Give women religious freedoms as well

Kudos to Paisarn Likhitpreechakul for his luminous explanation of a tricky passage in the Tripitaka that makes the Buddha appear to be a misogynist.

More troubling to some admirers of the Buddha is a passage in the Culla Vagga, ably translated by Henry Clarke Warren in “Buddhism in Translation”. Here, the Buddha’s aunt, Prajapati Gotami, begs the Buddha to allow the ordination of women. When the Buddha refuses, she gets his favourite disciple, Ananda, to run interference for her. In a passage that reveals the most human aspects of the Buddha’s personality, Ananda keeps wheedling until the Buddha finally relents. But he is clearly reluctant to do so.

Why this reluctance? The Buddha lived in a fairly primitive time. Women were not safe unless they had males to protect them, as evidenced by this passage from “The Laws of Manu”, a Hindu lawbook composed a few hundred years later: “Her father guards her in childhood, her husband guards her in youth, and her sons guard her in old age.” Who was supposed to guard the nuns? Certainly not the monks. Placing monks and nuns in close proximity would have been a recipe for ongoing scandals in a sangha committed to celibacy. Hence the Buddha’s reluctance to ordain nuns.

Now we live in a more civilized era – although I have my doubts whenever I watch the news on TV – and some religious organisations have solved the problem by allowing separate orders for monks and nuns. Others, notably in Mahayana Buddhism, allow full ordination of women, an example which the Thai sangha would do well to emulate. The religious aspirations of women ought not to be abridged. 

William Page

Samut Prakan