It seems Buddha wasnt so much on anti procreate per se but He does in a way repulsed of rebirth .
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He was repulsed by Samsara, and rebirth is a part of it. So I think.
But procreating is ok, new human births must be arranged somehow.
Appreciated, Kheramato. I think it depends on how you define the concept of rebirth. Do you look at it as a kind of transmigration of souls (or whatever part of the former being that gets reborn) or do you just consider a new similar being being born and making similar experiences a rebirth. My teacher is of the second oppinion and thinks that the first was foreign to the historical Buddha and only made it into teachings later. Of course that places him outside orthodox Theravada Buddhism.
In any case I admit to having been uncareful in my statement since I of course do not know what the historical Buddha really tought. But I stand by my statement as my personal view.
Very True. Human Birth is indeed rare and beneficial.
The normal perception is that if after death if one is born as a Brahma then it’s like a promotion.
But the Buddha said that If a Brahma, after death, is reborn as a human then it’s real promotion for him (Brahma) because only Human species have that capability to understand the Mind Matter Phenomenon and practice Samatha which leads to release from the Bondages (Sankharas).
Regards,
Amit
But he wasn’t. He initially intended to create a Four-part following: upasakas, upasikas, bhikkhusangha and bhikkhunisangha. So, he initially intended to allow women to go forth.
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Sexism, Racism, Supremacy etc are deeply entrenched defilements that have plagued human society for millenia. I was surprised to see so many western thinkers and philosophers from Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel to Locke, Hume, Darwin, Freud and others had mysogynist thinking and ideas. (Wikipedia)
Growing up in a Buddhist family with some contact with Buddhist culture I do not see much senior householder Mahapajapati’s bowing to a younger monk as necessarily sexist. Here’s why. The male monastic Sangha in Buddha’s time was already established for 5 years with many Arahants and noble ones. In my experience I have seen a few times individual monks in India irrespective of age is believed to represent the whole (bhikkhu) sangha and not an individual person. Older people (including mother or father) bows to even young boys who just took the robe in temporary ordination often after funeral of father or mother (as is the custom), because they do follow the vinaya during short term novice ordination. It is considered a great honor for the lay community and any Buddhist family to offer their children to monastic Sangha (even temporarily) out of reverence for the triple gem.
In the US, I’ve seen a Srilankan monk accept the offering of a meal to him on behalf of whole bhikkhu sangha. This rubbing off of the individual self is part of the culture.
Also some languages in India use gender neutral pronoun as in Pali and Bengali, which softens gender bias. I learned that from a nun who uses the word ‘bhante’ with her monastic name.
Namo Buddhaya!
I think the garudhammas are much like the expectation of a layman to show defference to a monk’s status.
It would be terribly unfortunate for the monk to let it go to his head, thinking laypeople to be his inferior, because people would notice and shut it down quickly.
I wish we would recognize it similarly when the garudhammas get to people’s head and shut it down quickly as we would a conceited monk, without shutting down the garudhammas.
People should realize the obvious reason why the Buddhas don’t favor establishing both orders. It is because the monks & nuns will want to see eachother often, they become close & intimate, lust arises, and they leave the training in droves.
It has nothing to do with mysogyny, women ruining anything or being evil.
The mysogyny manifests as the demonstrable unfair treatment of women on account of conceit that there is due to misapprehension of the training rules.
…then why didn’t he establish ONLY nun’s order?.. Or make monks bow to nuns?..
Men are so used to being first in everything they don’t even think about it.
I think the Garudhammas were established to protect the nuns - to show the people that these women were under someone’s protection. These were dark and dangerous times for women - especially the ones who “belonged to no one” - had no husband or father nearby. The reason was external sexism, not internal.
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It has to do with king of Brahmas being a man not a woman, the king of Maras being a man not a woman, the king of the 33 Gods is a man not a woman, the wheel turning monarchs being men not women.
It is not easy to find a woman who has not performed those roles and at that time she was a man not a woman.
Furthermore Tathagatas are always men never women.
It has to do with integrity and veneration of what is worthy of respect.
It is essentially the same reason why laymen bow to monks. It’s not because the monk is better, it is because we recognize that ordination as something worth venerating.
I hope you can understand what i am getting at. If one thinks ‘I am a woman’ then one cuts oneself off from one’s past & future history and this will break the integrity.
The truth is that whenever beings are born as male they are prone to conceit and thinking themselves better than women. And when they are born as female then they recognize this in men and think the system is against them. But the truth is that the system is not against them as much as men & women both judging the case too hastly.
Basically it is a cycle of being born a mysogynist and being born as a woman complaining about it, all because of conceit & hypocrisy due to misapprehension of the training rules & gender roles.
Going back to the analogy of a layman venerating monks.
I always try to venerate the monks, and i don’t mind saying that they have something nice which i do not and are better off to that extent, and i revere that distinction by bowing and treating them differently.
If i felt like this was being used against me, that someone is exploiting it, then i would shut down the exploitation. I would probably scold it very harshly in contrast to veneration. And i would keep venerating the monks as before but now having made sure there are no misunderstandings because of this.
I think that if i was a nun id probably do the same and insist on upholding the garudhammas but i would not let anybody use this against me and would raise hell if they try.
As i see it, just because one venerates a distinction, it does not make one subservient or generally submissive.
For example if a wife is more intelligent & virtuous then she is a fool to give up authority but whilst leading the household it is still in her self-interest to venerate her husband.
Likewise if anagami layman is in a company of monks lacking attainments. He can still insist on venerating the monks, be most humble, considerate & polite, but there is no way he would submit to them and it won’t end well for the monks if they tried to exploit this good quality.
