This seems to be a challenging topic since it is so emotive! To assist participants in framing their replies in accordance with Right Speech and the forum rules, Slow Mode has been engaged. Let’s all take a deep breath!!
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Certainly many things:
Ears to listen to her,
Eyes to see her,
Feet to step aside and give her space
And a fearless heart to love her.
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The Lord has instructed one to transcend things like feminity and masculinity;
The Blessed One said: "A woman attends inwardly to her feminine faculties, her feminine gestures, her feminine manners, feminine poise, feminine desires, feminine voice, feminine charms. She is excited by that, delighted by that. Being excited & delighted by that, she attends outwardly to masculine faculties, masculine gestures, masculine manners, masculine poise, masculine desires, masculine voices, masculine charms. She is excited by that, delighted by that. Being excited & delighted by that, she wants to be bonded to what is outside her, wants whatever pleasure & happiness that arise based on that bond. Delighting, caught up in her femininity, a woman goes into bondage with reference to men. This is how a woman does not transcend her femininity.
"A man attends inwardly to his masculine faculties, masculine gestures, masculine manners, masculine poise, masculine desires, masculine voice, masculine charms. He is excited by that, delighted by that. Being excited & delighted by that, he attends outwardly to feminine faculties, feminine gestures, feminine manners, feminine poise, feminine desires, feminine voices, feminine charms. He is excited by that, delighted by that. Being excited & delighted by that, he wants to be bonded to what is outside him, wants whatever pleasure & happiness that arise based on that bond. Delighting, caught up in his masculinity, a man goes into bondage with reference to women. This is how a man does not transcend his masculinity. Sn7.48
That reminds me exactly of things not to be done
Then the Venerable Ananda said to the Blessed One: “How, Lord, should we conduct ourselves towards women?”
“Do not see them, Ananda.”
“But, Lord, if we do see them?”
“Do not speak, Ananda.”
“But, Lord, if they should speak to us?”
"Then, Ananda, you should establish mindfulness Dn16
A fearless heart is one unbound.
283-285 Dhammapada
Cut down the forest of desire, not the forest of trees. From the forest of desire come danger & fear. Having cut down this forest & its underbrush, monks, be deforested. For as long as the least bit of underbrush of a man for women is not cleared away, the heart is fixated like a suckling calf on its mother. Crush your sense of self-allure like an autumn lily in the hand. Nurture only the path to peace — Unbinding — as taught by the One Well Gone
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IMHO we are all trying to make mountains out of a molecule. As I understand it, the Buddha says “young men, There is suffering, instead of searching for an escape from it, why are you all searching for a woman”.
What the Sutta does not say is whether the other women who were with the men also listened to the discourse and made any attainments. Most likely it would have been the outcome because it is unlikely that all the women had to go back home alone.
If the Sutta had said that the women too attained stream entry no one probably would ask these questions today.
With Metta
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Bhante, this is fine for itthiyā and vo, but you have left the interrogative kiṁ unanalysed, assuming in each case that it means “What?” However, in the commentaries the word is not infrequently glossed as kasmā or kena which would give us a why or a how question.
To quote an example from one of your own translations:
I note that both the Mahachula Thai translators and Ven. Ānandajoti in his Mahākhandhaka translation have in fact treated kiṁ pana vo kumārā itthiyā as a why question.
Mahachula:
พวกเธอมีความต้องการหญิงไปทำไม
“Why do you have a desire [or need] for a woman?”
Ānandajoti:
“But why, young men, (look for) a woman?”
https://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Texts-and-Translations/Mahakhandhako/20-Good-Group.htm
On the other hand, the Mahamakut monks have stuck with “What?”
พวกเธอจะต้องการอะไรด้วยหญิงเล่า
“What do you want with a woman?”
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Could you show me ven thanissaro translation ?
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As far as I know Ajahn Thanissaro hasn’t translated any of the books of the Vinaya Pitaka. In his Buddhist Monastic Code he has translated many passages from the Vinaya, but I doubt the Bhaddavaggiyasahāyaka episode would be one of them.
