In the past three decades Buddhism has become increasingly popular in the West and has had a major impact on Western religious thought and practice. That tradition, however, comes with baggage about the roles and position of women that is reminiscent of the baggage in other the major traditions already established in the West, such as Christianity and Judaism.The response of Western Buddhist scholars has been to apply some of the historical techniques used in recent decades to evaluate biblical history to study the authenticity and nature of Buddhist scriptures. Use of these techniques in both contexts tends to run up against a particular bias. If the scholars are themselves practitioners and have assumptions about the "goodness" of the founder, whether Jesus, Buddha, Moses, or some other, then the scholars may make the mistake of projecting their own ideas about "goodness" on the historical figure, instead of relying on an objective historical analysis to evaluate texts.This paper will look at how leading Buddhist scholars have exposed this kind of bias when studying the authenticity of Buddhist sayings about the nature and practice of women.
[...] She attributed some responsibility for changes such as a greater acceptance of female children, the option for women not to marry, and a decreased emphasis on a father choosing his daughter's husband to Buddhism.[1] Horner does admit that a few unpleasant (to many twenty-first century people) attitudes toward women, like the assumption that women will wait on men, were not wiped out by early Buddhism.[2] Horner portrays Buddhists as social reformers who were trying to alter women's position,[3] while other authors, such as Gross, argue that early Buddhist were not trying to make social changes.[4] The story of the founding of the nuns' order is a good example of how Horner used her assumptions. [...]
[...] The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction, fourth edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company Schuster Barnes, Nancy. “Buddhism.” In Arvind Sharma, ed. Women in World Religions. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press Sponberg, Alan. “Attitudes toward Women and the Feminine in Early Buddhism.” In José Ignacio Cabezón ed. Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press Wilson, Liz. Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press I.B. [...]
[...] This is the real issue for the status of women in Buddhism, I think: it is not that Buddhist monks roundly despised women—they simply wanted to keep women out of all positions of authority, in theory and in practice.[16] Schuster Barnes never shares her definition of misogyny, and a definition is crucial here. There are many issues raised by the Vinaya story of the founding of the nuns' order, for example, that may or may not be considered misogyny: inequality, hierarchy, and perceived spiritual, as well as physical, differences between men and women. [...]
[...] As such, the emergence of conventional misogyny into Buddhist literature would represent a shift in perspective away from the psychological soteriology of the earliest tradition back toward the purification soteriology of the ascetics who had been criticized for their excesses by Śākyamuni.[18] III.Historical Analysis It may be true that all statements in the Pali canon that sound misogynistic to modern scholars are later interpolations. It is also possible that they are not. It is important to examine each situation carefully based on a comparison of the texts and on the study of other contemporary texts, and not to just make assumptions based on the presuppositions that the Buddha or the early level of monks did not hold view that we would find misogynistic or offensive. [...]
[...] Needless to say, the historicity of this account [of the creation of the nuns' order] has been looked upon with skepticism by some modern researchers because its misogyny is uncharacteristic of the main body of early Buddhist scriptural writings. In fact, in some early sutra (scriptural writing believed by the faithful to be the words of the Buddha) one finds hints about the founding of the nuns' order which suggest quite another attitude on the part of the founder. The Mahāparinibbānasuttanta records that the Buddha vowed, just after his own enlightenment, to go on living until the samgha of monks, nuns, male and female lay disciples had been established and had proven successful. [...]
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