The problem in gender dynamics is that people are generally confused not knowing where the boundaries are and where to set the boundaries.
I find this sutta to be highly questionable, by the way. And not only me.
Ok. Men are worthy of women’s respect. Because… they are.
I have always found the sutta about “Women can’t be Brahma, Mara etc” highly questionable. Because, you know, Brahma doesn’t rule with his penis. I’m not so sure about Mara, but still.
This looks to me like a later addition by sexist monks. And, yeah, as I can see, men still LOVE IT. Because they are so special.
There is a difference between venerating a person and venerating a characteristic of a person.
For example a person from a very reputable family might get a more lenient punishment from the king on account of the man’s relatives.
The man’s last name is taken into account and is venerated, rather than the man who is ruining the social credit of his clan.
We can say the man is venerated in that he is beneficiary of the leniency but he is born into this family because of his deeds and so we can’t deny him what is his. It would be unjust even if he is a bad person we do not like.
I don’t find it questionable but i understand that people would find things like this and the garudhammas questionable in light of real mysogyny because these are things agreeable to the mysogynists and it feeds their delusion.
My point is that the problem is not the garudhammas but the mysogyny that there is because of it.
People think that because you bow to them then they are better than you and can walk allover, this is the problem imho, not the traditional etiquette & gender roles.
In many ways, if one pushes to eliminate the garudhammas because it causes much trouble, then it enforces the mysogynistic stereotypes of unruly women who want to escape the kitchen.
It’d be as if laity decided that monks get too conceited when we bow to them and so they decide to stop bowing.
Then the monks would say ‘Truly these laypeople are so lowly & corrupt they don’t even bow to us anymore’, thus it’d reinforce the delusion.
My understanding (happy to be corrected by the experts here!) is that:
- The Sixteen planes of fine material existence (rupa brahma loka) have physical forms with no genitalia and no specific gender allocations
- The Four planes of immaterial existence (arupa brahma loka) have no physical forms at all, hence cannot be allocated any gender
The fact that characters are depicted as male in the sutras is more likely to be SECONDARY to the sexism of the time rather than some message from the Buddha that the PRIMARY message is that men are superior and hence hold all major roles in the Universe.
The Buddha suggested it would be wise to examine everything he taught and then see if any particular thing said to be his teaching is consistent with the rest and then accept or reject accordingly…seems wise to me and what we need to do here.
The Buddha ordained women (using the same words as ordaining men)
The Buddha had chief female disciples, just as chief male
The EBT have multiple (many thousand?) female enlightened beings
The EBT have some female authors
The EBT have multitudes of verses where the Buddha reflects on judging people by their thoughts, speech and actions not other characteristics (caste gender etc)
Anything else needs to be viewed in the light of these very clear messages coming across the two plus millennia of continued sexism! What amazes me is how little sexism crept in not that some sexism crept in…
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This is a misunderstanding. The Buddhas only have two chief disciples. There are many foremost disciples but only two chief disciples. There were no female chief disciples.
More likely based on what? This is much like saying that rebirth and everything magical was added to the story or that the whole legend of the Buddha is fiction.
To many people many things seem obviously wrong & suspect but this is just their opinion which contradicts many texts.
Here you appeal to things being obviously suspect & erroneous but it is only your opinion which can never be substantiated with texts held to be true.
Therefore if you hold this opinion but can not show clear substantiation based on the texts then you have essentially left the conversation based on texts held to be true and are discussing your own doctrine.
Whether it be a misunderstanding, or whether it be a correct understanding, it is the Theravādin received opinion that every Buddha’s retinue includes both a pair of aggasāvakas and a pair of aggasāvikās. In the case of Gotama Buddha the latter would be Khemā and Uppalavaṇṇā.
The earliest explicit source of this opinion is the Buddhavaṃsa in which the names of the present and past Buddhas’ alleged aggasāvikās are given. The idea also finds a certain measure of implicit (but non-probative) support in earlier texts, e.g., in the exhortation to bhikkhunīs to look upon Khemā and Uppalavaṇṇā in the same way that bhikkhus should look upon Sāriputta and Moggallāna.
I’ve never looked into the question of how widely shared the concept of an aggasāvikā / agraśrāvikā was in other Indian Buddhist schools, but I do know that it’s found in at least one, namely, the school that gave us the Mahāvastu compilation.
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I think it’d upset people if i explain why it is unreasonable.
My pleasure.
I wouldn’t regard the mere non-mention of aggasāvikās in the Mahāpadānasutta as probative, or even suggestive, of their non-existence.
This same sutta also relates the size of the past Buddhas’ bhikkhusanghas, but not of their bhikkhunīsanghas. It relates the names of the past regnant rājās but not the names of their consort devīs. Ought we to conclude from this that the past Buddhas had no bhikkhunīsanghas and that the regnant rājās had no devīs? Or might their non-mention be no more than conformity to some shorthand pars pro toto convention?
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It took me a while to understand what you were getting at.
Are making a reference to ‘consort devi’ as ‘The Woman Treasure’?
I don’t understand why one would expect the texts to mention the harem of the king or their foremost queen/queens. Lest one would be talking about a Wheel Turning Monarch’s ‘Woman Treasure’.
Does Pali not use the masculine gender when referring to a group of both masculine and feminine components (my Pali is Kindergarten level so hope an expert will chip in!)? One of the Pali scholars can probably reference texts where we know there were Bhikkhunis present but the masculine collective noun is used, I understand this to be the case but don’t have a reference.
@Notez : Do you accept that the EBT has multiple references to the Buddha criticising Brahmans for thinking people can be judged from their position or caste or some other characteristic but says it is from the character of their thoughts, speech and actions, nothing to do with any other characteristic (e.g., sex)?