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Yes. But what are we to do with this information in the context of this thread? It doesn’t change the reality that
Of course transcending all identification is the ultimate goal. Most people on this forum know this. But we don’t live in a vacuum. These things do affect people. Buddhist women and minorities are often reminded of these teachings not as a compassionate response but dismissal. And while these teachings are very important and to be practiced by all of us; I’m concerned that in the context of this particular thread, your comment might not help those who need help with the original question.
What do you think, is it likely that a Buddhist woman will see your comment and think “Oh, right! Silly me, how did I forget”? 
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It can be inferred that all of these verses can be applied to both sexes. It might just as well been a woman asking
- What should we do about men?
- Not seeing
- What if we have to see them?
- Not talking
… etc
I think that it is important to clearly say what is and isn’t the teacher’s message and that we do not make it into something that it isn’t.
For this reason i was compelled to make the last post and as much as it might be disagreeable to some i find the encouragement to offer one’s heart, ear & eyes to a woman straight evil.
Plucking out her lovely eye,
with mind unattached
she felt no regret.“Here, take this eye. It’s yours.”
Straightaway she gave it to him.
Straightaway his passion faded right there,
and he begged her forgiveness. Thig14.1
Likewise if a man encouraged women to stay bonded i would take an issue with that.
I don’t think females need to be protected from the texts or that the teachings should be made psychologically pleasing to them. I think women are plenty capable of figuring things out and doing the work.
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I can’t comment for Bhante @sujato, but personally, I feel that questions beginning with “why” belong to a slightly more formal register of English and are not really that commonly used in spoken Australian English unless you actually want to interrogate someone (or with an additional softener, like “Can I ask why…?”)
So while translating as “why” is technically correct, it makes the English register unnatural. I know not everyone can stomach a dangling preposition, but that’s why I went for softer “what for”.
Also: I’m glad you are out of retreat Bhante @Dhammanando, the internet wasn’t the same without you.
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Exactly this kind of problem arises within every scriptural tradition. In teaching ancient texts I have found it helpful to remind students of the following:
Writings intended for an audience thousands of years ago are bound by social ideas of their time just as much as they are by the vocabulary and grammar of their languages. Ancient scriptures require translation of concepts as much as they do language, and a word-for-word translation is not always a fair representation of content.
The important question is not whether a classical text espouses views that would not be acceptable today—you may be sure it will. Being cross with ancient India for not being modern Boston is one of the less useful ways of approaching a text. The question we should ask is whether the problematic statements are structurally essential to the text as a whole, or whether they can be regarded as merely quaint relics of bygone times.
Ancient texts will be sexist and homophobic. Count on it. There’s no way to put a good face on this. But to focus on trace elements of vanished cultures to the exclusion of the explicitly and consciously developed content is to miss the really important points.
A sobering thought, which should lead to a more generous view of ancient texts, is the consideration of our own failures of awareness. My neighbors all drive enormous SUV’s. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that this is an eco-crime. My neighbors are not however criminals: they have a failure of awareness. To berate them is unlikely to improve their understanding.
Failures of awareness are part of the human condition, and human documents, however supernally true, will have flaws that are inescapable when communicating to humans in a particular historical situation.
So yes, there’s sexism in the Pali texts, and trying to candy this over with exegesis only persuades people we are intellectually dishonest. But sexism is not a structurally significant part of the Dharma, and to pretend that it is only persuades people we are captious and self-obsessed. It is there, it’s not right, and it will be hurtful until we advance as a society to where we can view it as a curious delusion of ancient folk without contemporary relevance.
It is our duty to be honest about flaws in our belief systems. It is equally our duty to regard people as beings who essentially mean well and can learn better.
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I think you are being impolite here, what about blind people do they need to learn Pali too ?
While I agree that expertise In Pali might clear any possible misunderstanding I don’t think it’s necessary, Buddha never ask us to learn Pali to attain nibbana
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This is true as far as it goes. But the reality is that in any language certain combinations of words are far more likely than others. To discover these combinations is an enormous amount of work, but fortunately we have dictionaries. In the present case, it seems the combination of kiṁ with the instrumental case is standard (see DOP, sv. ka), and the meaning is “what is the use of …”, or something similar. I therefore take this to be the most likely meaning of the Pali here.
