the path to awakening is not a solo journey of intense striving and asceticism, but a connected one requiring nourishment, rest, relationships, and care for oneself.
The story of Yasodhara, the Buddha's wife, suggests that living a life fully engaged in the world, raising children, and managing a household can be an 'equal opportunity door to awakening,' offering a lost teaching on how to practice amidst ordinary life.
Ananda, the Buddha's attendant, acted as an ally by petitioning the Buddha three times after Mahapajapati and other women were initially denied entry, arguing for women's equal capacity for enlightenment.
Her poem encourages looking at everyone as if they might be a future Buddha, promoting a compassionate response to others' suffering and recognizing their potential for greatness rather than judging them.
The first step is to notice the cultural tilt towards masculine energies (striving, pushing, solo effort) and consciously integrate more feminine qualities such as receptivity, gentleness, connection, nourishment, and community into individual practice and the structures of practice.
14 Actionable Insights
1. Balance Masculine, Feminine Energies
Identify the tilt towards masculine energies (e.g., pushing, striving) in your individual practice and community, then consciously integrate more feminine qualities like receptivity, gentleness, nourishment, and connection to achieve greater balance.
2. Identify Masculine Energy Tilt
Notice how our world and practices are tilted toward masculine energies (e.g., hard, fast, active) over feminine energies (e.g., soft, slow, passive), recognizing this imbalance contributes to cultural sickness.
3. Reject Shame-Based Self-Improvement
Avoid ‘New Year, New You’ narratives that imply complete reinvention and are often based on shame and self-loathing, instead exploring a science-based approach to self-love.
4. See Everyone as Future Buddha
Look at everyone as if they might be a future Buddha, which can help counteract judgmental tendencies and assume greatness in others.
5. Address Bad Behavior with Compassion
When encountering bad behavior in yourself or others, try to see it as stemming from confusion and suffering rather than innate badness, fostering a more compassionate response.
6. Integrate Fierce Compassionate Action
Combine deep compassion with fierce dedication, perseverance, and grit, recognizing that compassion is not just soft but can also drive strong, determined action.
7. Advocate for Unheard Voices
For those in positions of privilege, listen to the cries of those being left out and advocate for them, taking a stand even if it might be difficult or unpopular.
8. Nourish Your Spiritual Practice
Avoid intense pushing, striving, and solitary effort in spiritual practice, recognizing it’s a connected journey where you need to keep yourself well-fed with beauty, relationships, art, and rest.
9. Embrace Heartfulness in Practice
Cultivate qualities like nurturance, tenderness, gentleness, relationship, support, and nourishment in your spiritual practice, fostering a ‘heartfulness’ that grounds you in the body rather than transcending it.
10. Ground Practice in Your Body
When experiencing intense doubt during meditation, reorient your practice from transcending ‘up and out’ to coming ‘down and in’ by grounding yourself, metaphorically or literally touching the earth.
11. Awaken Through Engaged Daily Life
Consider that living a life fully engaged in the world can be an equal opportunity path to awakening, rather than needing to renounce everything or retreat to a monastery.
12. Shift Perspective to Awaken
Understand that awakening involves shifting your perspective to see the same things in new ways, and take this up as a contemplation to potentially change your experience.
13. Reflect for Balanced Practice
Engage in personal reflection on the stories and perspectives shared, viewing them as an invitation to find your way into a more balanced practice, life, and world, rather than as criticism.
14. Submit New Year Series Questions
Dial 646-883-8326 to leave a voicemail with questions or reflections for the New Year series, including meditation questions, by December 7th.
8 Key Quotes
It's not that they weren't there, it's that it wasn't written down.
Pamela Weiss
The most senior nun is always junior to the most junior monk.
Pamela Weiss
It's hard to compute because the Buddha and Buddhism, you know, the primacy of compassion in this tradition, you know, it's placed right in the center. And so it's hard to imagine why somebody who was purportedly fully enlightened would want to subordinate women.
Dan Harris
We don't even know what we're missing. We've adapted so much to a particular perspective about what practices and how it's passed on and on and on and on like that, that it takes a wake-up call in a certain way to realize, oh, wait, there's more.
Pamela Weiss
Enlightenment is a team sport.
Dan Harris
What if it were the case that living a life fully engaged in the world were an equal opportunity door to awakening?
Pamela Weiss
Can we see suffering rather than evil? Can we see that when any of us, we or they are behaving badly, that it's not coming out of some kind of innate badness. It's coming out of confusion. It's coming out of one's own suffering.
Pamela Weiss
Patriarchy has no gender.
Pamela Weiss