I’ve been looking for a way into the dharma that takes account of women’s experience, sensitivities and predicaments, and finally found lines in the Therigatha that “speak to my condition” as the Quakers like to say. I’d read it before, in a number of translations from the impeccable Norman, the no less reliable but somewhat more urbane Hallisey, and tried Murcott’s more deliberately feminist rendering—along with a number of others. It wasn’t until I struggled through some verses that looked promising, dictionary in hand, that I felt a living pulse! This poem, which ironically shares a name with me, describes the double drudgery of housework and a husband’s sexual demands as key factors in her disenchantment with the world. Three points of particular interest appear,
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her complaints could have been voiced by a woman in 1970’s America: it is a truly trenchant feminist critique
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The sharpness of her insight is lost unless we appreciate the witty sexual dimension, which to my knowledge was only recognized by Bhante Sujato ( SuttaCentral )
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What makes this ring, for me, as an authentic woman’s voice is the erotic humor. Men’s sexual wit tends not to be very subtle—the wit here was so subtle that only one translator recognized it! And of course, the droll characterization of her husband’s sexual “bent” and its instrument—the merriment at the expense of the male sex drive is not the sort of thing that would occur to a man.
This bhikkhuni’s poetic testimony uses humor to add wings to her account of awakening. Perhaps the sense of play is what I find most engaging and refreshingly feminine.