Still, we need to get the right nuance. Since the English word “use” has unfortunate connotations, I have now chosen a less direct rendering:
“But, young men, why look for a woman?”
Kiṁ pana vo, kumārā, itthiyti.
I have also decided to change “prostitute” to “sex worker”. According to Open Society Foundations, the difference between the two terms is as follows:
The term “sex worker” recognizes that sex work is work. Prostitution, on the other hand, has connotations of criminality and immorality.
The evidence from the Canon suggests that “sex worker” is the more appropriate term. It is clear that there were women in ancient India who made a living from selling sex, but there is little evidence, so far as I know, of any criminal activity involved. Moreover, there is little no indication that sex work was considered immoral.
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Great point.
Yeah, no thanks. If we look at texts dating before the Common Era, there’s no homophobia in Buddhist texts, or indeed, so far as I know, in any Asian texts. And if you look at other scriptural traditions—such as the Greeks for example—homophobia is far from universal, where it exists at all. Let’s not assume that what is true of the Abrahamaic tradition is true of everyone. Or should I say, that what is true of a few Bible verses is true of everyone.
As far as sexism goes, a little nuance would be in order. There are a few problematic passages in the early Buddhist texts—which I have often discussed—and I don’t think this is among them. But it’s simply not true to say as a blanket statement that ancient “texts” are sexist.
Moreover, this assumes that “our” modern perspective is somehow more evolved than that of people in the past. It’s more complex than that. Moderns are sexist as hell. We have no vantage point of virtue on which to judge people of the past. A basic concept like believing women when they speak of sexual harassment is mandated in the Pali Vinaya, but practically ignored in almost every modern institution.
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This was the opposite of what I hoped for when I split this topic off from another thread. … It’s sad when we realise that before expressing a personal difficulty we need to reaffirm a faith that we have assumed everybody here takes for granted. … It’s heartening to know that you have true spiritual friends here.
I hope we can all learn something from what Anne has written here, about something helpful we might have done. What I’ve learned is that when I was writing the Opening Post, I might have helped a little to have added a reminder about this.
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It’s so easy to mansplain these sorts of things away and tell women the problem is that they are attached to their identity and that’s why they suffer. As if that explanation is suddenly going to change all the higher instances of domestic violence, lower wages, fear of walking down the street alone etc etc. You can’t just magic away gender because actually in daily life it matters…
Men are usually privileged not to expect bad conditions just because of their gender. But men so often forget that they are extremely attached to their identity too!
It’s so important that we acknowledge where gender matters and how it relates to suffering on personal and social levels, so that we don’t spiritually bypass these things using some exaggerated idea of transcendence that devalues the realities of people’s daily experience. In our spiritual practice it takes wisdom to be able to balance understandings of the transcendent and mundane in ways that don’t deny the reality of either.
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That’s the ultimate goal, for sure. Most of us have many rounds of living in samsara ahead of us and feel we can do well to live our lifetimes as skillfully and compassionately as possible. The Buddha told us to abide radiating compassion and loving kindness to all around us, these beautiful qualities touch on the suffering of others and can move us to feel concern to alleviate that suffering on the mundane level in the world as well as encouraging ourselves and others to move towards transcending the world.
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This is a biased, one-sided view of life. Men experience discrimination too. And being at the receiving end of societal tarring and warped prejudices can result in the same anguish that afflicts other beings.
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Yes, of course men experience their own share of struggles. As a trans man, I know this all too well. Being a man is a much more lonely experience and there are a few aspects of life that are generally more difficult for men than women.
But women’s struggles, overall, far surpass those of men in magnitude. When it comes to gender-related issues specifically. People who’ve only ever lived as one gender in this life might not fully see the sheer magnitude of the difference. Boy, is it huge!
I find it striking that you responded the way you did because nothing you said conflicts what Bhante Akaliko said. He said men are usually privileged not to expect bad conditions just because of their gender. Which is just an easily observable reality. Nowhere did he say that men don’t experience discrimination.
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